This book consists of award papers from the 22nd annual conference of the JSAI (JSAI 2008) and selected papers from the three co-located workshops. Eight papers were selected among more than 400 presentations at the conference and 18 papers were selected from the 34 presentations at the co-located wo- shops;

Awarded Papers.- Overview of Awarded Papers – The 22nd Annual Conference of JSAI.- A Japanese Input Method for Mobile Terminals Using Surface EMG Signals.- Evaluation of Similarity Measures for Ontology Mapping.- Network Distributed POMDP with Communication.- Solving Crossword Puzzles Using Extended Potts Model.- Socialized Computers and Collaborative Learning.- Learning Communicative Meanings of Utterances by Robots.- Towards Coordination of Multiple Machine Translation Services.- Ranking Method of Object-Attribute-Evaluation Three-Tuples for Opinion Retrieval.- Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics.- Overview of Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS) 2008.- Multiple Subject Constructions in Japanese: A Dynamic Syntax Account.- Topic/Subject Coreference in the Hierarchy of Japanese Complex Sentences.- Japanese Reported Speech: Against a Direct–Indirect Distinction.- The Dynamics of Tense under Attitudes – Anaphoricity and de se Interpretation in the Backward Shifted Past.- Argumentative Properties of Pragmatic Inferences.- Prolegomena to Dynamic Epistemic Preference Logic.- Monads and Meta-lambda Calculus.- Juris-Informatics.- Overview of JURISIN 2008.- Bootstrapping-Based Extraction of Dictionary Terms from Unsegmented Legal Text.- Computational Dialectics Based on Specialization and Generalization – A New Reasoning Method for Conflict Resolution.- Treatment of Legal Sentences Including Itemized and Referential Expressions – Towards Translation into Logical Forms.- Computing Argumentation Semantics in Answer Set Programming.- Laughter in Interaction and Body Movement.- LIBM 2008 - First International Workshop on Laughter in Interaction and Body Movement.- Laughter around the End of Storytelling in Multi-party Interaction.-Preliminary Notes on the Sequential Organization of Smile and Laughter.- Laughter for Defusing Tension: Examples from Business Meetings in Japanese and in English.- Robots Make Things Funnier.- Laughter: Its Basic Nature and Its Background of Equivocal Impression.

This book consists of award papers from the 22nd Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, held in Asahikawa, Japan, in June 2008 and selected papers from three co-located international workshops. The volume starts with 8 award winning papers of the JSAI 2008 main conference that were selected among more than 400 presentations. They are accompanied by 18 revised full workshop papers, carefully reviewed and selected from 34 presentations at the following three co-located international workshops: Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS 2008),  the 2nd International Workshop on Juris-Informatics (JURISIN 2008), and the 1st International Workshop on Laughter in Interaction and Body Movement (LIBM 2008).