Supervision : Marie-Jeanne LESOT

Co-supervision : TIJUS Charles, ZIBETTI Elisabetta

«How much is ‘about’?» Modélisation computationnelle de l’interprétation cognitive des expressions numériques approximatives

Approximate Numerical Expressions (ANE) are imprecise linguistic expressions implying numerical values, illustrated by "about 100". We first focus on ANE interpretation, both in its human and computational aspects. After defining original arithmetical and cognitive dimensions allowing to characterize ANEs, we conducted an empirical study to collect the intervals of values denoted by ANEs. We show that the proposed dimensions are involved in ANE interpretation. In a second step, we proposed two interpretation models, based on the same principle of a compromise between the cognitive salience of the endpoints and their distance to the ANE reference value, formalized by Pareto frontiers. The first model estimates the denoted interval, the second one generates a fuzzy interval representing the associated imprecision. The experimental validation of the models, based on real data, show that they offer better performances than existing models. We also show the relevance of the fuzzy model by implementing it in the framework of flexible database queries. We then show, by the mean of an empirical study, that the semantic context has little effect on the collected intervals. Finally, we focus on the additions and products of ANE, for instance to assess the area of a room whose walls are "about 10" and "about 20 meters" long. We conducted an empirical study whose results indicate that the imprecisions associated with the operands are not taken into account during the calculations.

2016-2017 Publications

• 2017
  • S. Lefort : “«How much is ‘about’?» Modélisation computationnelle de l’interprétation cognitive des expressions numériques approximatives”, thesis, phd defence 09/19/2017, supervision Lesot, Marie-Jeanne, co-supervision : Tijus, Charles, Zibetti, Elisabetta (2017)
  • S. Lefort, M.‑J. Lesot, E. Zibetti, Ch. Tijus, M. Detyniecki : “How Arithmically Fuzzy Are We? An Empirical Comparison of Human Imprecise Calculation and Fuzzy Arithmetic”, FUZZ-IEEE - IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Naples, Italy (2017)
  • S. Lefort, E. Zibetti, M.‑J. Lesot, M. Detyniecki, Ch. Tijus : “Dimensions for automatic interpretation of approximate numerical expressions: An empirical study”, ACM IUI 2017, IUI'17 Proceedings of the 22^nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Limassol, Cyprus (2017)
  • S. Lefort, M.‑J. Lesot, E. Zibetti, Ch. Tijus, M. Detyniecki : “Interpretation of approximate numerical expressions: Computational model and empirical study”, International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, vol. 82, pp. 193-209, (Elsevier) (2017)
  • S. Ivaldi, S. Lefort, J. Peters, M. Chetouani, J. Provasi, E. Zibetti : “Towards engagement models that consider individual factors in HRI: on the relation of extroversion and negative attitude towards robots to gaze and speech during a human-robot assembly task: Experiments with the iCub humanoid robot”, International Journal of Social Robotics, vol. 9 (1), pp. 63-86, (Springer) (2017)
• 2016
  • S. Lefort, M.‑J. Lesot, E. Zibetti, Ch. Tijus, M. Detyniecki : “Interprétation floue des expressions numériques approximatives”, 25^es Rencontres Francophones sur la Logique Floue et ses Applications, La Rochelle, France (2016)
  • S. Lefort, M.‑J. Lesot, E. Zibetti, Ch. Tijus, M. Detyniecki : “How much is " about " ? Fuzzy interpretation of approximate numerical expressions”, 16^th International Conference on Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty in Knowledge-Based Systems (IPMU'16), Eindhoven, Netherlands (2016)
  • I. Gaudiello, E. Zibetti, S. Lefort, M. Chetouani, S. Ivaldi : “Trust as indicator of robot functional and social acceptance. An experimental study on user conformation to iCub answers”, Computers in Human Behavior, (Elsevier) (2016)