Olivier Sigaud - Böcker

The matter of anticipation is, as the editors of this volume state in their preface, a rathernewtopic. Giventhealmostconstantusewemakeofanticipationin our dailyliving,itseemsoddthatthebulk ofpsychologistshavepersistentlyignored it. However, the reason for this disregard is not di?cult to ?nd. The dogma of the scienti?c revolution had from the outset laid down the principle that future conditions and events could not in?uence the present. The law of causation clearly demands that causes should precedetheir e?ects and, therefore,concepts such as purpose, anticipation, and even intention were taboo because they were thought to involve things and happenings that lay ahead in time. An analysis of the three concepts - purpose, anticipation, and intention - shows that they are rooted in the past and transcend the present only insofar as they contain mental representations of things to be striven for or avoided. Purposiveorgoal-directedactioncouldbe circumscribedasactioncarriedoutto attain something desirable. In each case, the particular action is chosenbecause, in the past, it has more or less reliably led to the desired end.The only way the future is involved in this procedure is through the belief that the experiential worldmanifestssomeregularityandallowsthelivingorganismtoanticipatethat what has workedin the past will continue to work in the future. This belief does not have to be conscious. Skinner's rats continued to turn left in a maze where theleftarmhadbeenbaited. Theydidsobecausethemeatpelletthey foundthe ?rst time had "reinforced" them to repeat the turn to the left.

Anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems is steadily gaining the - terest of scientists, although many researchers still do not explicitly consider the actual anticipatory capabilities of their systems. Similarly to the previous two workshops, the third workshop on anticipatory behavior in adaptive lea- ing systems (ABiALS 2006) has shown yet again that the similarities between di?erent anticipatory mechanisms in diverse cognitive systems are striking. The discussions and presentations on the workshop day of September 30th, 2006, during the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior Conference (SAB 2006), con?rmed that the investigations into anticipatory cognitive mechanisms for behavior and learning strongly overlap among researchers from various disciplines, including the whole interdisciplinary cognitive science area. Thus, further conceptualizations of anticipatory mechanisms seem man- tory. The introductory chapter of this volume therefore does not only provide an overview of the contributions included in this volume but also proposes a taxonomy of how anticipatory mechanisms can improve adaptive behavior and learning in cognitive systems. During the workshop it became clear that ant- ipations are involved in various cognitive processes that range from individual anticipatory mechanisms to social anticipatory behavior. This book re?ects this structure by ?rst providing neuroscienti?c as well as psychological evidence for anticipatorymechanismsinvolvedinbehavior,learning,language,andcognition. Next,individualpredictivecapabilitiesandanticipatorybehaviorcapabilitiesare investigated. Finally, anticipation relevant in social interaction is studied.

Anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems continues attracting attention of researchers in many areas, including cognitive systems, neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning. This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems, ABiALS 2008, held in Munich, Germany, in June 2008, in collaboration with the six-monthly Meeting of euCognition 'The Role of Anticipation in Cognition'. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for inclusion in the book. The introductory chapter of this state-of-the-art survey not only provides an overview of the contributions included in this volume but also revisits the current available terminology on anticipatory behavior and relates it to the available system approaches. The papers are organized in topical sections on anticipation in psychology with focus on the ideomotor view, conceptualizations, anticipation and dynamical systems, computational modeling of psychological processes in the individual and social domains, behavioral and cognitive capabilities based on anticipation, and computational frameworks and algorithms for anticipation, and their evaluation.

From an engineering standpoint, the increasing complexity of robotic systems and the increasing demand for more autonomously learning robots, has become essential. This book is largely based on the successful workshop “From motor to interaction learning in robots” held at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems. The major aim of the book is to give students interested the topics described above a chance to get started faster and researchers a helpful compandium.