Common ground for action-perception coupling and its consequences for speech processing
2017-02-09 11:00 - 12:30 (Europe/Paris) | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Common ground for action-perception coupling and its consequences for speech processing by Sonja A. Kotz (Dept. of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University, The Netherlands & Dept. of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany)
Sonja.kotz@maastrichtuniversity.nl
11h
While the role of forward models in predicting sensory consequences of action is well anchored in a cortico-cerebellar interface, it is an open question whether this interface is action specific or extends to perceptual consequences of sensory input (e.g. Knolle et al., 2012; 2013 a&b). Considering the functional relevance of a temporo-cerebellar-thalamo-cortical circuitry that aligns with well known cerebellar-thalamo-cortical connectivity patterns, one may consider that cerebellar computations apply similarly to incoming information coding action, sensation, or even higher level cognition such as speech and language (e.g. Ramnani, 2006; Kotz & Schwartze, 2010, 2016): (i) they simulate cortical information processing and (ii) cerebellar-thalamic output may provide a possible source for internally generated cortical activity that predicts the outcome of information processing in cortical target areas (Knolle et al., 2012; Schwartze & Kotz, 2013). I will discuss new empirical and patient evidence (motor-auditory coupling and auditory only) in support of these considerations and present an extended cortico-subcortical framework encompassing action-perception coupling, perception, and multimodal speech.

Music and Language comprehension in the brain – a surprising connection by Richard Kunert
2017-04-28 14:00 - 17:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Music and Language comprehension in the brain – a surprising connection by Richard Kunert (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen)
RiKunert@googlemail.com

14h Salle des voûtes,
fac St Charles, Pôle 3 C
How the comprehension of instrumental music and spoken or written language is implemented in the brain remains mysterious.
In this talk I present a new way to approach this issue.
In a series of studies we investigated music and language comprehension at the same time in order to gain insights into both.
Specifically, we asked whether these two kinds of stimuli are subserved by common neural circuitry despite their obvious differences.
It turns out that structural properties of language and instrumental music are both processed in a common brain area.
Does this truly imply shared structural processing or is this just a general effect related to attention?
It turns out that the effects of music on attention are actually limited.
Overall, the findings I will present suggest that music and language processing share very limited, and surprisingly specialized neural circuitry.
Overall, an interdisciplinary approach, as applied here, can open the way for asking ever more focused questions about brain organization.

Discourse Prosody and Sentence Processing in Prelingually Deaf Teenagers with Cochlear Implants by Katherine Demuth
2017-05-09 17:30 - 19:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Discourse Prosody and Sentence Processing in Prelingually Deaf Teenagers with Cochlear Implants by Katherine Demuth
17h30 LPL,

The past few years has seen major improvements in the early diagnosis of hearing loss, early intervention, and device improvements.
Much of the assessment of language development has focussed on the early years,
with assessment of hearing levels, intelligibility, vocabulary size,
and other standardized measure showing good to excellent attainment levels by many children fitted with both hearing aids and cochlear implants (CIs).
However, much less is known about the language abilities of school-aged children with hearing loss,
where many still experience challenges making themselves understood, understanding others, and fully engaging in social interaction.
This talk discusses results from two recent studies of discourse interactions and sentence processing by prelingually deaf teenage CI users,
showing that they are less interactive, exhibit a different use prosodic cues for certain discourse functions,
and are much slower at sentence processing than their normal hearing peers.
This raises many questions regarding the nature of their language model, and how it might be enhanced to achieve more efficient language processing and production.

Deep learning models of perception and cognition by Marco Zorzi
2017-07-06 14:00 - 16:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Deep learning models of perception and cognition by Marco Zorzi (University of Padova, Italy)
Deep learning in stochastic recurrent neural networks with many layers of neurons (“deep networks”) is a recent breakthrough in neural computation research. These networks build a hierarchy of progressively more complex representations of the sensory data through unsupervised learning. Using examples from research in my laboratory, I will show that deep learning models represent a major step forward for connectionist modeling in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I will also focus on a new model of letter perception, which shows that learning written symbols can recycle the visual primitives of natural images, thereby requiring only limited domain-specific tuning.

