The Department of Cognitive Science
cordially invites you
to the public defense of the PhD thesis
Active learning as a link between environmental statistics and the development of internal representations
by
József Arató
PRIMARY SUPERVISOR: József Fiser
SECONDARY SUPERVISOR: Gergely Csibra
External Advisor: Constantin Rothkopf
Members of the Dissertation Committee:
Ernő Téglás, Chair, CEU
Christopher Summerfield, external examiner, University of Oxford
Richard Aslin, external examiner, Haskins Laboratories
abstract | Although it is known that facing a dynamically changing sensory stream, people's perceptual decisions could be influenced not only by individual past stimuli, but also by extracted summary statistics of the stimuli, the effects of these long-term influences are underexplored. In the present thesis, I explored the impact of past stimulus statistics on two distinct types of visual decisions. In the first line of research, in Chapters 2-3, I focused on visual explorative decisions via eye-movements and investigated whether hidden statistical structures of complex scenes could influence visual exploration. I found that spatial regularities of visual stimuli influenced explorative eye-movement patterns, that this effect emerged over time, and it could predict the success in learning the underlying structure of the input. These findings suggest a strong relationship between visual exploration and learning, during which the two processes continuously influence each other. I also showed how this relationship depended on the explicit vs. implicit nature of the task. In the second line of research, in Chapters 4-5, I explored long-term statistical influences in perceptual decision making. To this end, I tested the influence of past probabilities of appearance on discrimination judgments about ambiguous stimuli. I found that statistics of past stimulus strongly influenced perceptual decisions independently of the well-documented short-term sequential effects. This past influence depended on the change-dynamics between long-term and recent stimulus probabilities, sometimes resulting in locally irrational biases. Taken together, the results in these two research domains are consistent with a framework, in which past stimulus statistics are perpetually and automatically built into complex internal representations, which in turn, depending on the task and type of regularity, can dramatically influence visual decisions.
The defense will take place at October Hall,
V. Budapest, Október 6 street 7, ground floor
on Wednesday, January 9, at 10 am
organized by the Department of Cognitive Science
Györgyné Finta (Réka)
Department Coordinator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Central European University
Department of Cognitive Science
H-1051 Budapest
Oktober 6 utca 7.
tel: (36-1) 887-5138
fax: (36-1) 887-5010
http://www.ceu.eduhttp://cognitivescience.ceu.edu
______________________________________________
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https://mersz.hu/hivatkozas/matud_f16553#matud_f16553
Csaba Pléh
distinguished visiting professor
CEU Dept of Cognitive Science
1051 Budapest Nádor u. 9 Hungary
office: Október 6. u. 7, I. e 104
Tel.: 36 303493735 plehcsaba.eu
review editor, Hungarian Journal of Psychology
member of HAS and AE
The Department of Cognitive Science
cordially invites you
to the public defense of the PhD thesis
Active learning as a link between environmental statistics and the development of internal representations
by
József Arató
PRIMARY SUPERVISOR: József Fiser
SECONDARY SUPERVISOR: Gergely Csibra
External Advisor: Constantin Rothkopf
Members of the Dissertation Committee:
Ernő Téglás, Chair, CEU
Christopher Summerfield, external examiner, University of Oxford
Richard Aslin, external examiner, Haskins Laboratories
abstract | Although it is known that facing a dynamically changing sensory stream, people's perceptual decisions could be influenced not only by individual past stimuli, but also by extracted summary statistics of the stimuli, the effects of these long-term influences are underexplored. In the present thesis, I explored the impact of past stimulus statistics on two distinct types of visual decisions. In the first line of research, in Chapters 2-3, I focused on visual explorative decisions via eye-movements and investigated whether hidden statistical structures of complex scenes could influence visual exploration. I found that spatial regularities of visual stimuli influenced explorative eye-movement patterns, that this effect emerged over time, and it could predict the success in learning the underlying structure of the input. These findings suggest a strong relationship between visual exploration and learning, during which the two processes continuously influence each other. I also showed how this relationship depended on the explicit vs. implicit nature of the task. In the second line of research, in Chapters 4-5, I explored long-term statistical influences in perceptual decision making. To this end, I tested the influence of past probabilities of appearance on discrimination judgments about ambiguous stimuli. I found that statistics of past stimulus strongly influenced perceptual decisions independently of the well-documented short-term sequential effects. This past influence depended on the change-dynamics between long-term and recent stimulus probabilities, sometimes resulting in locally irrational biases. Taken together, the results in these two research domains are consistent with a framework, in which past stimulus statistics are perpetually and automatically built into complex internal representations, which in turn, depending on the task and type of regularity, can dramatically influence visual decisions.
