The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Anna Babarczy, Budapest University of Technology and Economics on Can the comprehension of abstract language be rooted in sensory experiences? Date: Wed, March 14, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Can the comprehension of abstract language be rooted in sensory experiences? ABSTRACT: The question of learning the meaning of abstract language (roughly, expressions with no perceptible referents) has been bugging philosophers for thousands of years. More recently, a number of experimental paradigms have emerged trying to shed light on this issue. The basic idea explored in the talk is that people understand abstract (metaphorical) expressions by linking them to sensory or bodily experiences. If this is the case, we should be able to show that these experiences affect people’s interpretation of abstract utterances. The talk looks at the evidence we have so far (pro and contra).We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Francesco Guala, University of Milan Date: Wed, March 28, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Is Group Identity Efficient? An Empirical Test of Team Preference and Collective Intentionality Theories Abstract: Theories of collective intentionality have roots in three different disciplines: group identity theory in psychology, team preference theories in economics, and collective intentionality theories in philosophy. Although philosophers have often endorsed a naturalistic approach to collective intentions, they have mostly focused on purely conceptual issues such as the reducibility of collective to individual intentionality or the existence of logically distinct forms of collective intention. Psychologists and game theorists, in contrast, have provided most of the empirical data that is currently available on this topic. These data, however, come from experiments that were not especially devised to test collective intentionality theory, and hence do not speak convincingly either for or against the theory. In particular, they fail to distinguish between genuine collective intentions (or team preferences) and norm-based explanations of group behaviour. Following Bratman's and Bacharach's analyses, I argue that a decisive test of collective intentionality or team preference theory must focus on a special class of perturbations of individual payoffs, which allow one to check whether experimental subjects are pursuing collective or individual goals. The payoff structure however must be designed in such a way as to control for other-regarding preferences (or social norms) such as altruism and inequality-aversion. Finally, I present new data from a large set of mini-dictator games showing that group identity (1) does not improve significantly the joint payoffs of group members, but in several cases actually reduces efficiency; (2) does not systematically enhance altruism; (3) has a levelling effect, making subjects particularly averse to disadvantageous inequality; and (4) tends to moderate selfish preferences. The data overall suggest that theories of social norms provide a better explanation of group behaviour than collective intentionality or team preference models.We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Dana Samson, Universite Catholique de Louvain Date: Wed, May 2, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 The many sides of mind reading Abstract: When trying to make sense of other people’s behaviour we usually invoke their mental states, such as their intentions, beliefs or emotions, an ability often referred to as having or using a “Theory of Mind”. Far from seeing theory of mind as a unitary ability, mounting evidence now forces us to consider the multiple pathways and processes available to humans to read other people’s mind. In the first part of the talk, I will show that theory of mind relies on various complex cognitive processes, and I will illustrate how neuropsychology can help us identify and understand the nature of these processes. In the second part of the talk, I will show how in certain circumstances, we can also call upon much simpler and automatic processes to compute other people’s perspective. The co-existence of these two types of processes (high-level and low-level processes) explains why, on the one hand, adults are far from performing at ceiling in theory of mind tasks and, on the other hand, young infants are able to easily solve complex theory of mind problems. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Wayne Gray, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Date: Monday, May 7, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Contributions of Body-Bound, Brain-Bound, and Control Resources to Cognitive Workload Abstract: I will discuss parts of two experiments designed to test the relative impact of body-bound (e.g., eye movements, motor movements), brain-bound (e.g., memory, visual, auditory), and control (proactive versus reactive) processes on dual task performance. Experiments were conducted in a paradigm that combines a visual tracking task with an n-back style memory task with Experiment two imposing the same demands on body-bound components across high and low workload conditions. Results suggest that eye movement behavior, and not an overload of visual processing cause most of the effects discovered. However, memory load seems to affect the brain's ability to exert proactive control over eye movements, resulting in hard to predict performance effects. These results are analyzed at the timescale of immediate interactive behavior and suggest that understanding these control functions may be the key to understanding how workload affects performance in a variety of tasks. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Alexandre Pouget Dept of basic Neuroscience Universite de Geneve Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Not noisy, just wrong Abstract Behavior varies from trial to trial even when the stimulus is maintained as constant as possible. One of the most important questions in neuroscience concerns the origin of this variability. In many models, it is attributed to noise within the brain, often in the form of independent Poisson variability in spike trains, or variations thereof. Here, we show that suboptimal inference caused by the deterministic approximations of the statistical structure of the sensory inputs provides another major cause of variability. Importantly, we argue that in most tasks of interest, and particularly complex ones, this cause of variability is likely to be the dominant component of behavioral variability. This perspective explains a variety of intriguing observations, including why variability appears to be larger on the sensory than on the motor side, and why our sensors are sometimes surprisingly unreliable. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Giorgo Coricelli Univeristy of Southern California Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 “Cognitive hierarchy theory of Strategic thinking: behavioral and neural evidence” by Giorgio Coricelli We used functional MRI (fMRI) and eye-tracking to investigate human mental processes in interactive decision making. Our main goal is to investigate whether and how a player’s mental processing incorporates the thinking process of others in strategic reasoning. We apply a cognitive hierarchy model to classify subject’s choices in experimental games according to the degree of strategic reasoning so that we can identify the neural substrates of different levels of strategizing. According to this model, high-level reasoners expect the others to behave strategically, whereas low-level reasoners choose based on the expectation that others will choose randomly. The data show that high-level reasoning and a measure of strategic IQ (related to winning in the game) correlate with the neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, demonstrating its crucial role in successful mentalizing. With the eye-tracking data we were able to evaluate different theories of limited cognition. Our results are coherent with the existence of individually heterogeneous patterns of initial responses, which are based on a set of a priori types. These findings support a cognitive hierarchy model of human brain and behavior. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Michael R. Waldmann Department of Psychology, University of Göttingen Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Agents and Causes: Reconciling Competing Theories of Causal Reasoning Michael R. Waldmann and Ralf Mayrhofer Currently in both psychology and philosophy two important frameworks of causal reasoning compete. Whereas dependency theories (e.g., causal Bayes nets) focus on causally motivated statistical or counterfactual dependencies between events, dispositional theories model causation as arising from the interaction between causal participants endowed with intrinsic dispositions or forces (e.g., force dynamics). The main goal of the present project is to reconcile these two competing frameworks. In a series of experiments we have focused on one of the most fundamental assumptions underlying causal Bayes nets, the Markov constraint. According to this constraint, an inference between a cause and an effect should be invariant across conditions in which other effects of this cause are present or absent. Previous research has demonstrated that reasoners tend to violate this assumption systematically over a wide range of domains. We hypothesize that people are guided by abstract assumptions about the mechanisms underlying otherwise identical causal relations. In particular, we suspect that the distinction between agents and patients, which can be disentangled from the distinction between causes and effects, influences which causal variable people blame when an error occurs. We have developed and tested a causal Bayes net model which captures different error attributions using a hidden common preventive noise source that provides a rational explanation of the presence or absence of Markov violations. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Summer University Problems of the Self course Open Lecture) by Maurice Bloch The London School of Economics and Political Science Date: Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 18:00 - 21:00 Location: Central European University Main Campus, Nador street 9, Auditorium `Do people in different types of societies talk about themselves and others in the same way?` Anthropologists have stressed how in many cultures one does not find the obsession with the self and its value which characterises Euro-America. They stress how people in such places do not often talk about their internal states. They stress how what one “really feels deep down” can never be a legitimation of action. What matters there are the relations one has with others not what one is as an individual. In the lecture I shall illustrate what they are talking about. I shall then consider the common criticisms made by anthropologists of psycho analysis, psychology and even neurology because of these disciplines ethnocentric attitudes which, they claim, undermine their work. Finally, I shall argue that it is necessary both to take on board the findings of anthropologists and their complaints but that these are much less damaging to the cognitive sciences than is made out. A combination of disciplines such as cognitive psychology and anthropology is possible, fruitful and quite fun. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

