[ACT-R-users] Cog Mod Announcements: ICCM'03/CogSci tutorials/AISBQ/Soar/more

Sat May 31 12:04:09 EDT 2003

[Please feel free to forward this as well. ]

This is based on the International Cognitive Modeling Conference
mailing list, which I maintain.  I've added you to it by hand.  I send
the messages out by hand using some Emacs functions.  The first
announcement is the one that is driving this email, that the ICCM
proceedings are available.  I don't anticipate much traffic though,
until the next ICCM in Pittsburgh in 2004 has a paper call go out.

I email to it about 1-2 times/year a bunch of cognitive modeling and
HCI related announcements, jobs, and links.  I will continue to send
this to you about twice a year unless you tell me to stop.  I think
these announcements are each of some quality.

cheers,

Frank

1.  ICCM proceedings available
    [now, until they run out]

2.  Soar 20th Anniversary Workshop
    [23-27 June 03]  http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/~soar/workshop23.html

3.  Agents that work workshop in Australia at AAMAS 2003
    [14 July 03] http://www.agent-software.com.au/shared/demosNdocs/aamas2003/

4.  Cogsci 2003 Tutorials: eye-tracking, online seminars, Inquery, and LSA
    [30 July 03] http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conf03/tutorials.html 

5.  AI and Simulation of Behaviour Journal looking for submissions
    [continuous] http://www.aisb.org.uk/aisbj/index.html

6.  Cognitive Science Society European Conference
    [10-13 Sept 03]  http://www.eurocogsci03.uos.de

7.  Book on Cognitive modeling available online and in-print
    [continuous] http://iac.dtic.mil/hsiac/SOARS.htm

8.  Workshop on Cogsci & engineering systems, Australasian CogSci Conf
    [13 July 03] http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/cogsci2003/conf_content/prop_symosia.html

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1.  ICCM proceedings available

The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling was held 10-12
April in Bamberg Germany.  Its program and further details on it are
available at http://iccm2003.ppp.uni-bamberg.de/

Extra copies of the proceedings are available from Dr. Frank Detje
(frank.detje at ppp.uni-bamberg.de) for I believe about 20 Euros.

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2. Soar 20th Anniversary Workshop

Invitation to attend the 23rd Soar Workshop, June 23-27, 2003, Ann
Arbor Michigan.

It has been a little more than twenty years since the first version of
Soar turned over. Since that time, Soar has been used world wide for
developing AI systems, building cognitive models, controlling robots,
and controlling characters in computer games. To celebrate, we are
trying to make this year' s workshop even more special than usual. We
are expanding the technical portion of Soar workshop to three days
(June 25-27), broadening the scope of presentations and discussions,
inviting many people from outside the traditional Soar community to
attend, and even giving out Soar T-shirts!

If you are new to Soar, the workshop is a great way to learn Soar (we
have tutorials June 23-24), come up to speed on current research on
Soar, and meet other Soar researchers who are potential
collaborators. If you are old to Soar, now is a great time to see old
friends, get up to speed on new developments, and participate in
defining its future (see below).

We want to also invite people working in other architectures. You will
learn more about Soar and we will learn more about research outside of
Soar. We invite you to give a talk on your own work in another
architecture - just make sure you relate it to Soar in some way.

One of the goals of the workshop is to plan out the future of Soar,
specifically to increase its use and usability. What can we do so more
people use Soar and Soar is easier to learn and use? We will set aside
one afternoon for brainstorming on the problems and possible
solutions.  Everything is on the table for discussion from the
structure and implementation of Soar, to interface and development
tools, to the way we organize the community. There are some resources
potentially available to help us with this, so this is not just an
exercise.

Please come! Soar workshops have always been intellectually exciting,
bringing together research in AI, cognitive science, HCI, and
cognitive modeling from both academic and industrial perspectives.

To find out more and register, go to the workshop web site:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/~soar/workshop23.html

Please forward this invitation to other relevant mailing lists.

John Laird

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3.  AAMAS (Autonomous agents and multiagent systems), the
    international agent festa that's in Melbourne this
    year. http://www.aamas-conference.org/main.htm

Goss and Lucas have a workshop there on agents at work.
http://www.agent-software.com.au/shared/demosNdocs/aamas2003/

Deadlines are past for papers, but for an invitation to attend without
paper, send an email to Simon Goss (Simon.Goss at dsto.defence.gov.au).

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4.  Cognitive Science Conference Tutorials

The cognitive science conference will have a tutorial program this
summer on 30 July.  Further details are available at
http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conf03/tutorials.html 

 Using Eye Movements to Study Cognitive Processes
 Rayner, Half-day (afternoon)
 in the Park Plaza, room to be announced

 How to Plan and Run Online Seminars
 Neal and Anastas, Half-day (morning)
 in the Park Plaza, room to be announced

 Inquiry, a Tool for Teaching Cognitive Science
 Bechtel et al., Half-day (morning)
 in the Park Plaza, room to be announced

 Latent Semantic Analysis: Theory, Use and Applications
 Dennis et al., Half-day (afternoon)
 in the Park Plaza, room to be announced

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5. AI and Simulation of Behaviour Journal looking for submissions

More information is available at :
http://www.aisb.org.uk/aisbj/index.html

the AISB Quarterly is also looking for book reviews, check the AISB
web site for details.

