Giovanni Pezzulo.
Giovanni Pezzulo c/o ISTC-CNR, via S. Martino della Battaglia, 44 00185 Roma, Italy
Profile
- anticipation and goal-directed behavior;
- cognitive modelling;
- cognitive robotics;
- embodiment;
- philosophy of mind;
I am a researcher at the Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale "Antonio Zampolli" of the National Research Council of Italy (ILC-CNR), currently working at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), in Rome. I got a degree in Philosophy of Science (University of Pisa) and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology (University of Rome "La Sapienza").
My Research:
I use a combination of theoretical, computational and empirical methods to study cognitive processing in humans and other animals, and to realize robots that have similar abilities.
At the moment my main research question is how living organisms (and possibly robots) could develop higher cognition from sensorimotor skills. My tentative answer --in keeping with embodied and motor theories of cognition-- is that the architecture of motor prediction and control of our earlier ancestors was gradually improved to afford cognitive control and executive functions (and in parallel, joint actions and communication in the social domain).
Related to this general research question, I am exploring a number of interrelated research topics: anticipation, anticipatory behavior and action simulation (see my webportal on anticipation and the EU-funded project MindRACES); goal-directed behavior and decision-making (I am coordinator of the EU-funded project Goal-Leaders); schema-based agent architectures for action control, joint action and communication (see the EU-funded project HUMANOBS); language processing (see the DylanLab website); and the architecture of representation and intentionality (hoping that cognitive science and robotics help answering these old and deep philosophical questions).
You can check my publications here
Research
A list of my current research topics, with representative publications, can be found below:
- Anticipation and goal-directed behavior
Pezzulo, G.; Butz, M. V.; Sigaud, O. & Baldassarre, G. (2009) Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems: From Psychological Theories to Artificial Cognitive Systems.Springer LNAI 5499
Pezzulo, G.; Butz, M. V.; Castelfranchi, C. & Falcone, R., eds (2008) The Challenge of Anticipation: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis and Design of Artificial Cognitive Systems Springer LNAI 5225
Pezzulo, G. (2007) Anticipation and Future-Oriented Capabilites in Natural and Artificial Cognition. 50 Years of AI, Festschrift, 258-271
- Grounding higher cognition in sensorimotor and predictive loops
Pezzulo, G. & Castelfranchi, C. (2009) Thinking as the Control of Imagination: a Conceptual Framework for Goal-Directed Systems. Psychological Research, 73, 559-577
Pezzulo, G. & Castelfranchi, C. (2007) The Symbol Detachment Problem. Cognitive Processing, 8, 115-131
Pezzulo, G.; Barca, L.; Bocconi, A. L. & Borghi, A. M. (2010) When Affordances Climb into your Mind: Advantages of Motor Simulation in a Memory Task Performed by Novice and Expert Rock Climbers. Brain and Cognition, 73, 68-73
Pezzulo, G. (2009) DiPRA: A Layered Agent Architecture which Integrates Practical Reasoning and Sensorimotor Schemas. Connection Science, 21, 297-326
- Representation and prediction
Pezzulo, G. (2011) Grounding Procedural and Declarative Knowledge in Sensorimotor Anticipation. Mind and Language, 26, 78-114
Pezzulo, G. (2008) Coordinating with the Future: the Anticipatory Nature of Representation. Minds and Machines, 18, 179-225
- Grounded and embodied cognition
Pezzulo, G.; Barsalou, L.; Cangelosi, A.; Fischer, M.; McRae, K. & Spivey, M. (2011) The Mechanics of Embodiment: A Dialogue on Embodiment and Computational Modeling. Frontiers in Cognition, 2, 1-21
Pezzulo, G. & Calvi, G. (2009) Computational Explorations of Perceptual Symbol System Theory. New Ideas in Psychology,
- Action understanding, joint action, and the pragmatic foundations of interaction and communication
Pezzulo, G. (2011) Shared representations as coordination tools for interactions. Review of Philosophy and Psychology
Dindo, H.; Zambuto, D. & Pezzulo, G. (2011) Motor simulation via coupled internal models using sequential Monte Carlo. Proceedings of IJCAI 2011, 2113-2119
Pezzulo, G. & Dindo, H. (2011) What should I do next? Using shared representations to solve interaction problems. Experimental Brain Research, 211, 613-630
- Goal-directed decision-making and model-based reinforcement learning
Pezzulo, G. & Rigoli, F. (2011) The value of foresight: how prospection affects decision-making. Front. Neurosci., 5
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A list of all my publications can be found here