Zaven PARÉ
2020-05-29 11:00 - 13:00
Séminaire exceptionnel ILCB
Vendredi 29 Mai 2019, 11h00

Prof. Zaven Paré
Sonzai-Kan and Cognition (Behavior Monitoring Interpretation for Interaction Design)

Les capacités de jeu

La présentation porte sur les biais cognitifs dans des expérimentations mettant en jeu l’AI, la robotique et l’interaction sociale (avec ou sans embodiment) dans 4 configurations de jeux avec 4 dispositifs. Les quatre parties de mon plan illustrent séparément les problématiques de l’anthropomorphisation de l’action et de l’interaction.

La force brute abstraite : le jeu de Go
La rapidité algorithmique : le rubik’s cube
La rapidité mécanique : pierre-papier-ciseaux
Le potentiel social : les échecs

ATTENTION, ce séminaire aura lieu en ligne.
Pour y accéder, suivez le lien : https://amuskype.univ-amu.fr/thierry.chaminade/4HYYDS2N
Participer par téléphone : +33413554505
ID de conférence : 68560127

Vous aurez une petite installation à faire au préalable et des réglages de connexions, qu’il faudrait faire dès à présent. Pour des raisons d’organisation, prévoyez de vous connecter 10mns avant le début.

Bio
Actuellement résident de l’IMéRA, Zaven Paré travaille en tant qu’artiste et chercheur en design d’interaction. Il a inventé la marionnette électronique (oeuvres présentes dans des collections en France, en Suisse, en Italie, aux États Unis et en Russie). Ses dispositifs ont été utilisés dans des mises en scène de Valère Novarina (CalArts, Festival Henson, La Mama etc, Festival d’Avignon). Il a été collaborateur de chorégraphes (Marie Chouinard, Edouard Lock), pour le théâtre et le théâtre musical (Denis Marleau, Mauricio Kagel) et pour le ballet et l’opéra (Het National Ballet, Opéra Paris-Bastille). À partir de 2009, il participe au Robot Actors Project du professeur Hiroshi Ishiguro, dans le Intelligent Robotics Laboratory à l’Université d’Osaka et à ATR.
Il a été lauréat du French American Fund for Performing Arts au California Institute for the Arts, de la Villa Kujoyama, de la Japan Society for Promotion of Science, et l”invité d’honneur du dernier festival de marionnettes de Moscou. Il est l’auteur de L’âge d’or de la robotique Japonaise (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2016).

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Parallel orthographic processing and reading
2020-09-03 17:30 - 19:00 | CIRM – Luminy, 163 avenuede Luminy, Case 916, Marseille, 13288, France
Parallel orthographic processing and reading
Jonathan Grainger (Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University Marseille)
In written languages that use an alphabetic script, orthographic processing lies at the heart of the reading process, enabling visual information to make contact with linguistic information. Indeed, reading can be viewed as a bi-directional interaction between the processing of visual and linguistic information, with orthographic processing serving as the crucial interface between the two. In the present talk, I will summarize the knowledge that has accrued concerning orthographic processing in single word reading before presenting more recent research on sentence reading and the processing of orthographic information spanning several words. In both lines of research, the key words are: parallel, cascaded, and interactive processing. For single word reading the interactivity involves position-coded letter identities and whole-word orthographic representations, and for sentence reading it extends to involve ordered word identities and higher-level sentence structures.

Understanding covert verbal actions as simulated verbal actions : Ladislas Nalborczyk , ILCB
2020-11-27 14:00 - 15:00
Mental imagery of actions or “motor imagery” is accompanied by subjective multisensory (e.g., auditory, visual, kinaesthetic) experience. For instance, while reading these words, you may experience the auditory sensation of an “inner voice” accompanying your reading. Since the first explorations of the phenomenological and psychophysiological properties of such imagined actions, there has been considerable efforts and progresses towards describing the mechanisms leading to these sensory percepts. An influential view suggests that these sensory percepts would result from the simulation or emulation of the corresponding motor action, reusing internal models developed for the control of overt actions. However, the precise computations required by these internal models (i.e., simulators or emulators) and their neural implementation is still unclear. Moreover, the simulationnist view raises the question of how is it possible for imagination of action not to lead to overt execution. In other words, despite the involvement of the motor system in providing the sensory experience of the covert action, how can we imagine raising our arm without actually raising our arm? By focusing on imagined (i.e., covert) verbal actions as a case study, we aim to better characterise the fundamental interplay between language, action, and perception.

Interpreting machine learning in hearing, communication and language sciences: why, how, and the current challenges
2021-02-11 12:00 - 14:30
Here is the link to the event : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/99484117315?pwd=[REDACTED]
“Interpreting machine learning ? Why and how ? “
In the context of a cycle of talks organized by the ILCB post-docs, we are organising February, 11th (online) a talk/round table on interpretability.

This event is dedicated to be informal and aims to be a place for discussing our point of view and/or needs on interpretability, in the context of language and hearing sciences, but not only, all contributions and points of view are very welcome.

Please find below the original call with an updated program.

Here is the link to the event : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/99484117315?pwd=[REDACTED]

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https://www.ilcb.fr/event/interpreting-machine-learning-in-hearing-communication-and-language-sciences-why-how-and-the-current-challenges/

Machine learning and deep neural networks have been raised as compelling models to simulate complex tasks in language, communication and brain sciences. But what do we really understand about these model and how they process information? As users, we often use them as tools without precisely understanding their mechanistic and representational underpinnings. It is now crucial to go through the interpretation of machine learning but interpreting might have different meaning: while perceptual researchers might aim to understand how a convolutional networks can be interpreted in terms of nonlinear filtering or brain activations like patterns, a language researcher might try to decipher the role and meaning of the recursive computations made by transformer networks.

The ILCB bridges research in language, communication and brain sciences all of which are susceptible of benefiting from the use of machine learning, with research in informatics and mathematics, directly concerned with machine learning as a topic in its own right.

Program :

12h/12h30 – Etienne Thoret (Post-doc ILCB, PRISM, LIS) – Deciphering the acoustical bases of hearing by interpreting biomimetic deep-neural-networks (20 min + 10 min)

12h30/13h – Philippe Blache (LPL) – Is language processing incremental? A comparison between Transformer and RNN-based language models and their ability to model human language processing. (20 min + 10 min)

13h/13h30 – Ronan Sicre (LIS) – Visual interpretability of deep neural networks: a brief overview. (20 min + 10 min)

13h30/13h45 Adrià Torrens (University of Ostrava) Building a grammar for gradient linguistic evaluative expressions: Do Machine learning, neuronal networks, and deep learning help? (10 min + 5min)

13h45/14h30 – Discussion (45 minutes)

Etienne Thoret,

Understanding the communication between the spoken and written language system from a network perspective
2021-04-08 12:00 - 13:00
Shuai Wang, Postdoc ILCB and Chotiga Pattamadilok, CNRS researcher, LPL
Abstract :
The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex, also named visual word form area, plays a key role in reading. Recent evidence suggests that it is also involved in different levels of speech processing, from phoneme analysis to sentence listening. Yet, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this cross-modal activation and the communication between this area and the spoken language system. In this talk, we are going to introduce our on-going research that addresses these issues from a network perspective by 1) applying the Graph Theory on fMRI data, and 2) examining the temporal dynamics of the communication between areas within the spoken and written language system using an intracranial EEG protocol.

Comparing brains across individuals and species via cortical folding patterns
2021-04-22 12:00 - 14:30
KepKee and Olivier Coulon
Abstract:
A prominent feature of the human cerebral cortex is the presence of folds, or sulci. Even though cortical sulci look very different from one person to another, sulcal organisation is not at all random: it follows a topography that is highly conserved across human and nonhuman primates. Robust sulci-function relationships have mostly been demonstrated in the primary sulci (e.g. the central sulcus where the motor cortex is found), as these sulci tend to be more stable across individuals in terms of their shape, and relative positions on the cortex. In contrast, sulci-function links in secondary and tertiary sulci have been harder to study due to large inter-individual variabilities.With the advent of modern neuroimaging methods and an accumulation of MRI brain scans, it is now possible to characterize the spatial, geometric, and topological variations of cortical sulci across many individuals and species, and to study their links to brain function. This promising line of work has revealed novel relationships between sulci and functional brain areas at the individual level beyond primary sulci, that are generalised across primates. Such powerful sulci-function links provide an important means of bridging brains across individuals and species for comparisons.This seminar aims to provide an overview of :

