The Neural Basis of Thought and Language

The Neural Basis ofThought and Language

Final

Review Session

Administrivia

• Final in class next Tuesday, May 9th

• Be there on time!

• Format:

– closed books, closed notes

– short answers, no blue books

• And then you’re done with the course!

The Second Half

Cognition and Language

Computation

Structured Connectionism

Computational Neurobiology

Biology

Midterm Final

abst

ract

ion

Motor Control

Metaphor Grammar

Bailey Model

KARMA ECG

SHRUTI

Bayesian Model of HSP

Bayes Nets

Overview

• Bailey Model

– feature structures

– Bayesian model merging

– recruitment learning

• KARMA

– X-schema, frames

– aspect

– event-structure metaphor

– inference

• Grammar Learning

– parsing

– construction grammar

– learning algorithm

• SHRUTI

• FrameNet

• Bayesian Model of Human Sentence Processing

Full CircleNeural System &

Development

Motor Control & Visual System

Spatial Relation

Psycholinguistics Experiments

Metaphor

Grammar Verbs & Spatial Relation

Embodied Representation

StructuredConnectionism

Probabilistic algorithms

ConvergingConstraints

How can we capture the difference between

“Harry walked into the cafe.”

“Harry is walking into the cafe.”

“Harry walked into the wall.”

Analysis Process

Utterance

Simulation

Belief State

General Knowledg

e

Constructions

SemanticSpecificatio

n

“Harry walked into the café.”

The INTO construction

construction INTO subcase of Spatial-Relation

form selff .orth ← “into”

meaning: Trajector-Landmarkevokes Container as contevokes Source-Path-Goal as spgtrajector ↔ spg.trajectorlandmark ↔ contcont.interior ↔ spg.goalcont.exterior ↔ spg.source

The Spatial-Phrase construction

construction SPATIAL-PHRASE

constructionalconstituents

sr : Spatial-Relationlm : Ref-Expr

formsrf before lmf

meaningsrm.landmark ↔ lmm

The Directed-Motion construction

construction DIRECTED-MOTIONconstructional

constituentsa : Ref-Expm: Motion-Verbp : Spatial-Phrase

form af before mf

mf before pf

meaningevokes Directed-Motion as dmselfm.scene ↔ dm

dm.agent ↔ am

dm.motion ↔ mm

dm.path ↔ pm

schema Directed-Motionroles

agent : Entitymotion : Motionpath : SPG

What exactly is simulation?

• Belief update plus X-schema execution

hungry meeting

cafe

time of day

readystart

ongoingfinish

done

iterate

WALK

at goal

“Harry walked into the café.”

readywalk

done

walker=Harry goal=cafe

Analysis Process

Utterance

Simulation

Belief State

General Knowledg

e

Constructions


n

“Harry is walking to the café.”

“Harry is walking to the café.”

readystart

ongoingfinish

done

iterateabortcancelled

interrupt resume

suspended

WALKwalker=Harry goal=cafe

Analysis Process

Utterance

Simulation

Belief State

General Knowledg

e

Constructions


n

“Harry has walked into the wall.”

Perhaps a different sense of INTO?

construction INTO subcase of spatial-prep


meaningevokes Trajector-Landmark as tlevokes Container as contevokes Source-Path-Goal as spgtl.trajector ↔ spg.trajectortl.landmark ↔ contcont.interior ↔ spg.goalcont.exterior ↔ spg.source

construction INTO subcase of spatial-prep


meaningevokes Trajector-Landmark as tlevokes Impact as imevokes Source-Path-Goal as spgtl.trajector ↔ spg.trajectortl.landmark ↔ spg.goalim.obj1 ↔ tl.trajectorim.obj2 ↔ tl.landmark

“Harry has walked into the wall.”

readystart

ongoingfinish

done

iterateabortcancelled

interrupt resume

suspended

WALKwalker=Harry goal=wall

Map down to timeline

S

R

E

readystart

ongoingfinish

done

consequence

further questions?

What about…

“Harry walked into trouble”

or for stronger emphasis,

“Harry walked into trouble, eyes wide open.”

Metaphors

• metaphors are mappings from a source domain to a target domain

• metaphor maps specify the correlation between source domain entities / relation and target domain entities / relation

• they also allow inference to transfer from source domain to target domain (possibly, but less frequently, vice versa)

<TARGET> is <SOURCE>

Event Structure Metaphor

• Target Domain: event structure

• Source Domain: physical space• States are Locations

• Changes are Movements

• Causes are Forces

• Causation is Forced Movement

• Actions are Self-propelled Movements

• Purposes are Destinations

• Means are Paths

• Difficulties are Impediments to Motion

• External Events are Large, Moving Objects

• Long-term Purposeful Activities are Journeys

KARMA

• DBN to represent target domain knowledge

• Metaphor maps link target and source domain

• X-schema to represent source domain knowledge

Metaphor Maps

1. map entities and objects between embodied and abstract domains

2. invariantly map the aspect of the embodied domain event onto the target domain

by setting the evidence for the status variable based on controller state (event structure metaphor)

3. project x-schema parameters onto the target domain

further questions?

