agent design echoes

Echoes - design of the agent

Building autonomous agents for children with autism

Aims for the agent -

p 46 ' to be able to act credibly both as a peer and as a tutor'

 achieve appropriately designed transactional support. 

Autonomy p 47 ' an agent that is able to decide independently how to act best in order to achieve a set if high level goals that have been delegated to it'

Be pro-active - engender motivation & attention

Reactive - adaptive

Have social ability - so that it can maximise the chances of the child experiencing a sense of self-efficacy

An ideal social agent with socio-emotional competence

ECHOES environment

12 learning activities that focus on two sub components that are challenging for children on the autistic spectrum -

(i) joint attention ( the ability to coordinate and share attention and emotions

(ii) symbol use -p48 ' understanding of meaning expressed through conventional gestures and words and ability to use non verbal means to share intentions'

Design for the agent

Derived from OCC and appraisal theory. OCC identifies 22 emotions. Agents provided with an affective system composed of emotional reaction rules, action tendencies, emotional thresholds, emotion decay rates

P 499 ' The agent experiences one or more of the 22 emotions of the OCC model based on its appraisal of the current external events and IRS subjective tendencies to experience certain emotions instead of others. The agents deal with these emotions by applying problem-focused or emotion-focused coping strategies

The agent

Advantages of an agent - tireless, persistent, consistent & positive

Positive, motivating, and supportive. Tends to be happy, does not get frustrated easily.

Actions - verbal (using simple language or key words), non-verbal (eye gaze and gesture)

Facial expression, a range of positive facial expressions ( involving lips, eyes, & eyebrows)

Evaluation

Response to bids for interaction ( post intervention cf Pre intention)

From the agent -  slight increase but not SS

From the human practitioner- did increase and almost reached SS

Initiation of bids

To the agent - numerical increase but not SS

To the human participant - very low and remained low

Meltzoff et al (2009) notes

Meltzoff, A.N., Kuhl, P.K., Movellan, J., and Sejnowski., T.J. (2009)

Foundations for a new science of learning

Science, 325, 284-288

p284 'Human learning and cultural evolution are supported by a paradoxical adaptation. We are born immature. During the first year of life , the brain of an infant is teeming with structural activity' with sensory processes developing before higher activity'

'Three principles are emerging from cross-disciplinary work in psychology, neuroscience, machine learning, and education, contributing to a new science of learning'  and, in particular, are useful for explaining,, language and social understanding.

1.    Learning is computational, implicit

2.    Learning is social, implicit

3.    Learning  is supported by brain circuits linking perception and action

1. Learning is computational

' infants and young children possess powerful computational skills that allow them to automatically infer structural models of their environment from the statistical patterns they experience' eg 'before they are three, children use frequency distributions to learn which phonetic units distinguish words in their native language' p 285 ' Statistical regularities and co variations in the world thus provide a richer source of information than previously thought' and the learning    running around these regularities is implicit. ' Learning from probabilistic input provides an alternative to Skinnerian reinforcement learning and Chomskian nativist accounts' of learning

2. Learning is social

p285 'Children do not compute statistics indiscriminately. Social cues highlight what and when to learn'  young infants 'more readily learn and enact an event when it is produced by a person than be an inanimate device. Machine learning studies show that systematically increasing a robot's social-like behaviours and contingent responsivity elevates young children's willingness to connect with it and learn from it'

3. Learning is supported by brain circuits linking perception and action

' Human social and language learning are supported by neural-cognitive systems that link the actions of self and other.'  The brain areas responsible for initiation of movement and its action overlap. ' Social learning, imitation, and sensorimotor experience may initially generate, as well as modify and refine, shared neural circuitry for perception and action'.  KRO to what extent and what is the nature of 'the close coupling and attunement between self and other, which is the hallmark of seamless social communication and interaction'

Social learning and understanding

Three social skills are foundational

1.    Imitation

2.    Shared attention

3.    Empathy and social emotions

 Imitation

'Learning by observing and imitating experts in the culture is a powerful social learning mechanism' ' Imitation if faster than individual discovery and safer than trial and error learning' ' Children can use third person information ( observation of others) to create first person knowledge. This is an accelerator for learning: Instead of having to work out causal relationships themselves children can learn from watching experts' ' Imitative learning is valuable because the behavioural actions of others "like me" serve as a proxy for one's own' ' Children do not slavishly duplicate what they see but reenact a person's goals and intentions' ie ' they produce the goal that the adult was striving to achieve, not the unsuccessful attempts. Children choose whom, when, and what to imitate and seamlessly mix imitation and self discovery to solve novel problems'  attempts in robotics to emulate infant imitation include direct (input-action) and more recently goal based approaches .

