[Editor], 'Conferences', Psycoloquy 941227 URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/psycoloquy/psycol-941227-[editor]-conferences PSYCOLOQUY ISSN 1055-0143 Tue, 27 December 94 Newsletter Section (1) Conference: Cognitive Technology, Aug 24-27 '95, Hong Kong (2) Conference: IJCAI: Spatial Expressions, Aug 19-21 '95, Montreal (3) Conference: AISB-95: Language Visualisation, April '95, Sheffield (4) Conference: AISB-95: Foundations of Cog Sci, April '95, Sheffield (5) Conference: Philosophy & Psychology, Aug/Sept '95, Oxford ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: JPMARSH%hkucc.hku.hk@Princeton.EDU (Jonathon Marsh) Subject: (1) Conference: Cognitive Technology, Aug 24-27 '95, Hong Kong FIRST INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 24-27 August 1995 City University of Hong Kong The University of Aizu, Japan Cognitive Sciences Centre, University of Southampton, UK VENUE: City University of Hong Kong PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT AND FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS COGNITIVE TECHNOLOGY: Cognitive Technology (CT) is the study of the interaction between people and the objects they manipulate. It is concerned with how technologically constructed tools/aids (A) bear on dynamic changes in human perception, (B) affect natural human communication, and (C) act to control human adaptation. Cognitive systems must be understood not only in terms of their goals and computational constraints but also in terms of the external physical and social environments that shape cognition. This can yield (A) technological solutions to real world problems, and (B) tools designed to be sensitive to the cognitive capabilities and affective characteristics of their users. CT takes a broader view of human capability than the current Human Computer Interface research and talks of putting more of the 'human' into the interface without attempting to simulate 'humanness' on machines. It is primarily concerned with how cognitive awareness in people may be amplified by technological means and considers the implications of such amplification on what it means to be human. It should appeal to researchers across disciplines who are interested in the sociocultural and individual implications of developments in the interface between technology and human cognition. Any technology which provides a tool has implications for CT; computer technology has special importance because of its particular capacity to provide multi-sensory stimuli and emulate human cognitive processes. CONFERENCE AIMS: The issues to be explored in this conference can be classified into three areas (1) research problems, (2) process/product specification, and (3) combinations of the two. 1) Research problems, * Establishing an integrated human/machine relationship in which the machine externalizes, extends, and amplifies human cognitive processes. * Examining the ways in which affective states relate to the effect of technological development on human thinking. * Studying sources of dissonance between technological process/ production and human thought/emotion. 2) Process/product specification, * Safeguarding technological growth and development by identifying and eliminating dehumanizing hazards and potentially destructive implications early in the developmental process. * Empowering technology users to become more critical and proactive in considering the tools at their disposal. * Providing guidelines for responsibly presenting information so as to help the user "ask the right questions". 3) Joint research and process/product specification, * Focusing technological growth away from technology-driven and towards human-driven development. * Humanizing technological development from the inside out by placing our cognitive achievements and abilities into the technologies we develop. * Providing technology-based opportunities for the modelling, training, correction, and enhancement of various aspects of human behaviour. * Providing technological means to overcome handicaps, drudgery, fatigue, and any other barriers to human creativity and growth. CHAIRMAN: Professor Jacob L. Mey, Odense University, Denmark & Northwestern University, USA. INVITED SPEAKERS: Professor Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, UK Professor T. L. Kunii, University of Aizu, Japan CALL FOR PAPERS: If you are interested in considering these issues, or other similar ones, and want to share your thoughts and hopes with like-minded people, please submit 6 hard copies of an extended abstract (apprx 1500 words) to Kevin Cox, Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. e-mail: cscoxk@cityu.edu.hk, fax: (852) 788 8614, tel: (852) 788 8604. Deadline for abstracts: 15 Feb 1995 Notification of acceptance: 31 Mar 1995 Full paper: 31 May 1995 Discussion points deadline: 30 June 1995 Registration fee: before 1 July 1995 $US 200 after 1 July 1995 $US 250 Details of the conference schedule and available accommodation will be circulated in a conference brochure at a later date. ------------------------------ From: Paul Mc Kevitt Subject: (2) Conference: IJCAI: Spatial Expressions, Aug 19-21 '95, Montreal 14th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-95) Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions Montreal, Canada One day during 19th-21st August 1995. WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION People constantly relate their spatial perceptual (eg. visual) experiences to one another, conveying the size, shape, orientation and position of objects using a wide range of spatial expressions. The semantic treatment of