[Comp-neuro] [publication and call for dialog] IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development, Spring 2013

Dear colleagues,

It is my pleasure to announce the release of the Spring 2013 issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development. This is the biannual newsletter of the computational developmental sciences and developmental robotics community, studying mechanisms of autonomous lifelong learning and development in machines and humans.

It is available at:

http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/AMDNL-V10-N1.pdf

=== Dialog initiated by J. Weng, with responses from Y. Demiris, A. Tapus, M. Lopes, K. Rohlfing, B. Wrede, A. Morse, Y. Choe

=== "Modeling AMD and its Application to Assistive Robotics: Closed Skull or Not?

This dialog discusses the developmental approach to socially assistive robotics. While assistive robots need to adapt continuously and in a lifelong manner to the particularities, preferences and evolving needs of human(s), there are still significant challenges to adapt these developmental learning methods to constraints of safety, trust, acceptability and usefulness. The dialog in this issue of the newsletter provides enlightening visions about this challenge.

=== New dialog initiated by P. F. Dominey

=== "How are Grammatical Constructions Linked to Embodied Meaning Representations?"

Then, a new dialog initiation by Peter Ford Dominey addresses issues in language development and related to the associated capability to perform mental simulations of events: How children learn to use grammar that allows the specification of the temporal unfolding of events in simulation? Does the progressive increase in the complexity of grammatical constructions that are used in development correspond to a developing capability to mentally represent? Is there a direct link between language and simulation? Or must the target of simulation be coded symbolically?

Those of you interested in reacting to this dialog initiation are welcome to submit a response (contact pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr) by September 15th, 2013. The length of each response must be between 600 and 800 words (including references).

Next to the dialogs, Angelo Cangelosi, the chair of the IEEE AMD TC, provides an overview of the news and activities of the TC.

Let me remind you that previous issues of the newsletter are all open-access and available at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/

I wish you a stimulating reading!

Best regards,

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,

Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development
Research director, Inria

Head of Flower project-team

Inria and Ensta ParisTech, France

http://www.pyoudeyer.com