Time: 4pm (to 5:30pm) Budapest/Vienna time
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Venue: Online, Zoom meeting 942 7892 8352<https://us06web.zoom.us/j/94278928352?pwd=ckljaElMYnJtYW41b25sVGZNU09kQT09>, pw: xfhq44
Chair: Bálint Varga
Speaker: Emily Liquin<https://www.emilyliquin.com> (New York University)<https://www.emilyliquin.com>
Title: How curiosity guides us towards good explanations
Abstract: Curiosity motivates exploration and is beneficial for learning, but curiosity is not always experienced when facing the unknown. Why do humans experience curiosity in some circumstances but not others? And how does this change across development? In this talk, I will present my recent work investigating whether explanation-seeking curiosity — curiosity about a "why" or "how" question — is selective in a way that is tuned to the epistemic aims of explanation. If curiosity is selective in this way, we would expect learners to be most curious when they are most likely to learn useful and generalizable explanations. Our results show that curiosity motivates explanation search selectively towards explanations that a learner believes hold promise for learning. However, in ongoing work, we find that the triggers of curiosity change between childhood and adulthood. Broadly, this research sheds light on how human learners across the lifespan decide when to seek information and what questions to ask.
Let me know if you would like to schedule an online meeting with the speaker.
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A reminder of the talk tomorrow:
Time: 4pm (to 5:30pm) Budapest/Vienna time
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Venue: Online, Zoom meeting 942 7892 8352<https://us06web.zoom.us/j/94278928352?pwd=ckljaElMYnJtYW41b25sVGZNU09kQT09>, pw: xfhq44
Chair: Laura Schlingloff
Speaker: Tobias Gerstenberg<https://cicl.stanford.edu/member/tobias_gerstenberg/> (Stanford University)
Title: Going beyond the here and now: Counterfactual simulation in human cognition
Abstract: As humans, we spend much of our time going beyond the here and now. We dwell on the past, long for the future, and ponder how things could have turned out differently. In this talk, I will argue that people's knowledge of the world is organized around causally structured mental models, and that much of human thought can be understood as cognitive operations over these mental models. Specifically, I will highlight the pervasiveness of counterfactual thinking in human cognition. Counterfactuals are critical for how people make causal judgments, how they explain what happened, and how they hold others responsible for their actions.
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Time: 4pm (to 5:30pm) Budapest/Vienna time
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Venue: Online, Zoom meeting 942 7892 8352<https://us06web.zoom.us/j/94278928352?pwd=ckljaElMYnJtYW41b25sVGZNU09kQT09>, pw: xfhq44
Chair: Laura Schlingloff
Speaker: Tobias Gerstenberg<https://cicl.stanford.edu/member/tobias_gerstenberg/> (Stanford University)
Title: Going beyond the here and now: Counterfactual simulation in human cognition
Abstract: As humans, we spend much of our time going beyond the here and now. We dwell on the past, long for the future, and ponder how things could have turned out differently. In this talk, I will argue that people's knowledge of the world is organized around causally structured mental models, and that much of human thought can be understood as cognitive operations over these mental models. Specifically, I will highlight the pervasiveness of counterfactual thinking in human cognition. Counterfactuals are critical for how people make causal judgments, how they explain what happened, and how they hold others responsible for their actions.
Let me know if you would like to schedule an online meeting with the speaker.
______________________________________________
Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu
Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu