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Cognitive Computing

Page history last edited by Nicholas Davis 15 years, 7 months ago

This project is in cognitive computing and aims at exploring the mental graphics of human thinking and communicative understanding (cf. ##1,3 above), in order to enhance informational computing and learning technology (cf. ##2,4 above). To complete this goal, the group will combine an existing language processing pilot project with a novel temporal diagramming program.

    The underlying and leading idea is that human representations of meaning are built according to our main cognitive symbol systems – language and music – and use three diagrammatic formats: linear ordering; node integration cycles; and iconic spatial diagrams. Natural mental graphics process information by linking structures on these diagrammatical levels to experiential inputs. All three diagrammatic formats are crucial in human semantic representations of knowledge; and all are computable through suitable modeling and programming. A computational simulation of natural information processing will change our modeling and understanding of semantics in language and thought, and will be applicable directly in the didactic technology and pedagogy of all formal disciplines involving symbolic knowledge, such as the teaching of foreign languages and program languages.

    The project will first explore and build computational models of actual analytic diagramming (linear, nodal, and iconic) as expressed in sentence grammars, including cognitive semantic schemas, of narrative, descriptive, and argumentative discourse corpora. It will secondly elaborate computational simulations based on these diagrammatic models, that will allow the construction of a cognitive robot for automatically parsing meaning patterns, semantic data mining of texts, sampling and recombining meaning structures, and experimentation with creative meaning construction: a creative semantics. Thirdly, these diagram-based techniques will, in parallel and successively, be tested in learning environments, in which natural diagramming for formal and creative learning takes place and can be supported by the computational diagramming devices. An exchange between natural and computational inputs in a didactic and research-oriented dialogue will create a new approach to learning, thinking, and communicating. A creative approach to creativity is intended.

    Computation must be creative in a cultural world where it is pervasive; the main road to this goal leads through the study of human creativity in language and thought, and such a cognitive orientation of computation will enhance the interdisciplinary connection between the technical and the mind-oriented – psychological, and even the artistic – aspects of formal creativity.

    The envisioned outcome of this activity is creating a diagramming program that temporally records and plays diagrams in real time. In conjunction with this, certain portions of the diagram will be tagged with words, either manually – annotating certain diagrammatic events such as ‘to,’ ‘from,’ ‘barrier,’ etc. or by conducting an experiment in which a participant explains a concepts while diagramming the idea. During this experiment, the explanation will be recorded using simple audio recording used to annotate the diagram created.

     The intellectual merits of this project are researching the creative process by means of exploring diagrammatic expressions and translating these findings into a computational system capable of representing creative components of language. This paradigm has the potential to aid under-represented populations by means of conveying information in a graphical manner, which may be a more efficient means of communicating knowledge to those individual with mental disabilities. Geographic barriers will be lowered as well because the diagram files can be transmitted via the Internet for those students who are unable to attend class but still wish to participate in research.

     This program has important implications in a commercial as well as scientific domain. Corporations would have the option of presenting textual information in a diagrammatic format, serving to facilitate collaborative effort and understanding. The scientific community can use this resource to study the underlying properties of creativity as they are expressed in diagrams and corresponding language. It can also be used to aid in research presentation and documentation.

 

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