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6.  Cognitive Science Conference in Europe

EUROCOGSCI03, Sept 10-13 with tutorials on Sept 9/10 2003 in
Osnabrueck, Germany

The German Cognitive Science Society (Gesellschaft fer
Kognitionswissenschaft; GK) will honor the best poster presentation of
young scientists by a special prize. More information can be found on
the conference website:

http://www.eurocogsci03.uos.de

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7.  Book on Cognitive modeling available online and in-print

Ritter, F. E., Shadbolt, N. R., Elliman, D., Young, R., Gobet, F., &
Baxter, G. D. (2003). Techniques for modeling human and organizational
behaviour in synthetic environments: A supplementary review.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: Human Systems Information
Analysis Center.

Ordering information (including information about the downloadable PDF
file) is available at : http://iac.dtic.mil/hsiac/SOARS.htm

Abstract:

We summarize selected recent developments and promising directions for
improving the quality of models of human performance in synthetic
environments.  The potential uses and goals for behavioral models in
synthetic environments are first summarized.  We focus on the topics
of providing more complete performance, on providing better
integration of the models with synthetic environments and with each
other (reusability), and improved usability of the models, an
important but neglected aspect of their performance.  Within this
context, we review relevant, current work related to modeling.  For
example, we examine cognitive modeling of emotion, advanced techniques
for testing and building models of behavior, new cognitive
architectures including hybrid architectures, and agent and Belief,
Desires and Intentions (BDI) architectures.  A list of projects with
high payoff for modeling human performance in synthetic environments
is provided as a conclusion.

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8. The Australian Cog Sci Fest (Australasian Society for Cognitive
   Science, ASCS, http://www.cogsci.unsw.edu.au) is international this
   year.  One of the interesting symposia is Cognitive Issues in the
   Design and Predictive Operation of Systems-of-Systems
   Applications.
   http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/cogsci2003/conf_content/prop_symosia.html

Deadlines are past for papers, but for an invitation to attend without
paper, send an email to Simon Goss (Simon.Goss at dsto.defence.gov.au).

Background

A new class of problems have emerged from the ability to network
socio-technical systems both within and across organisational
boundaries. A fundamental feature of these large, distributed, complex
systems is our current inability to perform predictions on their
long-term behaviour. Example application areas include: the stock
market, de-regulated electricity markets (such as in California where
electricity providers have been bankrupted in a single day due to a
lack of understanding of options trading), network-centric warfare
(the military is moving away from aggregating functions on a single
platform to distributing functions across platforms and coordinating
their activities in some manner), interplanetary manned space missions
(where the flight controllers and scientists on Earth have a 40 minute
communication delay when talking with the astronauts on Mars), and the
internet (at the application level).

The characteristics of this new class of problems include:
 for design, analysis and predictive operation for the new class of
 problems, and the implications for the wider cognitive science
 community (is it more of the same or are there some underlying
 assumptions that need to be challenged?). More generally, we want to
 establish a network of researchers working on the new class of
 problems, identify approaches being used in the problem space, and
 provide a forum for identifying research challenges to the wider
 cognitive science community.

Related Work
There is a lot of related work that may be relevant to the new class
of problems:
 -- The cognitive science community has raised the issues of situated
 action and distributed cognition. The ethnographic community has
 examined similar issues under the rubric of work practice studies and
 communities of practice.
 -- The systems thinking community has studied cognition at three
 levels of analysis: reacting to events, long-term patterns of
 behaviour, systemic structures and their limitations as diagnosed by
 system archetypes. We are interested in constructs at the systemic
 structures and patterns of behaviour level of analysis.
 -- There is considerable work under the rubric of linfrastructuren
 that examines the impact of new technologies and public policies eg
 transportation, housing, information instruments. What is the
 relationship of new infrastructures to our concept of cognition?
 -- The military have coined the term lsystems-of-systemsn and
 explored architectural approaches for examining the new class of
 problems. What insights do the systems-of-systems approach provide to
 cognitive science and what does cognitive science add to the
 systems-of-systems approach to the new class of problems?
 -- Research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science often
 takes a descriptive, textual approach. An alternative approach is by
 exploiting the power of imagery and the changes in the images over a
 period of time to understand a systemms pattern of behaviour. What is
 the underlying cognitive science constructs of an imagery approach,
 and how do these constructs help the design, analysis and predictive
 operation of the new class of problems?

The Form of the Workshop
Target audience: multi-disciplinary, researchers and practitioners who
are interested in the cognitive science implications of the new class
of problems. 

We aim to conduct a one day working workshop with a maximum of 15
participants. Participants will be selected on the basis of a position
paper (maximum 10 pages). Position papers will be circulated to all
participants before the workshop, along with an email discussion of
important issues. The workshop will aim to identify approaches,
assumptions and cognitive science constructs to aid the design,
analysis, and predictive operation of the new class of problems.

The position papers will be selected on the basis of their
originality, relevance, and ability to stimulate discussion. We
particularly encourage position papers from graduate students.

The organisers intend to publish the outcome of this workshop in the
refereed archival literature.

Key Dates
 -- Submission of Position Papers: 30th May, 2003 (submit papers to
 Dr. John OmNeill, email: John.ONeill at dsto.defence.gov.au)
 -- Notification of Acceptance: 13th June, 2003
 -- Workshop Date: 13th July, 2003

Program Committee
Dr. John O'Neill, DSTO (co-organiser), email: John.ONeill at dsto.defence.gov.au
Dr. Simon Goss, DSTO (co-organiser)
Professor Bill Clancey, NASA Ames Research Center
Professor Penny Sanderson, University of Queensland
Dr. Gina Kingston, RAND Visiting Fellow

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