 Shared attention

'Social learning is facilitated when people share attention. Shared attention to the same object or event provides a common ground for communication and teaching. An early component of shared attention is gaze following' experimental evidence to show that ' we project our own experience onto others'. P286  ' The ability to interpret the behaviour the behaviour and experience of others by using oneself as a model is a highly effective learning strategy that may be unique to human........It would be useful if this could be exploited in machine  learning'

Empathy and social emotions

' The capacity to feel and regulate emotions is critical '  ' In humans, many affective       processes are uniquely social'. Children will even help and comfort a social robot that was crying Tanaka,Cicourel,Movellan, 2007) 'Brain imaging studies in adults show an overlap in the neural systems activated when people  receive a painful stimulus themselves or perceive that another person is in pain  Hein & Singer (2008) These neural reactions are modulated by cultural experience, training, and perceived similarity between self and other Hein & Singer (2008)

Language Learning  - as shedding light on the interaction between computational learning, social facilitation of learning, and shared neural circuitry for perception and production.

Evidence to show that developing infants pick up the statistical regularities of a language leading to neural commitment. ' However, experiments also show that the computations involved in language learning are "gated" by social processes (Kuhl, 2007). In foreign language learning experiments, social interaction strongly influenced infants' statistical learning. Infants exposed to a foreign language at 9 months learn rapidly, but only when experiencing the new language during social interchanges with other humans. 'Temporal contingencies may be critical'.

Idea of neural commitment

A similar pattern , ' passerine  birds learn conspecific song by listening to and imitating adult birds' ' In birds, as in humans, a social context enhances vocal learning'.

Sanger et al (2011) notes

Sanger, Lindenberger, Muller (2011)

Interactive brains, social minds

Communicative & Integrative Biology

P 655  difficult ' studying the complexities of social interaction in tightly controlled experimental settings' p 661 'real-life social interactions are spontaneous, reciprocal , and multimodal, and thereby pose great challenges to experimental design and the ability to draw causal inferences'

Definitions

Social cognition ' the mechanism that allows us to understand others '

Mentalizing , theory of mind ' the ability to represent other people's mental states (Frith & Frith (2002) as well as the knowledge needed for interaction and formation of social relationships

Social interaction is more narrowly defined 'turn taking among active, autonomous agents who follow social rules and control their action and reactions according to. Their perceptions'

Joint action ' any form of coordinated action bringing about change'

Coordination ' non accidental correlation between the behaviours of two or more systems that are in sustained coupling, or have been coupled in the past, or have been coupled to another, common system'

Interpersonal action coordination  occurs in ' the context of joint actions and coordination' note synchronisation of speech and movements does not qualify. '

Interpersonal action coordination

Discussed in terms of musicians and dancers but could apply to collaborative learning, especially face-to-face.

'interpersonal action coordination requires the perception,representation and anticipation of one's own and  partner actions'

Joint goal, (task) required. The task determines individual intentions (which may be very different especially in learning contexts)

Investigating the neural basis of social interaction

P 656 'Currently little is known about the brain areas that are involved and the neural mechanisms that implements interpersonally coordinated behaviour'

Designs and methods

Collectively the following  implicate fronto parietal areas

Focus

•    Agency

•   Cooperation &competition

•   Intentional stance

•   Self relevance and interpretation of relational stance

Single subjects intact interacting with

•   Computers

•   Virtual counterparts

•   Real counterparts

Methods and techniques involving  EEG

•   Formation of shared action representations' (40)

•   Movement coordination (41)

•   Different forms of action coordination (50,51)

