CMN 2015 - Sixth Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN'15)

Narrative provides a framing structure for understanding, communicating, influencing, and organizing human experience. Systems for its analysis and production are increasingly found embedded in devices and processes, influencing decision-making in venues as diverse as politics, economics, intelligence, and cultural production.
In order to appreciate this influence, it is becoming increasingly clear that research must address the technical implementation of narrative systems, the theoretical bases of these frameworks, and our general understanding of narrative at multiple levels: from the psychological and cognitive impact of narratives to our ability to model narrative responses computationally.
Special Focus: Cognitive Systems
This inter-disciplinary workshop will be an appropriate venue for papers addressing fundamental topics and questions regarding narrative. Papers should be relevant to issues fundamental to the computational modeling and scientific understanding of narrative. The workshop will have a special focus on the building cognitive systems that are distinguished by a focus on high-level cognition and decision making, reliance on rich, structured representations, a systems-level perspective, use of heuristics to handle complexity, and incorporation of insights about human thinking, meaning we especially welcome papers relevant to the cognitive aspects of narrative.
Illustrative Topics and Questions
How is narrative knowledge captured and represented?
How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a universal scheme for encoding episodic information?
How can we study narrative from a cognitive point of view?
Can narrative be subsumed by current models of higher-level cognition, or does it require new approaches?
How do narratives mediate our cognitive experiences, or affect our cognitive abilities?
What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there such a set? How many possible story lines are there?
Is narrative structure universal, or are there systematic differences in narratives from different cultures?
What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts?
How do conceptions and models of spatiality or temporality influence narrative and cognitive systems?
What are the details of the relationship between narrative and common sense?
What shared resources are required for the computational study of narrative? What should a Story Bank contain?
What shared resources and tools are available, or how can already-extant resources be adapted to the study of narrative?
What are appropriate formal or computational representations for narrative?
How should we evaluate computational and formal models of narrative?
How can narrative systems be applied to problem-solving?
What aspects of cross-linguistic work has narrative research neglected?