Schedules are shown according to Central European Summer Time (CEST). CEST can be converted into other time zones with a time zone converter, for instance, world time buddy.
All the videos are available online, on the LLF channel.
Thursday, May 20 (all times CEST)
11:00 Opening
11:10-12:10 Judit Gervain (U Paris Descartes, CNRS) How prosody helps infants and children to break into communication
12:20-13:20 Talya Sadeh (Ben Gurion U) How Do Pre- and Post-Encoding Processes Affect Episodic Memory?
14:10-15:10 Robin Cooper (U Gothenburg) Modelling Memory with Types: semantics and neural representation
15:20-16:20 Peter Hagoort (Radboud U, MPI for Psycholinguistics) The neuropragmatics of dialogue and discourse
16:40-17:40 Jonathan Ginzburg (U Paris) Dialogue Context in Memory
18:00—onwards free discussion
Friday, May 21
11:00-12:00 Alistair Knott (U Otago) A neural model of sensorimotor experience, and of the representation, storage and communication of events
12:10-13:10 Christine Bastin (GIGA-CRC in vivo imaging, U Liège) Episodic memory and the importance of attribution processes to assess the retrieved memory contents
14:00-15:00 Massimo Poesio (Queen Mary U), Sharid Loáiciga (U Potsdam) Universal Anaphora and Dialogue Phenomena
(In collaboration with Sopan Khosla, Ramesh Manuvinakurike, Vincent Ng, Carolyn Rose, Michael Strube, Juntao Yu, Simon Dobnik and David Schlangen)
15:10-16:10 Evelina Fedorenko (MIT) Language within the mosaic of social cognition
16:30-17:30 Andy Lücking (U Paris, U Frankfurt) Multimodality and Memory: Outlining Interface Topics in Multimodal Natural Language Processing
17:45—onwards free discussion
The neuropragmatics of dialogue and discourse
(Radboud U, MPI for Psycholinguistics)
Bašnáková J, van Berkum J, Weber K, Hagoort P. A job interview in the MRI scanner: How does indirectness affect addressees and overhearers?
Heidlmayr K , Weber K , Takashima A , Hagoort P. No title, no theme: The joined neural space between speakers and listeners during production and comprehension of multi-sentence discourse. Epub 2020 Jun 4
Dialogue Context in Memory
(U. de Paris)
Ginzburg, Jonathan, Chiara Mazzocconi, and Ye Tian (2020). Laughter as language. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5, no. 1.
Ginzburg, J and A. Lücking (2020). On Laughter and Forgetting and Reconversing: A neurologically-inspired model of conversational context. In: Proceedings of SemDial 2020.
A neural model of sensorimotor experience, and of the representation, storage and communication of events
(U Otago)
The foundation for my model is Dana Ballard’s (1997) proposal that the SM processes through which an agent engages with the world are structured as deictic routines: well-defined sequences of relatively discrete atomic attentional, sensory or motor actions (called deictic operations). I propose that agents experience sentence-sized ‘events’ in the world through deictic routines, whether they are observing them or participating in them. I further propose that agents represent events in working memory (WM) as prepared deictic routines: that is, as ‘executable’ representations, that can be performed, or simulated. In the model I propose, these executable event representations provide the interface between language and long-term memory (LTM). When an event has been experienced, its complete WM representation can be registered in LTM, and the WM representation can be cleared, ready for the next event. (It will be registered more strongly if it has strong emotional connotations.) A complete WM event representation can also be communicated, by simulating it in a special ‘language mode' where SM signals can trigger output phonology.
This model supports an interesting account of how memory operations surface in language. The key idea here is that operations accessing memory, or putting the agent into other cognitive modes, should also be regarded as ‘deictic operations’ - ones that happen at the very start of a deictic routine. On this model, when experiencing an event, the first thing the agent must do is to decide whether to retrieve an event from memory (or some other cognitive modality like imagination), or to engage with the sensorimotor here-and-now. These different options are each implemented by a deictic operation. (Thus there are separate deictic operations establishing ‘LTM retrieval mode’, ‘experience mode’ and so on.) Crucially, these mode-setting deictic operations are also stored in the WM medium encoding events, which interfaces with language.
