21 Mar
2024
21 Mar
'24
1:48 p.m.
Dear all,
The CEU Department of Cognitive Science invites you to the following talk:
Alon Hafri, University of Delaware
Title: Where language and vision meet: Shared representational principles and content
Abstract:
There are few domains as central to cognitive science as language and visual perception.
They are typically studied in isolation, yet at some level, they must connect. How? My
talk will explore this connection. First, I reveal surprising parallels in how language
and vision encode information: Vision, like language, can be compositional. I explore the
psychophysics of visual scene composition, finding that the mind builds relational
representations (e.g., a vase on a table) in a canonical order. Next, I show that language
and vision tap into the same modality-neutral conceptual representations. Using symmetry
as a case study, I find a striking correspondence between linguistic and perceptual
judgments of the same visual displays. Lastly, I demonstrate how language can offer a
window into non-linguistic visuospatial representations, leveraging the unique ways that
certain languages encode such properties, particularly Mandarin Chinese. By examining how
Mandarin speakers describe novel objects ("daxes") in different visual contexts,
I uncover an unexplored influence of spatial relations (a dax in a bowl) on object shape
computations. Taken together, my work highlights the representational principles and
content shared by language and vision, with implications for how infants acquire language
from visual observation.
Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2024
Time: 4 pm (to 5:30 pm) CET
Venue: Online, Zoom meeting 969 2496
5784<https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/96924965784?pwd=c2duZ0dDMFdEMUthK2Mwa2wzMllEUT09>
(passcode: 471712)
Chair: Gergely Csibra
Best,
Bartu
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