This paper presents PENTAtrainer2, a semi-automatic software package written as Praat plug-in integrated with Java programs, and its applications for analysis and synthesis of speech melody as communicative functions. Its core concepts are based on the Parallel Encoding and Target Approximation (PENTA) framework, the quantitative Target Approximation (qTA) model, and the simulated annealing opt...

A theory of communication between autonomous agents should make testable predictions about which communicative behaviors are collaborative, and provide a framework for determining the features of a communicative situation that affect whether a behavior is collaborative. The results presented here are derived from a two-phase empirical method. First, we analyze a corpus of naturally-occurring pr...

We study the problem of checking the competence of communicative agents operating in a global society in order to receive and offer electronic services. Such a society will be composed of local subsocieties that will often be semi-open, viz., entrance of agents in a semiopen society is conditional to specific admission criteria. Assuming that a candidate agent provides an abstract description o...

This paper presents an overview of the Parallel Encoding and Target Approximation (PENTA) model of speech prosody in response to an extensive critique by Arvaniti and Ladd (2009). PENTA is a framework for conceptually and computationally linking communicative meanings to fine-grained prosodic details, based on an articulatory-functional view of speech. Target Approximation simulates the articul...

Considerable effort has been directed at understanding the nature of the communicative deficits observed in individuals with acquired brain injuries. Yet several theoretical, methodological, and clinical challenges remain. In this article, we examine distributed cognition as a framework for understanding interaction among communication partners, interaction of communication and cognition, and i...

Technical approaches still dominate regional resource use planning processes in Australia, despite increasing calls from stakeholder groups for greater participation. In response to these calls, communicative approaches to regional resource use planning are being adopted. Communicative planning converts natural resource planning (allocation) from a technical to a political process, albeit one w...

The development of open multiagent systems presupposes not only a standard Agent Communication Language and common conversation protocols, but also some kind of social framework within which agent interactions can be carried out. To account for such a social framework we propose a suitable construct, that we call an institution, imposing role-dependent authorizations and interaction rules on gr...

One of the main issues in the engineering of multi-agent systems is to give a formal semantics to agent communicative acts. This is generally done by describing how agent interactions with the environment affect and are affected by the agent inner behaviour – e.g., by the agent decisions its perception of the world. FIPA ACL semantics is one of the best-known examples of this approach. In this ...

Tracing the historical development of mixed-mode modelling from a theoretical and practical perspective leads to an understanding of the domain as substantially underpinned by critical social theory. A ‘natural’ progression is discerned, from which it is argued that the logical future direction for mixed-mode modelling is one grounded on theories of communicative action. The beginnings of a fra...

In this paper, we present an approach to treat and model the processing (i.e. recognition and production) of communicative gestures as grounded motor cognition. We first review cognitive theories and neuropsychological studies on human motor cognition. On this basis, we propose a computational framework that connects the sensorimotor processing of hand gestures in representational structures of...