CAREER: Rational Language Processing with Uncertain and Noisy Input

该职业奖研究人类如何整合各种信息源，以实现快速，准确的自然语言理解，但要受到身体和认知限制。 该项目的主要经验性重点是阅读，这是一种在识字社会中极其重要的信息交流方式。 阅读涉及一系列快速的有针对性的眼球运动，通过现代眼动跟踪技术记录下来，从中获得嘈杂的感官输入，并与先验知识相结合，以解决感知和语言的不确定性。 因此，该项目的中心目标是开发，实施和测试基于概率推理和理性行为原则的阅读中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。该项目的成功可能会对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，并将影响认知科学中关于认知合理性的广泛辩论。此外，该基础研究项目的结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。该研究项目还包括一个教育项目，包括语言研究中的概率模型的新教材，新的本科生和研究生课程，以及在主要会议和暑期研究所上的计算心理语言学教程和课程。该CAREER奖由两个董事会共同资助：CISE/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.