MOTIVATION AND GOALS

This workshop is dedicated to developing writing aids grounded in human cognition (limitations of attention and memory, typically observed habits, knowledge states, and information needs). In other words, we focus on the cognitive and engineering aspects of interactive writing. Our goal is not only to help people acquire and improve their writing skills but also to enhance their productivity. By leveraging computer technology, we aim to enable them to produce better texts in less time.

TOPICS

We welcome contributions on all topics related to writing aids, including but not limited to the following:

1. The Human Perspective: Cognitive scientific viewpoints, including education, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience

- Support: How can AI tools support critical thinking and logical reasoning in writing? How can writing assistants tailor feedback to individual writers, considering their unique needs and styles? How can we assess the quality and impact of AI-generated feedback on students' writing (methods, metrics, etc.)?
- Topical coherence: How can we help people organize their ideas into a coherent whole? How do we model or operationalize the concept of a topic, the paragraph's most central element? How do we detect possible topics within our data? What are typical subtopics of a given topic, and how do we identify them? How do we cluster content/ideas into topics and give the clusters appropriate names?
- Building software: How do we include humans in the development cycle of writing aids? How and at what level can engineers use insights from psycholinguistics and neuroscience? How can they model the writing process while accounting for human and technological factors?
- Metacognition: What do people typically know about writing in general and their own writing in particular? What are their problems and needs? How do people manage to coordinate the different processes? What should an authoring ecosystem look like (components)? What could be automated, and what is best left for interactive processing?
- Shared task: What kind of shared task would be meaningful while being technically feasible?

2. The Engineering Side

- LLMs: Where in the writing process could we use methods developed in AI (e.g., LLMs) or computational linguistics (e.g., content generation, content structuring, translation into language, revision)? What are the potential benefits, dangers, and limitations of LLMs as writing aids? How could revealing the 'knowledge' embedded within black-box models improve their effectiveness, particularly in terms of increasing the accuracy and relevance of the feedback they provide? How can we address challenges related to data collection, privacy, and ethical considerations in developing and deploying AI writing tools?
- Tools and resources: What kind of tools and resources (e.g., Sketch Engine, Rhetorical Structure Theory, knowledge graphs, and linked data) could be useful?
- Quality assessment: How can we check the veracity of facts, relevance, cohesion, coherence, style, fluency, proper use of pronouns, grammar, word choice, spelling, and punctuation?
- Enhancement and evaluation: How do we enhance text analysis during or after writing (e.g., quality of coherence, style) using corpus linguistic tools? How do we evaluate or compare existing writing assistants (e.g., adequacy, design features, ease of use, lessons learned)?


SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Please submit your papers via the START/SoftConf submission portal (https://softconf.com/coling2025/AAC-AI25/), following the COLING 2025 templates. Submitted versions must be anonymous and should not exceed 8 pages for long papers and 4 pages for short papers. References do not count toward the page limit, and may be up to 4 pages long. Supplementary material and appendices are also allowed. We also invite papers discussing tools and applications (system demonstrations) related to our workshop topics.

PARTICIPATION
The workshop requires a physical presence. If any authors are unable to attend and present in person, alternative arrangements (such as remote presentations or video recordings) may be considered. However, we cannot guarantee these options, as the COLING organizers and local chairs have informed us that they will not provide technical support or online access. Generally, work presented in person will be given preference over work presented virtually.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
• Michael Zock (CNRS, LIS, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France)
• Kentaro Inui (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE; Tohoku University, Japan; RIKEN, Japan)
• Zheng Yuan (King's College London and the University of Cambridge, UK)

FOR MORE DETAILS
• longer version of cfp: https://sites.google.com/view/wraicogs1/home/call-for-papers
• background knowledge: https://sites.google.com/view/wraicogs1/home/background-and-topics