Dear = colleagues,

For this new year, I am happy to announce the = release of the Fall 2014 issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous = Mental Development. 

This is the biannual newsletter of = the computational developmental sciences and developmental robotics = community, studying mechanisms of lifelong learning and development in = machines and humans.

It is available = at:

Featur= ing:

=3D=3D=3D =93Trained on everything"

=3D=3D= =3D Dialog Initiated by Katharina Rohlfing, Britta Wrede and = Gerhard Sagerer, with responses from Giulio Sandino and David = Vernon, Franck Ramus and Th=E9r=E8se Collins, Maha Salem, Juyang = Weng, Thomas Schultz, and Christina Bergmann:

In the = years to come, one very important challenge in developmental sciences is = education. Taking an integrated and interdisciplinary = approach requires to handle with dexterity concepts and = methods from diverse scientific fields ranging from psychology, = neuroscience, biology, robotics, computer science or mathematics. = How can we grow a community of young researchers mastering the = latest advances? How can we teach them to = establish cross-disciplinary collaboration and = impact? 

=3D=3D=3D "Will social robots = need to be consciously aware?=94

=3D=3D=3D New dialog = initiated by Janet Wiles

A large research community is today = working towards the objective of building robots capable of = believable, relevant and useful social interaction with humans. We = are far from understanding what =93consciousness=94 is, but = intuition tells us that it would be very difficult for = an =93unconscious=94 human to enter into a = social interaction. So what about robots? At least can we = identify levels of awareness (of the self, of others) which constitute a = necessary basis on which to build social competence? Those of = you interested in reacting to this dialog initiation are welcome to = submit a response by March 30th, 2015. The length of each = response must be between 600 and 800 words including = references (contact pierre- ).