How sulcal anatomy is important for revealing brain structure-function relationships across individuals and species, and;
The current methods and tools developed in our team for performing such sulcal analyses on MRI data.

In this seminar, we will present a series of three talks :

Talk 1: I will discuss recent evidence demonstrating that sulcal anatomy is an important means for localising functional areas across individuals and species.
Talk 2: Olivier and I will present a novel method that allows the cross-mapping of cortical surfaces across individuals, and species, based on common sulci for brain comparisons.
Talk 3: Finally, Olivier will present ongoing research about the links between the morphology of cortical folds, anatomical connectivity and function.

Video :

Linking Language evolution, language acquisition, and language diversity: How social and cognitive pressures shape learning and communication
2021-06-11 12:00 - 13:00
Limor Raviv (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
ABSTRACT:
What are the social, environmental, and cognitive pressures that shape the evolution of language in our species? Why are there so many different languages in the world? And how did this astonishing linguistic diversity come about?
These are some of the most interesting questions in the fields of cognitive science and linguistics, and represent the range of topics discussed in my research so far.
My work focuses on linking core aspects of language acquisition, language evolution, and language diversity using a range of novel behavioral paradigms and computational models.
My goal is to shed light on the communicative pressures and cognitive constraints (e.g., memory limitations, efficiency) that shape social interaction and language use in our species, and to identify the social, environmental, and cross-cultural factors (e.g., population size) that lead to language diversity and to cross-linguistic variation.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of my research in the past six years (including methods and results from selected projects), as well as present future directions and ongoing work.

The zoom link:

https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853?pwd=[REDACTED]

Exploring language development in autistic and TD children: individual differences, linguistic environment and conversational dynamics
2021-06-18 13:00 - 14:00
Riccardo Fusaroli (Interacting Minds Center, Aarhus University)
Le séminaire se tiendra en visioconférence via le lien : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853?pwd=[REDACTED]
Language development is traditionally explored in terms of individual differences and/or linguistic environment. In this talk I will present a more comprehensive framework, where children actively engage and potentially the linguistic environment, and analogously adult speakers adapt to and engage the child production. I will also present initial investigations on a longitudinal corpus involving 32 autistic and 35 typically developing children followed for over 2 years between 2 and 5 years of age. The focus will be to predict language development relying on individual differences (e.g. verbal IQ, socialization skills), linguistic environment (amount of language, lexical richness, syntactic complexity) and conversational dynamics (linguistic alignment).

Anything but boring: How looking at tasks can tell us more about language development.
2021-07-02 12:00 - 13:00
Christina Bergmann (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
Le séminaire se tiendra en visioconférence via le lien : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853?pwd=[REDACTED]
Abstract: Work that focuses on how we measure children’s knowledge may seem a hurdle towards discovery. In this talk, I will argue that inspecting the methods we use can tell us a great deal about the underlying mechanisms that generate measurable behavior, and highlight how these insights are key for theory building and computational modelling.

Summer school
2021-08-30 - 2021-09-03 | CIRM – Luminy, 163 avenuede Luminy, Case 916, Marseille, 13288, France