Conclusions and outlook

P 661

' reconcile the dynamics of e phenomenon with the requirements of experimental control'

' there is a need for studies that assess the target behaviour as well as the behavioural cues exchanged between  interaction partners in real time, and relate these measures to neural synchronisation within and between brains' ....  ' Interbrain synchronisation during interpersonal interaction (KRO how important is this online?) coordination clearly depends on multimodal perceptual cues ( e.g. Gestures, facial expressions, movements), but the relation between these cues and Interbrain synchronisation is rarely assessed or analysed' 

Saxe (2006) notes

Rebecca Saxe (2006)

Uniquely human social cognition

Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16, 235-239

Foundational capacities are the only aspects  of human social cognition  that are not uniquely human they are shared by preverbal infants , apes and monkeys

•   Recognise co specifics

•   Monitor others' actions

•   Engage in contingent interactions

•   Understand  basic mental states such as goals and actions (apes and preverbal children (see also  Meltzoff & Decety, 2003) for preverbal children)

What aspects of social cognition are uniquely human?

However, apes and monkeys  and very young infants do not have the following two social cognition  competences

 1. Theory of Mind ( Temporo-parietal junction TPJ)

P235 being able to ' distinguish between the object of a mental state

 what a person's mental state is about , the state of affairs to which the belief or perceptions refers) and the content. (How that state of affairs is represented, what the person believes or perceives to be true of it). KRO for project work the object, state of affairs would be  the task and the understanding that group cohesion needs to be maintained in order to make progress with the task. 'Command of this distinction enables older children to understand how people's mental representations of the world might differ from the way the world really is' KRO or that it differs from their own understanding of it   I.e. Saxe ( shown as italics) would extend the 2003 definition by Meltzoff & Decety ' To become a sophisticated mentalist one needs to analyse both the similarities and differences between one's own states and those of others' as they refer to an object,state of affairs

2.  Joint attention (medial prefrontal cortex MPFC) - mental representations with a three place (triadic) structure ie triadic social relations

'This second unique component of human social cognition requires an individual to represent  triadic relations 'You, and Me, collaboratively looking at, working on or talking about This'

Saxe is discussing these theories  in terms of the physical presence of an intentional actor.

Foundational stages are the first steps when reasoning about others' actions.

1.  Detecting the presence of an intentional actor

 (Extrastriate body area (EBA)). A region in bilateral occipito-temporal cortex that shows a selective response to human bodies and body parts, relative to other familiar objects. Right specialised for perceiving others). Verbal stories about the human body do not suffice.

2. Interpreting the motions of a human body in terms of the person's goals

Posterior Superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), usually right lateralised, recruited both during direct observation and indirect observation of the results of the action.  I.e. it represents the relationship between a movement and its context.  For simple goal directed actions, the response in r. pSTS is increased when there is a mismatch between the action and the target an an action

Representing the specific (representational) contents of mental states such as beliefs

Temporo-parietal junction , adjacent to but distinct from the pSTS

EP236 ' the BOLD response in this region is high when subjects read stories that describe a character's true or false beliefs but low during stories containing other information about a character, including appearance, cultural background, or even internal, subjective sensations .....that have no representational content'

 this region is also recruited 'for determining how the spatial relations between two objects would appear from a character's point of view versus from the subjects's own position'

3.  Reasoning (the sophisticated end of social cognition) about mental states

Recent imaging work has reconstructed the knowledge base on this ie MPFC not the unique neural substrate of reasoning about mental states

 p 236 ' No part of the MPFC is specifically recruited for reasoning about representational mental states' ( ie beliefs) 'instead subregions are implicated in distinct components of social cognition'  Two areas involved ventral and dorsal, distinctiveness supported by double dissociations (neuropsychological evidence)

Ventral MPFC affective empathy and sympathy (supported by evidence collected using a variety of method)

Saxe  p 237 definition of emotional empathy  based on Blair 'the cognitive and neural processes that produce a congruent emotion in the observer in response to others' directly perceived emotional displays or to descriptions of others' emotion-laden experiences'

Dorsal MPFC  implicated in ' shared or collaborative attention and goals, that is triadic relations between Me, You and This