CAREER: Rational Language Processing with Uncertain and Noisy Input

这一职业奖调查了人类如何在物理和认知限制下整合各种信息源，以实现快速、准确的自然语言理解。该项目的主要经验重点是阅读，这是一种在识字社会中无与伦比的信息交流模式。阅读涉及文本中一系列快速的有针对性的眼动--可通过现代眼球跟踪技术进行记录--从中获得嘈杂的感觉输入，并与先前的知识相结合，以解决感知和语言上的不确定性。因此，这个项目的中心目标是开发、实施和测试一个建立在概率推理和理性行为原则基础上的阅读语言理解和眼动控制的计算模型，使用自然语言处理(NLP)技术、强化学习和行为心理语言学实验的工具。该项目的成功很可能在人类句子处理领域产生重大影响，为理论和数据分析带来新的细微差别和细节，并将影响目前认知科学中关于认知合理性的广泛辩论。此外，这一基础研究项目的成果具有广泛的潜在应用，从智能辅导技术到语言障碍诊断到认知工效学。除了这一研究计划，该项目还涉及一项教育计划，包括一本关于语言研究中的概率模型的新教科书，新的本科和研究生课程，以及主要会议和暑期学院的计算心理语言学教程和课程。这个职业奖项由两个主任共同资助：：CESE/IIS和SBE/BCS。

This CAREER award investigates how humans integrate a wide variety of information sources to achieve rapid, accurate natural language comprehension subject to the physical and cognitive constraints under which it takes place. The project's primary empirical focus is on reading, a mode of information exchange of unexceeded importance in literate societies. Reading involves a rapid sequence of targeted eye movements throughout a text -- recordable through modern eye-tracking technology -- from which noisy sensory input are obtained and integrated with prior knowledge to resolve perceptual and linguistic uncertainty. The central goal of this project is thus to develop, implement, and test a computational model of language comprehension and eye movement control in reading built on principles of probabilistic inference and rational action, using the tools of natural language processing (NLP) technology, reinforcement learning, and behavioral psycholinguistic experimentation.The success of this project is likely to have major impact in the field of human sentence processing, bringing a new level of nuance and detail to both theory and data analysis, and will bear on broad current debates in cognitive science regarding rationality in cognition. Additionally, the results of this basic research project have a wide range of potential applications ranging from intelligent tutoring technology to language-impairment diagnosis to cognitive ergonomics. Together with this research program, the project involves an educational program including a new textbook on probabilistic models in the study of language, new undergraduate and graduate courses, and tutorials and courses on computational psycholinguistics at major conferences and summer institutes.This CAREER award is co-funded by two directorates:: CISE/IIS and SBE/BCS.