please, send us your paper:-)! extended submission deadline is 13th Feb
cheers
eduardo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Graça Gaspar" <gg@di.fc.ul.pt>
To: <alad@cs.york.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 2:59 PM
Subject: RE: 2nd CfP-Associative Learning and Reinforcement Learning


Um Workshop onde podem vir a surgir artigos interessantes.

Graça

-----Original Message-----
From: alad-request@cs.york.ac.uk [mailto:alad-request@cs.york.ac.uk] On
Behalf Of Eduardo Alonso
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 12:26 PM
To: alad@cs.york.ac.uk
Subject: 2nd CfP-Associative Learning and Reinforcement Learning



Associative Learning and Reinforcement Learning Workshop
Bristol, UK, 3rd April 2006
2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

The Associative Learning and Reinforcement Learning
workshop(http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~eduardo/CAL-AISB.html) aims to
encourage interdisciplinary research by strengthening collaboration
between learning scientists and the artificial intelligence community.
The workshop will be held as part of the annual convention of the
Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour (AISB -- Bristol, UK, 3-6 April 2006).

Connectionist models have been consistently used in the study of
associative learning, and standard models of classical conditioning can
be naturally interpreted in terms of computational neuroscience.
Moreover, the links between classical conditioning and
temporal-difference learning (one of the central elements of
reinforcement learning) are close and widely acknowledged.   Despite
this, important issues remain that indicate the distance between these
two areas of research; for example, reinforcement learning does not take
full advantage of current associative learning theories, whereas
associative learning uses computational models as ad hoc tools rather
than complementary formal models of behaviour.

The broad purpose of this symposium is to give a representative overview
of current research in the area, in order to facilitate dialogue between
the two scientific communities. We anticipate the potential benefits
will be bidirectional: on the one hand, advances in associative learning
may help improve the performance of existing reinforcement learning
algorithms (e.g., in improving generalisation to different learning
environments); on the other, intelligent systems designed with more
psychologically-based constraints might provide interesting
psychological insights (e.g.,
into the mechanisms underlying goal-directed behaviour).  In addition,
the session will provide an ideal scenario for the presentation of
learning simulators and psychologically inspired adaptive robots.

The workshop will comprise invited talks by Anthony Dickinson
(Experimental Psychology, Cambridge) and Nathaniel Daw (Gatsby
Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL), followed a number of shorter
talks and an open discussion.  Authors are invited to submit either
complete, or tentative and ongoing work by the 13th of January 2006 (to
eduardo@soi.city.ac.uk).  Accepted submissions (either abstracts or
papers) will be published by the AISB as on-the-day (copyright
free) symposium proceedings. Formatting instructions will be available
from the symposium website shortly. We are also negotiating with a
prestigious journal the publication of an after-event Special
Issue consisting of extended best papers, as well as some additional,
invited contributions.

Organisers:

Eduardo Alonso, Computer Science, City University
Charlotte Bonardi, Psychology, University of Nottingham
Esther Mondragón, Psychology, University College London

Programme Committee:

Christian Balkenius, Lund University Cognitive Science Bernard
Balleine, Department of Psychology, UCLA
Joanna Bryson, Department of Computer Science, University of Bath
Peter Dayan, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL
Magnus Enquist, Deparment of Zoology, Stockholm University
Geoffrey Hall, Department of Psychology, The University of York
Rob Honey, School of Psychology, Cardiff University
Robin Murphy, Department of Psychology, UCL
Ulrich Nehmzow, Department of Computer Science, University of Essex
Yael Niv, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL
John Pearce, School of Psychology, Cardiff University
José Prados, School of Psychology, University of Leicester
Richard Sutton, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta