The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to its talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
 
Simon Kirby
University of Edinburgh
www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~simon
 
Date: Wednesday, May 20th, 2015 - 17:00-18:30
Exploring the group mind through mass participation experiments 
Daniel C. Richardson
Department of Experimental Psychology
University College London
 
During this talk, I will present emerging results and allow audience member to take part in a new experimental paradigm: mass participation games. In our experiments, hundreds of people can play a computer game simultaneously using their smart phones or tablets. We can collect responses from a lecture hall full of people with the precision of a laboratory cubicle.
Audience members will explore the behaviour and decision making of groups. Together they will play video games, resolve disagreements and take difficult decisions. Our eventual goal is to  address a range of theoretical questions with experimental manipulations and computer modelling. Do participants play as if they were alone, or as a group? If so, do they represent the group as a single entity, or a collection of other agents? What are the dynamics of these behaviours, with learning across many trials? Lastly, what does it feel like to act in concert, or in competition, with a room full of people? 
- See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/events/2015-05-06/departmental-colloquium-dr-daniel-c-richardson-ucl-exploring-group-mind-through#sthash.mZfKJwUa.dpuf
Exploring the group mind through mass participation experiments�
Daniel C. Richardson
Department of Experimental Psychology
University College London
�
During this talk, I will present emerging results and allow audience member to take part� in a new experimental paradigm: mass participation games. In our experiments, hundreds of people can play a computer game simultaneously using their� smart� phones or tablets. We can collect responses from a lecture hall full of people with the precision of a laboratory cubicle.
Audience members will explore the behaviour and� decision making of� groups. Together they will play video games, resolve disagreements and take difficult decisions.� Our� eventual� goal is to� address a range of theoretical questions with experimental manipulations and computer modelling. Do participants play as if they were alone, or as a group? If so, do they represent the group as a single entity, or a collection of other agents? What are the dynamics of these behaviours, with learning across many trials? Lastly, what does it feel like to act in concert, or in competition, with a room full of people?�
- See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/events/2015-05-06/departmental-colloquium-dr-daniel-c-richardson-ucl-exploring-group-mind-through#sthash.mZfKJwUa.dpuf
 
The Cultural Origins of Structure
 
Language is striking in its systematic structure at all levels of description. By exhibiting combinatoriality and compositionality, each utterance in a language does not stand alone, but rather exhibits a network of dependencies on the other utterances in that language. Where does this structure come from? Why is language systematic, and where else might we expect to find this kind of systematicity in nature?
 
In this talk, I will propose a simple hypothesis that systematic structure is the inevitable result of a suite of behaviours being transmitted by iterated learning. Iterated learning is a mechanism of cultural evolution in which behaviours persist by being learned through observation of that behaviour in another individual who acquired it in the same way. I will survey a wide range of lab studies of iterated learning, in which the cultural evolution ofsets of behaviours is experimentally recreated. These studies include everything from artificial language learning tasks and sign language experiments, to more abstract behaviours like slide whistle imitation and sequence learning, and have recently even been extended to other species. I will conclude by suggesting that these cultural evolution experiments provide clear predictions about where we should expect to see structure in behaviour, and what form that structure might take.

 

See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/events/2015-05-20/departmental-colloquium-dr-simon-kirby-university-edinburgh-cultural-origins
We're looking forward to see you there! (Oktober 6 street 7, room 101)
Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events