such expressions presents particular challenges for natural language processing. The meaning representation used must be capable of distinguishing between fine-grained sense differences and ambiguities grounded in our experiential and perceptual structure. On-going research projects that in part address the problem of representing and processing spatial expressions include: o Dialogue understanding using "mental images". o Interfaces to multi-media systems, for example, natural language querying of photographic databases. o Machine translation systems, finding a systematic approach for translating spatial expressions correctly is notoriously difficult. o Natural language instruction of animated and virtual agents. o Spatial queries for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Implicit in current interest in integrating vision and natural language processing (AAAI-94 Workshop and AAAI-95 Fall Symposium on Integrating Natural Language and Vision Processing) is the issue of how to understand and generate spatial expressions. While a distinctive body of work has addressed this particular issue, the treatment of spatial language in its own right has typically not been fully documented. This workshop will provide a forum for more focussed expositions both on current and past research into the representation and processing of spatial expressions. ATTENDANCE: It is intended that between 30 and 40 people will attend the workshop. All workshop participant are expected to register for the main IJCAI conference. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Electronic submission is strongly encouraged (preferably self-contained LaTeX). Papers must be printed to 8 1/2" x 11" size. They must be a maximum of 15 pages, each page having no more than 43 lines, lines being at most 140mm long and with 12 point type. Title, abstract, figures and references must be included within this length limit. Four copies should be mailed to the address below. Double sided printing is encouraged. Patrick Olivier E-mail: plo@aber.ac.uk Centre for Intelligent Systems Tel: +44 970622447 University of Wales Fax: +44 970622455 Aberystwyth Dyfed, SY23 3DB, UK DEADLINES: Submission deadline: 13th March 1995 Notification of acceptance: 13th April 1995 Camera ready copy due: 27th April 1995 ------------------------------ From: Paul Mc Kevitt Subject: (3) Conference: AISB-95: Language Visualisation, April '95, Sheffield CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION AISB-95 WORKSHOP IN LANGUAGE VISUALISATION April 4th 1995 The Tenth Biennial Conference on AI and Cognitive Science (AISB-95) (Theme: Hybrid Problems, Hybrid Solutions) Halifax Hall University of Sheffield Sheffield, England (Monday 3rd -- Friday 7th April 1995) Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB) Chair: Ajit Narayanan Department of Computer Science University of Exeter, Exeter, UK WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: The focus of this one-day Workshop is on the use of systematic and consistent mappings between language input and output graphical forms, where the graphical forms constitute or convey the meaning of the input language. Language visualisation can be of use when (i) the language describes some real-world domain which is intrinsically visual or spatial in nature, and the visualisation tries to recover the visual/spatial meaning from the language description (eg. from a description of a scene, try to draw a picture of the scene); and (ii) the language describes some essentially abstract structure, and the purpose of visualisation is to help us understand the structure by presenting a visual/spatial analogue (eg. a diagram representing the flow of control in a program). Examples of language visualisation include: software visualisation (eg. visualising data structures and program instructions); story visualisation (eg. deriving mental images of text); logic visualisation (eg. deriving visual interpretations of spatial and temporal expressions); visualisation-based diagnosis; visualisation-aided CALL. WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION: Papers addressing these issues should be sent to the Workshop Chair (address below) by 30th January, 1995. All papers will be refereed by the Workshop Committee and other specialists. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by 24th February. Final versions of accepted papers must be submitted by 10th March, 1995. A collated set of workshop papers will be distributed to workshop attenders only. Authors will retain copyright. Papers describing experimental work are particularly welcome. Attendance at the Workshop will be restricted to 30 to encourage discussion. There will be a separate fee (about 60 pounds) for Workshop attenders (more information will be supplied later). The planned date for the Workshop is April 4th, 1995. FURTHER INFORMATION: Further information can be obtained from: Ajit Narayanan, Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4PT, UK. Telephone: +44 (0) 392 264064; email: ajit@dcs.exeter.ac.uk. ------------------------------ From: Paul Mc Kevitt Subject: (4) Conference: AISB-95: Foundations of Cog Sci, April '95, Sheffield FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION AISB-95 Workshop on REACHING FOR MIND: FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE April 3rd/4th 1995 The Tenth Biennial Conference on AI and Cognitive Science (AISB-95) (Theme: Hybrid Problems, Hybrid Solutions) Halifax Hall University of Sheffield Sheffield, England (Monday 3rd -- Friday 7th April 1995) Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB) Chair: Sean O