Language development as a joint process: Why the simultaneous learning of Form, Content, and Use is more a help than a hindrance
2021-10-08 12:00 | via zoom
Abdellah Fourta (Aix-Marseille University & INRIA Paris)
Abstract:
To acquire language, children need to learn form (e.g., phonology), content (e.g., word meaning), and use (e.g., finding the right words to convey a communicative intent). The scientific study of language development has traditionally studied these dimensions separately. Indeed, one could imagine that children first acquire the form, then associate form with content, and only then, learn how to use form and content adequately in a communicative context. The reality of the situation is that children have to deal with aspects of form, content and use simultaneously and experimental studies suggest that the timeline of acquisition of these dimensions largely overlap, indicating that children learn them in parallel, not one at a time. While this fact makes language acquisition seem even harder than we previously thought, here I argue that the joint learning of form, content, and use may be more a help than a hindrance, as these dimensions are interdependent in many ways and can therefore constrain/disambiguate each other. I will illustrate this idea based on my previous and current research combining both experimental and computational modeling.
Where: Zoom (send us an email to receive the link)

CoCoDev
2021-10-22 10:30 - 12:00 | via zoom
Kevin El Haddad is a researcher in affective computing and Human-Agent interaction at the University of Mons.
Abstract:
Smiles and laughs (S&L) are among the most frequent and informative non-verbal expressions used in our daily interactions. Their incorporation into machine’s communication skills is therefore a must in order to improve human-agent interaction (HAI) applications quality (among other aspects), whether it is on the detection/perception side or on the generation/production side.
This presentation will focus on our efforts aiming at providing a better understanding of S&L conversational dynamics as well as implementing them in HAI modules. We will present our contributions and ongoing work in synthesis, recognition and prediction technologies as well as resources we propose to the community with the hope that this same community will help us improve them through collaboration or other contributions.
I strongly believe that, with the limited resources available in the scientific communities, the more people get involved, the more we can accelerate the integration of S&L, and by extension nonverbal expressions in general, in HAI applications. So I look forward to meeting you during this talk.
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The zoom link: https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853

CoCoDev
2021-11-05 16:00 - 17:00 | via zoom
Production practice is more effective than comprehension for second language learning
Elise Hopman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Abstract:
Whereas most classroom-based language instruction traditionally emphasizes comprehension-based learning, memory research suggests that language production activities may provide a stronger learning experience than comprehension practice, due to the meaningfully different task demands involved in producing versus comprehending language. Using both artificial and natural language learning experiments with adults, I show that production exercises are more effective than comprehension exercises for learning the vocabulary and grammar of a foreign language. I will discuss these findings in the broader context of research implying that production and production-like activities might play a privileged role during learning more generally.

CoCoDev
2021-11-12 16:00 - 17:00 | via zoom
BabyBERTa: Learning More Grammar With Small-Scale Child-Directed Language
Philip Huebner (University of Illinos, Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract:
Transformer-based language models have taken the NLP world by storm. However, their potential for addressing important questions in language acquisition research has been largely ignored. In this work, we examined the grammatical knowledge of RoBERTa (Liu et al., 2019) when trained on a 5M word corpus of language acquisition data to simulate the input available to children between the ages 1 and 6. Using the behavioral probing paradigm, we found that a smaller version of RoBERTa-base that never predicts unmasked tokens, which we term BabyBERTa, acquires grammatical knowledge comparable to that of pre-trained RoBERTa-base – and does so with approximately 15X fewer parameters and 6,000X fewer words. We discuss implications for building more efficient models and the learnability of grammar from input available to children. Lastly, to support research on this front, we release our novel grammar test suite that is compatible with the small vocabulary of child-directed input.

CoCoDev
2021-12-03 12:00 - 14:00 | via zoom
TBA

Okko Räsänen (Tampere University)

TBA
2021-12-17 12:00 - 14:00 | via zoom
Jonathan Ginzburg (Université de Paris)

TBA
2022-01-28 12:00 - 14:00 | via zoom
Asli Ozyurek (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior)

Seminar on “speech production and perception”
2022-05-05 - 2022-05-06 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Prof. F. Guenther and REaDY team, LPL (5-6 May)
Thursday, May 5th 2022
Discussion with Prof. F. Guenther around the following presentations
14h-14h40 : Noël Nguyen & Kristof Strijkers : Phonetic and semantic convergence in speech communication
14h40-15h10 : Serge Pinto: Studying speech motor control from its impairment: the cases of hypo- and hyperkinetic dysarthrias
15h10-15h30 : Coffee break
15h30-16h10 : Elin Runnqvist, Lydia Dorokhova & Snezana Todorović : Action monitoring from tongue movements to words
16h10-16h40 : Anne-Sophie Dubarry : Exploring the variability of neurophysiological data during language processing

