Objective In this project, we propose to build a biologically plausible model of sentence comprehension based on recurrent neural networks called reservoirs. Human sentence comprehension is mainly handled by prefrontal cortex areas, which have highly recurrent connectivity. In both biological and artificial neural networks this recurrence is supposed to enable the management of different aspects of time such as working memory and contextual information processing. Here, we propose to develop the Reservoir Computing (RC) paradigm – in particular Echo State Networks (ESN) with incremental learning – to model language comprehension at the sentence level given sequential inputs of words or phonemes. Based on our initial research, a model processing syntactic sentence structures was able to demonstrate generalisation and online prediction capabilities while processing sequential input. For less frequent inputs, the model provided potential explanation for human electrophysiological data. Building on this research, a new model is proposed with the following objectives: (1) processing of all semantic information enabling contextual processing and richer representation of meaning, (2) implementing incremental learning with noisy supervision enabling realistic developmental language acquisition from simple to complex sentences, (3) demonstrating that the model can learn from naïve user’s utterances in several languages, and (4) demonstrating the ability of this model when embodied in a robot to acquire extended language capabilities through human-robot interaction accounting for developmental schemes. Fields of science social sciencespsychologypsycholinguisticsnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processingnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputational intelligence Programme(s) FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF - Marie-Curie Action: "Intra-European fellowships for career development" Call for proposal FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF) Coordinator UNIVERSITAET HAMBURG Address Mittelweg 177 20148 Hamburg Germany See on map Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Linda Reams-Behboud (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window EU contribution € 161 968,80