The defense will take place at October Hall,
V. Budapest, Október 6 street 7, ground floor
on Wednesday, January 9, at 10 am
organized by the Department of Cognitive Science
Györgyné Finta (Réka)
Department Coordinator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Central European University
Department of Cognitive Science
H-1051 Budapest
Oktober 6 utca 7.
tel: (36-1) 887-5138
fax: (36-1) 887-5010
http://www.ceu.eduhttp://cognitivescience.ceu.edu
______________________________________________
Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu
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The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to its talk
by:
Dr. *Ben Kenward* (Oxford Brookes University)
[web <https://www.brookes.ac.uk/templates/pages/staff.aspx?uid=p0078109>]
Title: *Children's conceptions of norms and their attitudes to norm
violations*
Date: Wednesday, 09 January 2019
Time: 17:00-18:30
Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Oktober 6 st. 7, room 10
Abstract:
This presentation will combine two approaches to understanding young
children’s conceptions of normativity. Firstly, a theoretical argument
integrating a large body of literature (including the well-established
protest paradigm) will be advanced, suggesting that the earliest
conceptions of what is right (normative) is not well-differentiated from
what is intended. For philosophers, an almost insurmountable challenge has
been to explain how what should be can be inferred from what is. For
psychologists, the challenge is instead to explain why humans in fact
routinely make that inference. This theory posits that the normativity
concept arises from the interaction between phylogenetically ancient
valence-based approach/avoid systems and more recent linguistic systems
supporting talk about good and bad. The conflation between what is and what
ought to be arises because of automatic connections between valence
judgement and intention generation systems. Secondly this talk will focus
on the presenter’s own program of empirical work examining children’s
responses to moral norm violations, with the ultimate aim of discovering
the proximate causes of children’s punishment motivation. Cross-cultural
similarities will be demonstrated in young children’s tendencies to inflict
punishment for norm violations. Unexpectedly, however, the most recent
findings suggest that children punish without enjoying it, and their
primary motivation is to deter norm violations, in contrast to the
conclusions from much adult work suggesting that adults are primarily
motivated by retribution.
We are looking forward to see you.
Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
______________________________________________
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Kedves Kollégák!
Az MTA TTK Kognitív Idegtudományi és Pszichológiai Intézete tisztelettel
meghívja Önöket ünnepi ülésére, melyet
Dr. Balázs László
70. születésnapja alkalmából rendez.
Időpont: 2019. január 11. péntek, 13:00
Helyszín: MTA Természettudományi Kutatóközpont, földszinti nagyterem
1117 Budapest, Magyar tudósok körútja 2.
Program:
13:00 – 13:20
Megnyitó: Winkler István, az MTA-TTK Kognitív Idegtudományi és
Pszichológiai Intézet igazgatója
Köszöntő: Czigler István, az MTA-TTK Kognitív Idegtudományi és
Pszichológiai Intézet volt igazgatója
13:30 – 15:00
Szakmai előadások
Takács Endre: Oxigén nélkül mit érek én: eredmények a hypoxia kutatásából
Ehmann Bea: Földi űranalóg helyszíneken működő izolált kiscsoportok
pszichológiai folyamatainak távoli monitorozása
Barkaszi Irén: A hosszú távú űrutazás hatása a kognitív funkciókra: a
Neurospat kísérlet
15:30 –
Beszélgetés az ünnepelttel, személyes köszöntések
Utána torta, sütemény, pezsgő.
Üdvözlettel
Takács Endre