Friday, May 6th 2022, 10h30-12h00
KEYNOTE by Prof. F. Guenther
(Director of Speech Neuroscience Lab, Boston University)
Neurocomputational modeling of speech production
Speech production is a highly complex sensorimotor task involving tightly coordinated processing in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex. To better understand these processes, our laboratory has designed, experimentally tested, and iteratively refined a neural network model, called the DIVA model, whose components correspond to the brain regions involved in speech. Babbling and imitation phases are used to train neural mappings between phonological, articulatory, auditory, and somatosensory representations. After the imitation phase, the model can produce learned phonemes and syllables by generating movements of an articulatory synthesizer. An extended version of the model, called GODIVA, addresses the neural circuitry underlying the buffering and sequencing of phonological units in multi-syllabic utterances. Because the model’s components correspond to neural populations and are given precise anatomical locations, activity in the model’s neurons can be compared directly to neuroimaging data. Computer simulations of the model account for a wide range of experimental findings, including data on acquisition of speaking skills, articulatory kinematics, and brain activity during normal and perturbed speech. Furthermore, “damaged” versions of the model are being used to investigate several communication disorders, including stuttering, apraxia of speech, and hypokinetic dysarthria

Prosody as a beacon for understanding a speaker's stance and intentions
2022-09-27 11:00 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Marc D. Pell, de l’Université McGill
Prof. Pell’s research investigates how adults communicate their emotions, attitudes, or other social intentions while speaking, to better understand the social-pragmatic context of spoken language.
Much of his work focuses on the effects of the human voice during pragmatic language processing and in social cognition. Members of his lab are exploring the neurocognitive basis of vocal communication, how this system is influenced by socio-cultural factors, and how vocal communication is influenced by acquired disease of the brain (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, repetitive head injury). Behavioural paradigms, acoustic analysis, neuroinvestigative techniques (ERPs, fMRI), and neuropsychological assessments of brain-damaged adults are being used to test these ideas.

Séminaire & Soutenance HDR Isabelle Dautriche
2023-01-13 10:00 - 18:30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
10H Judit Gervain (University of Padoa, Italy & CNRS)
How do infants represent speech: the developmental origins of the embedded neural oscillations model
The proposal (Giraud & Poeppel 2012) that a hierarchy of embedded neural oscillations support speech and language processing in the brain has received ample evidence in adults. However, the developmental orgins of such a neural architecture remain to a large extent unknown. The talk will present EEG data from newborns and older infants showing that neural oscillations are already in place early in development and are shaped by prenatal and postnatal experience.
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11H Coffee break
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11H30 Luca Bonatti (University Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
The role of logic in infant cognition

Do infants have a logic in their mind, and what role could it have in their cognitive system? David Hume argued that no novel content can arise by simply inspecting ‘relations of ideas’ — what we would now call logic, but only by knowing ‘matters of fact’ – objects, events, causal relations. This creates a puzzle: how is it possible that a system that adds no novel knowledge be useful to our cognition of the world? I will argue that the puzzle is a bit less puzzling if one thinks that knowledge is not acquired not only by adding novel information, but also by reducing uncertainty. I will present experiments with adults and infants suggesting that elementary logical processes are indeed spontaneously triggered in different contexts, and precisely serve the role of reducing uncertainty by eliminating possibilities.
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12H30 Lunch ILCB
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14H Soutenance HDR, Isabelle Dautriche (CNRS & Aix-Marseille University)
How children learn the meaning of words
One central task in most linguistic theory is to provide an account of the acquisition of language: What kind of machine in its initial state, supplied with what kinds of input, could acquire a natural language in the way that infants of our species do? This question is usually confined to the acquisition of phonology and syntax, leaving vocabulary aside. After all, words must be learnt by noticing the real-world contingencies for their use. No other theory could explain why English children learn to associate the sound sequence /ˈbɛtə/ to the meaning “better” and Turkish children to “worse”. I argue that focusing on distributional or statistical abilities provides an incomplete picture of word learning as it fails to account for how learning occurs, what kind of knowledge learners bring into the word learning problem and what properties of language may facilitate it. I will present experimental and computational work that suggest that 1) children are active learners, able to combine and weigh several sources of information while learning the meaning of words; 2) that the vocabulary of natural languages has evolved to be more learnable by infants and 3) that infants come equipped with non-linguistic biases that guide their learning, some of which may be shared with other species.
Committee:
Jennifer Culbertson, University of Edinburgh
Balthasar Bickel, University of Zurich
Luca Bonatti, University Pompeu Fabra
Judit Gervain, University of Padoa & CNRS
Noël Nguyen, Aix-Marseille Université
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17H Apéro

