Neurobiological Fundamentals of Strategy Change: A Core Competence of Companion-Systems

• Published in: Companion Technology pp. 145 - 166
• Main Authors: Schulz, Andreas L., Woldeit, Marie L., Ohl, Frank W.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 01.01.2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Cognitive Technologies
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Computational linguistics; User interface design & usability
• ISBN: 3319436643; 9783319436647
• ISSN: 1611-2482; 2197-6635
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43665-4_8

Companion-Systems interact with users via flexible, goal-directed dialogs. During dialogs both, user and Companion-System, can identify and communicate their goals iteratively. In that sense, they can be conceptualized as communication partners, equipped with a processing scheme producing actions as outputs in consequence of (1) inputs from the other communication partner and (2) internally represented goals. A quite general core competence of communication partners is the capability for strategy change, defined as the modification of action planning under the boundary condition of maintaining a constant goal. Interestingly, the biological fundamentals for this capability are largely unknown. Here we describe a research program that employs an animal model for strategy change to (1) investigate its underlying neuronal mechanisms and (2) describe these mechanisms in an algorithmic syntax, suitable for implementation in technical Companion-Systems. It is crucial for this research program that investigated scenarios be sufficiently complex to contain all relevant aspects of strategy change, but at the same time simple enough to allow for a detailed neurophysiological analysis only obtainable in animal models. To this end, two forms of strategy change are considered in detail: Strategy change caused by modified feature selection, and strategy change caused by modified action assignment.