Nuallain Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland & National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada Co-Chair: Paul Mc Kevitt Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield, England WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION The assumption underlying this workshop is that Cognitive Science (CS) is in crisis. The crisis manifests itself, as exemplified by the recent Buffalo summer institute, in a complete lack of consensus among even the biggest names in the field on whether CS has or indeed should have a clearly identifiable focus of study; the issue of identifying this focus is a separate and more difficult one. Though academic programs in CS have in general settled into a pattern compatible with classical computationalist CS (Pylyshyn 1984, Von Eckardt 1993), including the relegation from focal consideration of consciousness, affect and social factors, two fronts have been opened on this classical position. The first front is well-publicised and highly visible. Both Searle (1992) and Edelman (1992) refuse to grant any special status to information-processing in explanation of mental process. In contrast, they argue, we should focus on Neuroscience on the one hand and Consciousness on the other. The other front is ultimately the more compelling one. It consists of those researchers from inside CS who are currently working on consciousness, affect and social factors and do not see any incompatibility between this research and their vision of CS, which is that of a Science of Mind (see Dennett 1993, O Nuallain (in press) and Mc Kevitt and Partridge 1991, Mc Kevitt and Guo 1994). WORKSHOP TOPICS: The tension which riddles current CS can therefore be stated thus: CS, which gained its initial capital by adopting the computational metaphor, is being constrained by this metaphor as it attempts to become an encompassing Science of Mind. The workshop will focus on three themes: * What is the domain of Cognitive Science ? * Classic computationalism and its limitations * Neuroscience and Consciousness WORKSHOP FORMAT: Our intention is to have as much discussion as possible during the workshop and to stress panel sessions and discussion rather than having formal paper presentations. The workshop will consist of half-hour presentations, with 15 minutes for discussion at the end of each presentation and other discussion sessions. A plenary session at the end will attempt to resolve the themes emerging from the different sessions. ATTENDANCE: We hope to have an attendance between 25-50 people at the workshop. Given the urgency of the topic, we expect it to be of interest not only to scientists in the AI/Cognitive Science (CS) area, but also to those in other of the sciences of mind who are curious about CS. We envisage researchers from Edinburgh, Leeds, York, Sheffield and Sussex attending from within England and many overseas visitors as the Conference Programme is looking very international. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Papers of not more than 8 pages should be submitted by electronic mail (preferably uuencoded compressed postscript) to Sean O Nuallain at the E-mail address(es) given below. If you cannot submit your paper by E-mail please submit three copies by snail mail. Submission Deadline: February 13th 1995 Notification Date: February 25th 1995 Camera ready Copy: March 10th 1995 ------------------------------ From: Martin Davies Subject: (5) Conference: Philosophy & Psychology, Aug/Sept '95, Oxford EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY Fourth Annual Meeting St. Catherine's College, Oxford Wednesday 30 August - Friday 1 September, 1995 FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS The Fourth Annual Meeting of the Euro-SPP will begin at 11.30 am on Wednesday 30 August and will end at 5.30 pm on Friday 1 September. Themes for Invited Symposia include: emotion, attention, artificial life, and brain imaging. The conference will be held in St. Catherine's College, Oxford, where accommodation will be available. We expect to be able to offer an accommodation and meals package for the period from Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon for 108 pounds. In addition, bed and breakfast accommodation will be available for the Tuesday night before the conference, and for the Friday and Saturday nights after the conference, at a cost of 28 pounds per night. A limited number of superior rooms with private bath will be available at a higher rate. For further information about local arrangements, email: espp95@psy.ox.ac.uk. The Society welcomes submitted papers and posters for this meeting. Submitted papers and posters are refereed and selected on the basis of quality and relevance to both psychologists and philosophers. Submitted Papers: Papers should not exceed a length of 30 minutes (about 12 double-spaced pages). The full text should be submitted, along with a 300 word abstract. Poster Presentations: Proposals for poster presentations should consist of a 500 word abstract. Unless authors indicate otherwise, submitted papers that we are not able to accept will also be considered for poster presentation. The deadline for submission of both submitted papers and poster presentations is 20 January 1995. Please send three copies to: Professor Beatrice de Gelder Department of Psychology Tilburg University 5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands or: Professor Christopher Peacocke Magdalen College Oxford OX1 4AU UK For information about membership of the Euro-SPP, email: espp@kub.nl. End of PSYCOLOQUY Digest ******************************