Cognitive Modeling

Background

The workshop series ?Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems? was initiated in 2002 and has been held bi‐annually since then. The goal of ABiALS is an interdisciplinary knowledge exchange between researchers that are interested in how predictions and expectations enhance cognitive development and behavioral control. ABiALS focuses on learning mechanisms and resulting forms of representations for anticipatory cognition and behavior.

Focus Topic: Spatial Representations and Dynamic Interactions

This ABiALS workshop focuses on how predictions and anticipations are involved in the generation of internal spatial representations, their interactions, and the embedding of dynamically unfolding control routines. Particularly, various research disciplines suggest that anticipatory and predictive sensorimotor mechanisms are a crucial component in the development of useful spatial representations and the embedding of complex behavioral interaction routines.
Thus, in short, this workshop addresses the following three main questions:

First, how do distributed spatial representations develop and how are they adapted?

Second, how can these (interacting) representations be effectively utilized to interact with the environment?

Third, how are more complex behavioral routines, such as object manipulations, tool usage, or joint actions, learned, represented in compressed form, and flexibly activated in interaction with the various sensorimotor spatial representations available?

Aims & Scope

The interdisciplinary workshop will bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, neuroinformatics, neurosciences, and robotics. In the last years, cognitive psychologists were able to demonstrate the existence of strong links between intentions, anticipations, spatial perception, and behavioral control. To further develop models that enable us to better understand the nature of these links, the workshop will spark discussions and foster collaborations between empirical psychologists and neuroscientists on the one side, and scientists working on computational models of human cognition and neurorobotics on the other side. Thus, the workshop will help to transport novel findings in cognitive psychology to the domain of neuroinformatics and neurorobotics and enable cognitive psychologists to learn about current advances in neuroinformatics and neurorobotics, which help to gain a deeper understanding of their empirical findings.