This model of the SM system and its interfaces to memory offers some interesting ideas for linguists. At the level of syntax, stored mode-setting operations provide interesting possible denotations for tense mophology in sentences, and of several closed-class/modal verbs (including verbs expressing emotional experience, like ‘feel’). At the level of discourse, the model provides a neural implementation of several ideas from update semantics. I’ll focus on monologue in my talk, but I will outline possible extensions to dialogue.
A. Knott and M. Takac (2021). Roles for Event Representations in Sensorimotor Experience, Memory Formation, and Language Processing. Topics in Cognitive Science 13(1):187-205
M. Takac and A. Knott (2016). Mechanisms for storing and accessing event representations in episodic memory, and their expression in language: a neural network model. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) , pp. 532-537
A Knott (2014). How Infants Learn Word Meanings and Propositional Attitudes: A Neural Network Model. In T-W Hung (ed) Communicative Action, Springer, pp. 107-124
Edited volume: Special Issue of TOPICS: Event-Predictive Cognition: From Sensorimotor via Conceptual to Language-Based Structures and Processes
Episodic memory and the importance of attribution processes to assess the retrieved memory contents
(GIGA-CRC in vivo imaging, U Liège)
Bastin, C., Besson, G., Simon, J., Delhaye, E., Geurten, M., Willems, S., & Salmon, E. (2019). An integrative memory model of recollection and familiarity to understand memory deficits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, E281
Adrien Folville, Arnaud D’Argembeau & Christine Bastin (2020). Deciphering the relationship between objective and subjective aspects of recollection in healthy aging. Memory, 28:3, 362-373
How prosody helps infants and children to break into communication
(U. Paris-Descartes, CNRS)
Judit Gervain: The role of prenatal experience in language development. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2018, 21:62-6
How Do Pre- and Post-Encoding Processes Affect Episodic Memory?
(Ben Gurion University)
In addition, I will present a related research program, in which I ask whether memory is affected not only by post-encoding processes (like decay and interference), but also by processes occurring prior to encoding. I hypothesize that the scaffold of a memory engram is spontaneously laid even before the experience occurs. In support of this hypothesis, we have shown— using multivoxel-pattern-analysis of fMRI data—that the mnemonic fate of information depends on whether spontaneous neural representations prior to perceiving the information are reinstated during encoding.
Talya Sadeh, Janice Chen, Yonatan Goshen-Gottstein, Morris Moscovitch: Overlap between hippocampal pre-encoding and encoding patterns supports episodic memory. Hippocampus. 2019;29:836–847.
Talya Sadeh, Jason D. Ozubko, Gordon Winocur, and Morris Moscovitch: How we forget may depend on how we remember. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, January 2014, Vol. 18, No. 1
Modelling Memory with Types: semantics and neural representation
(U. Gothenburg)
I will argue that record types in TTR (a type theory with records) can be used to model mental states such as memory or belief. For example, a type modelling a belief or memory state is a type of the way the world would be if our beliefs or memories were true. A sentence like:
Sam thinks that Kim left
is true just in case the type which is the content of "Kim left" matches the type modelling Sam's belief/memory state.
I will discuss some of the details of developing a semantics where propositions are matched against memories in this way where both propositions and memories are modelled as types in TTR. The claim that types can be used to model memory would be empty if it turns out that the types are in principle impossible to represent on a finite network of neurons. In the second part of this talk I will discuss how types might be represented in terms of neural events on a network.
Cooper, Robin and Jonathan Ginzburg (2015). Type Theory with Records for Natural Language Semantics, in Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory (second edition), ed. by Shalom Lappin and Chris Fox, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 375--407
Cooper, Robin (2019). Representing Types as Neural Events, Journal of Logic, Language and Information, (28), 131–155, DOI 10.1007/s10849-019-09285-4
Universal Anaphora and Dialogue Phenomena
Language within the mosaic of social cognition
(MIT)
Fedorenko, E. and Varley, R. (2016). Language and thought are not the same thing: evidencecfrom neuroimaging and neurological patients. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1369: 132-153.
Paunov AM, Blank IA, Fedorenko E. (2019).Functionally distinct language and Theory of Mind networks are synchronized at rest and during language comprehension. J Neurophysiol. 2019 Apr 1;121(4):1244-1265
Evelina Fedorenko, Idan A. Blank (2020). Broca’s Area Is Not a Natural Kind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 24, Issue 4, pp. 270-284.