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Robots Learning to Say “No”: Prohibition and Rejective Mechanisms in Acquisition of Linguistic Negation

Authors:

Frank Förster,

Chrystopher L. NehanivAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), Volume 8, Issue 4

Article No.: 23, Pages 1 - 26

https://doi.org/10.1145/3359618

Published: 15 November 2019 Publication History

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Abstract

“No” is one of the first ten words used by children and embodies the first form of linguistic negation. Despite its early occurrence, the details of its acquisition remain largely unknown. The circumstance that “no” cannot be construed as a label for perceptible objects or events puts it outside the scope of most modern accounts of language acquisition. Moreover, most symbol grounding architectures will struggle to ground the word due to its non-referential character. The presented work extends symbol grounding to encompass affect and motivation. In a study involving the child-like robot iCub, we attempt to illuminate the acquisition process of negation words. The robot is deployed in speech-wise unconstrained interaction with participants acting as its language teachers. The results corroborate the hypothesis that affect or volition plays a pivotal role in the acquisition process. Negation words are prosodically salient within prohibitive utterances and negative intent interpretations such that they can be easily isolated from the teacher’s speech signal. These words subsequently may be grounded in negative affective states. However, observations of the nature of prohibition and the temporal relationships between its linguistic and extra-linguistic components raise questions over the suitability of Hebbian-type algorithms for certain types of language grounding.

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Cited By

Groß ASingh ABanh NRichter BScharlau IRohlfing KWrede B(2023)Scaffolding the human partner by contrastive guidance in an explanatory human-robot dialogueFrontiers in Robotics and AI10.3389/frobt.2023.123618410Online publication date: 30-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1236184
Förster FRomeo MHolthaus PWood LDondrup CFischer JLiza FKaszuba SHough JNesset BHernández García DKontogiorgos DWilliams JÖzkan EBarnard PBerumen GPrice DCobb SWiltschko MTisserand LPorcheron MGiuliani MSkantze GHealey PPapaioannou IGkatzia DAlbert SHuang GMaraev VKapetanios E(2023)Working with troubles and failures in conversation between humans and robots: workshop reportFrontiers in Robotics and AI10.3389/frobt.2023.120230610Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306
Zhang ZYu HWang WLuo Y(2023)Autonomous Conscious Humanoid Robot System2023 5th International Conference on Robotics, Intelligent Control and Artificial Intelligence (RICAI)10.1109/RICAI60863.2023.10489092(100-107)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RICAI60863.2023.10489092
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Robots Learning to Say “No”: Prohibition and Rejective Mechanisms in Acquisition of Linguistic Negation
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction

ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction Volume 8, Issue 4

Survey Paper and Special Issue on Representation Learning for Human and Robot Cognition

December 2019

108 pages

EISSN:2573-9522

DOI:10.1145/3372354

Editors:
Odest Chadwicke Jenkins
University of Michigan, USA
,
Selma Sabanovic
Indiana University, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2019 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 15 November 2019

Accepted: 01 August 2019

Revised: 01 June 2019

Received: 01 August 2018

Published in THRI Volume 8, Issue 4

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EU Integrated Project ITALK (“Integration and Transfer of Action and Language in Robots”)

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Cited By

Groß ASingh ABanh NRichter BScharlau IRohlfing KWrede B(2023)Scaffolding the human partner by contrastive guidance in an explanatory human-robot dialogueFrontiers in Robotics and AI10.3389/frobt.2023.123618410Online publication date: 30-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1236184
Förster FRomeo MHolthaus PWood LDondrup CFischer JLiza FKaszuba SHough JNesset BHernández García DKontogiorgos DWilliams JÖzkan EBarnard PBerumen GPrice DCobb SWiltschko MTisserand LPorcheron MGiuliani MSkantze GHealey PPapaioannou IGkatzia DAlbert SHuang GMaraev VKapetanios E(2023)Working with troubles and failures in conversation between humans and robots: workshop reportFrontiers in Robotics and AI10.3389/frobt.2023.120230610Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2023.1202306
Zhang ZYu HWang WLuo Y(2023)Autonomous Conscious Humanoid Robot System2023 5th International Conference on Robotics, Intelligent Control and Artificial Intelligence (RICAI)10.1109/RICAI60863.2023.10489092(100-107)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RICAI60863.2023.10489092
Förster FBroz FNeerincx M(2023)Taking a strong interactional stanceBehavioral and Brain Sciences10.1017/S0140525X2200145546Online publication date: 5-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22001455
Förster FAlthoefer K(2022)Attribution of autonomy and its role in robotic language acquisitionAI & Society10.1007/s00146-020-01114-837:2(605-617)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00146-020-01114-8
Förster F(2019)Enactivism and Robotic Language Acquisition: A Report from the FrontierPhilosophies10.3390/philosophies40100114:1(11)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies4010011

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