Workshop Aims
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Narratives are ubiquitous in human experience.  It is clear that, to fully understand and explain 
human intelligence, beliefs, and behaviors, we will have to understand why narrative is universal 
and explain the function it serves.

The aim of this workshop series is to address key, fundamental questions about narrative, using 
computational techniques, so to advance our understanding of cognition, culture, and society.

Special Focus: Shared Resources
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The computational study narrative does not yet have carefully constructed shared resources and 
corpora that can catalyze the way forward. This meeting will not only be an appropriate venue for 
papers addressing fundamental topics and questions regarding narrative, but also those papers which
focus on the identification, collection, and construction of *shared resources and corpora* that 
facilitate the computational modeling of narrative.

Papers should focus on issues fundamental to computational modeling and scientific understanding, 
or issues related to building shared resources to advance the field.  A technological application 
or motivation is not required.

Illustrative Topics and Questions
---------------------------------

* What kinds of shared resources are required for the computational study of narrative?

* What content and modalities should be put in a "Story Bank"
at formal representations should be used?

* What shared resources are available, or how can already-extant resources be adapted to common needs?

* What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts?  What is special that makes something a narrative?

* What are the details of the relationship between narrative and common sense?

* How are narratives indexed and retrieved?  Is there a "universal" scheme for encoding episodes?

* What impact do the purpose, function, and genre of a narrative have on its form and content?

* What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs?  Is there such a set? How many possible story lines are there?

* Are there systematic differences in the formal properties of narratives from different cultures?

* What are appropriate representations for narrative?  What representations underlie the extraction of narrative schemas?

* How should we evaluate computational models of narrative?

Additional Information
----------------------

We will likely have funding available to award travel grants to authors who have papers at the 
workshop, but would otherwise be unable to attend because of financial constraints.

Also in preparation is an arrangement with a noted international journal for a special issue 
featuring expanded versions of the best papers from the workshop.

Organizing Committee
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Mark A. Finlayson, MIT, USA
Pablo Gervas, UCM, Spain
Deniz Yuret, Koc University, Turkey
Floris Bex, Dundee, UK


Questions should be directed to:

narrative-ws12@csail.mit.edu