2004 AAAI Fall Symposium Series


Registration Brochure

Compositional Connectionism in Cognitive Science

Speakers / Abstracts         Schedule         Proceedings         Photos

Chairs
    Washington and Lee University

Ross Gayler
    La Trobe University

      Redwood Neuroscience
Institute

      University of Waterloo
Dates
General Registration
      July 2004

Camera Ready
      August 31, 2004

Invited Participants Registration
      September 10, 2004

Hotel Reservation Cutoff
      September 27, 2004

Final Registration
      October 1, 2004

Symposium
      October 22-24, 2004

Invited Speakers
      UCSD
Title TBA

Mark Steedman
      University of
      Edinburgh
Title TBA

Student scholarships available.

 

Hyatt Regency Crystal City , Washington, DC, October 22-24, 2004

Compositionality (the ability to combine constituents recursively) is generally taken to be essential to the open-ended productivity of perception, cognition, language and other human capabilities aspired to by AI. Ultimately, these capabilities are implemented by the neural networks of the brain, yet connectionist models have had difficulties with compositionality. This symposium will bring together connectionist and non-connectionist researchers to discuss and debate compositionality and connectionism.

The aim of this symposium is to expose connectionist researchers to the broadest possible range of conceptions of composition - including those conceptions that pose the greatest challenge for connectionism - while simultaneously alerting other AI and cognitive science researchers to the range of possibilities for connectionist implementation of composition. We therefore welcome and encourage submissions from both proponents and critics of connectionist representations, so long as the work described focuses on compositionality in the context of AI or cognitive science.

Topics of interest include:

  • The relationships between the representational constituents and the composite
  • The process of composition
  • The possibility of asymmetry between composition and decomposition
  • The constituents (relevant to human agency) that can be composed
  • The consequences of having multiple interacting compositional systems
  • The extent to which "structure-in-time" connectionist models, like Elman's Simple Recurrent Networks, represent compositional structure
  • The possibility that different connectionist models implement different aspects of compositionality and can be used together

Registration Information:

ALL ATTENDEES MUST PREREGISTER . Each symposium has a limited attendance, with priority given to invited attendees. All accepted authors, symposium participants, and other invited attendees must register by September 10, 2004. After that period, registration will be opened up to the general membership of AAAI and other interested parties. All registrations must be postmarked by October 1, 2004.