Apprentissage lexical chez les enfants en maternelle et en élémentaire: mécanismes en jeu et efficacité des méthodes d'interventions en classe
2023-05-03 10:00 - 11:00 | SALLE 9-051, Université Aix-Marseille Campus St Charles 3 Pl. Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003, France
Intervenante : Séverine Casalis, SCALab, Univ Lille & CNRS (pour plus d’infos : https://pro.univ-lille.fr/severine-casalis)
Abstract
L’objectif de l’exposé est de présenter de façon parallèle une synthèse de modèles et travaux expérimentaux conduits sur l’apprentissage lexical d’une part et d’études interventionnelles conduites en classe d’autre part. L’apprentissage de mots est conçu, théoriquement, de façon sensiblement différente, chez les très jeunes et jeunes enfants et chez les enfants d’âge maternelle. En conséquence, nous présenterons successivement les modèles de « fast mapping » (Chiat, 2001) rendant compte de l’apprentissage lexical chez le très jeune enfant et le modèle « Complementary System Account » (Lindsay & Gaskell, 2010) qui rend compte des mécanismes d’apprentissage lexical chez l’adulte et l’enfant plus âgé. Cette distinction entre mécanismes d’apprentissage lexical selon l’âge de l’enfant est également justifiée par le rôle que joue l’orthographe dans le développement du lexique, à la fois en termes de configuration lexicale et de type d’exposition. L’apprentissage de la lecture, avec notamment l’impact de l’orthographe et l’exposition aux textes écrits modifie également les interventions réalisées en classe, souvent basées sur les textes écrits à partir du cycle 3. Cette synthèse se conclura par les perspectives de recherche ouvertes par l’articulation entre les travaux de fondamentaux et les interventions en classe.
Participer par Zoom
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/85283430679?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 852 8343 0679
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Word learning in honor of Lila Gleitman: Perception of structure from language and world
2023-06-09 09:00 - 11:00 | Salle 9-050, Université Aix-Marseille Campus St Charles 3 Pl. Victor Hugo, Marseille, France
John Trueswell (Dept of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania)
Abstract: It is tempting to conclude that children learn the meanings of words by observing their circumstances of use (e.g., observing that the word “dog” often co-occurs with dog-sightings). If this is the case though, how do children ever learn the vast majority of the words that they know? Consider most of the words in this abstract, many of which a 3-year-old produces and understands: like “what”, “not”, “language”, “do”, “think”, “learn.” Can these words be learned by observation of their circumstances of use? There are no what-sightings that go with “what”, and no not-sightings that go with “not”; thinking-sightings often look like sleeping-sightings and sitting-sightings. How do children go about learning these “hard words” despite no explicit instruction? I will present research, some of which was done with my longtime collaborator Lila Gleitman, that is designed to answer these questions. I’ll focus on the unexpected role that word-to-world pairings nevertheless play in the learning of hard words. I’ll propose a framework for word-to-world mapping in which perception of the referent world itself offers us significant structure, and the syntactic structure we gather from the language is connected to these representations. This connection, and the structural representations on both sides of the word-to-world coin, allow us to see what we shouldn’t be able to see, and hear what we shouldn’t be able to hear. I’ll offer experimental evidence that our perception of the world includes rapid extraction of event structure, and hypothesize that this allows access to abstract relational meaning even in young children. These representations play an important role in understanding how situational contexts permit children to learn even the most abstract of terms, such as symmetrical predicates (e.g., the meaning of “equal”) and truth-functional negation (e.g., the meaning of “not”).