How do you learn…

the meanings of spatial relations,

the meanings of verbs,

the metaphors, and

the constructions?

How do you learn…



the metaphors, and

the constructions?

That’s the Regier model. (first half of semester)

How do you learn…



the metaphors, and

the constructions?

VerbLearn

schema elbow jnt posture accel

slide extend palm 6


slide extend palm 8


slide 0.9 extend 0.9 palm 0.9 [6]

data #1

data #2

data #3

data #4


depress 0.9

fixed 0.9 index 0.9 [2]


slide 0.9 extend 0.9 palm 0.9 [6 - 8]

schema elbow jnt posture

slide 0.9 extend 0.9 palm 0.7

grasp 0.3


depress fixed index 2


slide extend grasp 2

Computational Details

• complexity of model + ability to explain data

• maximum a posteriori (MAP) hypothesis

)|( argmax DmPm

rule Bayes'by )()|( argmax mPmDPm

how likely is the data given this model?

penalize complex models – those with too many word senses

wants the best model given data

How do you learn…



the metaphors, and

the constructions?

conflation hypothesis(primary metaphors)

How do you learn…



the metaphors, and

the constructions?

construction learning

Acquisition

Reorganize

Hypothesize

Production

Utterance

(Comm. Intent, Situation)

Generate

Constructions

(Utterance, Situation)

Analysis

Comprehension

Analyze

Partial

Usage-based Language Learning

Main Learning Loop

while <utterance, situation> available and cost > stoppingCriterion

analysis = analyzeAndResolve(utterance, situation, currentGrammar);

newCxns = hypothesize(analysis);

if cost(currentGrammar + newCxns) < cost(currentGrammar)

addNewCxns(newCxns);

if (re-oganize == true) // frequency depends on learning parameter

reorganizeCxns();

Three ways to get new constructions

• Relational mapping

– throw the ball

• Merging

– throw the block

– throwing the ball

• Composing

– throw the ball

– ball off

– you throw the ball offTHROW < BALL < OFF

THROW < OBJECT

THROW < BALL

Minimum Description Length• Choose grammar G to minimize cost(G|D):

– cost(G|D) = α • size(G) + β • complexity(D|G)

– Approximates Bayesian learning; cost(G|D) ≈ posterior probability P(G|D)

• Size of grammar = size(G) ≈ 1/prior P(G) – favor fewer/smaller constructions/roles; isomorphic mappings

• Complexity of data given grammar ≈ 1/likelihood P(D|G)– favor simpler analyses

(fewer, more likely constructions)

– based on derivation length + score of derivation

further questions?

Connectionist Representation

How can entities and relations be represented at the structured connectionist level?

or

How can we represent Harry walked to the caféin a connectionist model?

SHRUTI

• entity, type, and predicate focal clusters

• An “entity” is a phase in the rhythmic activity.

• Bindings are synchronous firings of role and entity cells

• Rules are interconnection patterns mediated by coincidence detector circuits that allow selective propagation of activity

• An episode of reflexive processing is a transient propagation of rhythmic activity

• asserting that walk(Harry, café)

• Harry fires in phase with agent role

• cafe fires in phase with goal role

+ - ? agt goal

+e +v ?e ?v

+ ?

walk

cafe

Harry

type

entity

predicate

“Harry walked to the café.”

Activation Trace for walk(Harry, café)

+: Harry

+: walk

+e: cafe

walk-agt

walk-goal

1 2 3 4

further questions?

Human Sentence Processing

Can we use any of the mechanisms we just discussed

to predict reaction time / behavior

when human subjects read sentences?

Good and Bad News

• Bad news:

– No, not as it is.

– ECG, the analysis process and simulation process are represented at a higher computational level of abstraction than human sentence processing (lacks timing information, requirement on cognitive capacity, etc)

• Good news:

– we can construct bayesian model of human sentence processing behavior borrowing the same insights

Bayesian Model of Sentence Processing

• Do you wait for sentence boundaries to interpret the meaning of a sentence? No!

• As words come in, we construct

– partial meaning representation

– some candidate interpretations if ambiguous

– expectation for the next words

• Model

– Probability of each interpretation given words seen

– Stochastic CFGs, N-Grams, Lexical valence probabilities

SCFG + N-gram

Reduced RelativeMain Verb

S

NP VP

D N VBN

The cop arrested the detective

S

NP VP

NP VP

D N VBD PP

The cop arrested by

Stochastic CFG

SCFG + N-gram

Main VerbReduced Relative

S

NP VP

D N VBN


S

NP VP

NP VP

D N VBD PP

The cop arrested by

N-Gram

SCFG + N-gram

Main VerbReduced Relative

S

NP VP

D N VBN


S

NP VP

NP VP

D N VBD PP

The cop arrested by

Different Interpretations

Predicting effects on reading time

• Probability predicts human disambiguation

• Increase in reading time because of...

– Limited Parallelism

• Memory limitations cause correct interpretation to be pruned

• The horse raced past the barn fell

– Attention

• Demotion of interpretation in attentional focus

– Expectation

• Unexpected words

Open for questions

The Neural Basis of Thought and Language

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