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From Language to the Mind: Learning to Read Deception, Nuanced Connotation and the Likely Success of Novels
Friday, December 6, 2013, 11:00 am-12:00 pm Calendar
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Abstract

Language is a Window into the Mind. It is not just what we write, but it is how we write that reveals a lot about our personal traits, socio-cognitive identities, concealed intention such as deception, nuanced connotation, and even literary success. Understanding language is already hard enough, hence understanding minds through language may seem even harder. In this talk, I argue that data-driven analysis of writing style, i.e., how we write, can be surprisingly powerful in perceiving the cognitive context of writing beyond the explicit and literal content of text. What's more, computers can at times substantially outperform humans in perceiving people's minds (e.g., deception), despite the lack of full blown understanding of underlying semantics and human-like common sense knowledge. I will present a series of our recent work under this theme, ranging from deception detection in online review communities, to prediction of the success of literary works, and to learning the nuanced connotation beneath the surface meaning.

Bio

Yejin Choi received her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Cornell University, and BS in Computer Science and Engineering at Seoul National University. She spent the summer of 2009 as a research intern at Yahoo! Research and joined the faculty of Computer Science Department at Stony Brook University in Sep 2010.

This talk is organized by Jimmy Lin