Interactive Robot Learning
2023-06-21 14:00 - 15:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Summary: In this talk, we focus on main methods and models enabling humans to teach embodied social agents such as social robots, using natural interaction. Humans guide the learning process of such agents by providing various teaching signals, which could take the form of feedback, demonstrations and instructions. This overview describes how human teaching strategies are incorporated within machine learning models. We detail the approaches by providing definitions, technical descriptions, examples and discussions on limitations. We also address natural human biases during teaching. We then present applications such as interactive task learning, robot behavior learning and socially assistive robotics. Finally, we discuss research opportunities and challenges of interactive robot learning.
Bio: Prof. Mohamed Chetouani is currently a Full Professor in signal processing and machine learning for human-machine interaction. He is affiliated to the PIRoS (Perception, Interaction et Robotique Sociales) research team at the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (CNRS UMR 7222), Sorbonne University (formerly Pierre and Marie Curie University). His activities cover social signal processing, social robotics and interactive machine learning with applications in psychiatry, psychology, social neuroscience and education. He was the coordinator of the ANIMATAS H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie European Training Network (2018-2022). Since 2019, he is the President of the Sorbonne University Ethics Committee. He was involved in several educational activities including organization of summer schools. He is member of the EU Network of Human-Centered AI. He is General Chair of ACM ICMI 2023. He is in charge of the inclusion of Students with Disabilities for the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Sorbonne University.

Passerelles entre gestes et voix chez différentes espèces de primates (dont humain) : Approche comparative de la communication sensible à l’attention
2023-09-29 10:00 - 11:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Marie Bourjade
Laboratoire CLLE, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès & Institut Universitaire de France

Bien avant l’entrée dans la parole, le jeune enfant mobilise déjà des compétences pragmatiques lui permettant de se faire comprendre, d’agir sur les adultes environnants et d’utiliser intentionnellement ses comportements à des fins communicationnelles. Parmi ces compétences pragmatiques, la Communication Sensible à l’Attention réfère à la capacité d’ajuster la modalité sensorielle des signaux communicatifs à l’attention de l’entourage. Elle revêt une importance particulière sur le plan de l’acquisition du langage, mais également de son évolution. En effet, le partage attentionnel entre parent et enfant pourrait avoir joué un rôle clé dans l’émergence de la communication sensible à l’attention chez les primates, constituant de facto une passerelle entre geste et voix. Je présenterai des travaux comparatifs réalisés en conditions écologiques chez le chimpanzé, le babouin olive et plusieurs groupes de population humaine, tous portant sur le choix des modalités de communication du jeune enfant envers sa mère selon l’état attentionnel de cette dernière. Les résultats mettront en avant les acquisitions du jeune en fonction de l’étayage maternel et souligneront l’importance fondamentale des interactions précoces dans les processus de socialisation et de développement communicationnel. Ces travaux seront remis en perspective avec les modèles culturels de parentalité et les hypothèses évolutives sur le conflit attentionnel parent-enfant.

The cerebellum in language and cognition
2023-10-17 12:30 - 13:30 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Anila D’Mello : l’Université de Texas

The cerebellum contains over 80% of the neurons in the brain, and over 50% of the neurons in the central nervous system. Despite being historically considered a motor structure, clinical and neuroimaging work find that the cerebellum is also important for cognition. This talk will present research integrating human neuroimaging, behavior, and neuromodulation to understand cerebellar contributions to higher-order language, social communication, and cognitive control in both neurotypical and autistic individuals.

Word learning in toddlerhood: The role of linguistic and social cues in naturalistic learning scenarios
2023-11-02 11:00 - 12:00 | LIS, 52 Av. Escadrille Normandie Niemen, Marseille, 13397, France
Monica Barbir, a researcher at the University of Tokyo

in a hybrid mode in LIS (Luminy) and online via Zoom at:
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/85497246420?pwd=[REDACTED]