** High Priority ** ROOM CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Because of the ongoing Summer University, we expect more persons coming to Professor Waldmann`s talk than we can accommodate in room G15, Frankel. Therefore the talk is going to be in Room 303, 3rd Floor, in the same building from 17:00. The journal club remains in G15 from 15:30 till 16:30. Kind regards, Reka The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Michael R. Waldmann Department of Psychology, University of Göttingen Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Agents and Causes: Reconciling Competing Theories of Causal Reasoning Michael R. Waldmann and Ralf Mayrhofer Currently in both psychology and philosophy two important frameworks of causal reasoning compete. Whereas dependency theories (e.g., causal Bayes nets) focus on causally motivated statistical or counterfactual dependencies between events, dispositional theories model causation as arising from the interaction between causal participants endowed with intrinsic dispositions or forces (e.g., force dynamics). The main goal of the present project is to reconcile these two competing frameworks. In a series of experiments we have focused on one of the most fundamental assumptions underlying causal Bayes nets, the Markov constraint. According to this constraint, an inference between a cause and an effect should be invariant across conditions in which other effects of this cause are present or absent. Previous research has demonstrated that reasoners tend to violate this assumption systematically over a wide range of domains. We hypothesize that people are guided by abstract assumptions about the mechanisms underlying otherwise identical causal relations. In particular, we suspect that the distinction between agents and patients, which can be disentangled from the distinction between causes and effects, influences which causal variable people blame when an error occurs. We have developed and tested a causal Bayes net model which captures different error attributions using a hidden common preventive noise source that provides a rational explanation of the presence or absence of Markov violations. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Summer University Problems of the Self course Open Lecture) by Maurice Bloch The London School of Economics and Political Science Date: Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 18:00 - 21:00 Location: Central European University Main Campus, Nador street 9, Auditorium `Do people in different types of societies talk about themselves and others in the same way?` Anthropologists have stressed how in many cultures one does not find the obsession with the self and its value which characterises Euro-America. They stress how people in such places do not often talk about their internal states. They stress how what one “really feels deep down” can never be a legitimation of action. What matters there are the relations one has with others not what one is as an individual. In the lecture I shall illustrate what they are talking about. I shall then consider the common criticisms made by anthropologists of psycho analysis, psychology and even neurology because of these disciplines ethnocentric attitudes which, they claim, undermine their work. Finally, I shall argue that it is necessary both to take on board the findings of anthropologists and their complaints but that these are much less damaging to the cognitive sciences than is made out. A combination of disciplines such as cognitive psychology and anthropology is possible, fruitful and quite fun. We're looking forward to see you there (Ceu Nador 9 Auditorium) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Stephen Butterfill, Warwick University Date: Wednesday, Sept 12, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 'Interacting Mindreaders' Could interacting mindreaders be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers? I'll argue that they could. Mindreading is sometimes reciprocal: the mindreader's target reciprocates by taking the mindreader as a target for mindreading. My talk will explain how such reciprocity can significantly narrow the range of possible interpretations of behaviour where mindreaders are, or appear to be, in a position to interact. A consequence is that revisions and extensions are needed to standard theories of the evidential basis of mindreading. The view also has consequences for understanding how abilities to interact combined with comparatively simple forms of mindreading may explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated forms of social cognition. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Zoltan Nadasdy Seton Brain & Spine Institute, Dept. of Psychology, UT Austin, Dept. of Cognitive Psychology, ELTE Budapest Date: Wednesday, Oct 3, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Grid cells and phase coding in the human brain Grid cells were discovered in the rodent brain but direct evidence for their human analogue is still lacking. These neurons are active whenever the animal passes equidistant spatial locations with a 60 degree rotational symmetry, making up a characteristic hexagonal tessellation pattern. The spatially periodic activity is assumed to serve as a scale free reference for spatial navigation. Searching for the human analogue, we recorded single neurons from the entorhinal cortex of epilepsy patients during spatial navigation in a virtual reality environment. We found a broad repertoire of spatially periodic firing patterns from each patient, including those of typical of grid cells. In addition, we investigated the relationship of spatially periodic activity to ongoing local field oscillations, in particular to theta and gamma rhythms. Our preliminary data show a spatially periodic modulation of spike phases relative to gamma oscillations, which are consistent across multiple cells from the same patient. We propose that a combination of firing rate and firing phase coding may underlie spatial navigation in the human entorhinal cortex. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to its extra talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Ivana Konvalinka Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Denmark, Cognitive Systems, DTU Informatics, Lyngby, Denmark Note: extra date: MONDAY, Nov 5, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Interpersonal coupling as a framework for studying two-person interactions Research in social cognition has so far been mostly restricted to measuring behaviour and brain signatures of isolated individuals, responding to computerized social stimuli. This approach has been criticized, resulting in a recent movement towards a joint-action, two-person approach, which employs studies of real interactions between two or more people. This approach aims to better understand the dynamic processes needed to successfully engage in interaction with others. However, the interpersonal mechanisms of real-time social interactions remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will present approaches to quantifying interpersonal behavioural, physiological, and neural mechanisms underlying both experimentally controlled and real-world social interactions, involving two or more people. Probing the behavioural domain, I will present a joint finger-tapping experiment, showing that people rely on both predictive and adaptive mechanisms on a millisecond timescale when synchronizing with another person. Furthermore, using a two-brain “hyperscanning” approach, I aim to show that being a leader or follower in an interaction has distinct neural mechanisms. Finally, I will present a study of a real-world interaction, showing synchronized physiological patterns between performers and related spectators during a fire-walking ritual, despite different bodily behaviour. I aim to show that interpersonal coupling can be a useful framework for quantifying two-person interactions across different modalities. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Katie Slocombe The University of York Date: Wednesday, Nov 7, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Chimpanzee vocalisations and social bonding Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, live in complex fission-fusion societies that are characterised by the presence of strong social bonds, particularly between males. Alliances between males are vital for achievement of high status and males engage in a range of social bonding behaviours, including grooming, meat sharing and coalitionary support in fights. I will present data from wild chimpanzees that highlights the potential role of vocalisations in social bonding and indicates vocalisations are directed at specific individuals, rather than being indiscriminately or reflexively produced. More specifically, I will show, through observational and experimental work, that chimpanzee food-associated calls are not an automatic reflexive reaction to food, but communicative signals directed at important social partners. These signals help keep important social partners in close proximity, which facilitates the occurrence of further bonding behaviours. I will then explore the potential of pant hoot chorus displays to signal short term bonds between males. I show that in the short term pant hoot choruses are a more reliable predictor of other affiliative, bonding behaviour between a dyad, than grooming. I conclude that vocalisations may play an important role in establishing and maintaining social bonds between male chimpanzees. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Manfred Bierwisch Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Date: MONDAY, Nov 12, 2012 - 13:30 - 15:10 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room 206!!!! Brain and Language: Conditions and Limits to understand their Relation Manfred Bierwisch (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) Abstract The human brain is the necessary material basis of natural language. In spite of the general consensus about this basic dependency, there is fairly limited understanding of how this relation comes about and what it consists in. This lack of understanding concerns general conditions of acquisition as well as activation and use of linguistic knowledge. Assuming that Hebbian learning and spreading activation are plausible, perhaps necessary, but apparently insufficient assumptions about principles of language behaviour, four types of impasses will be discussed, showing the gap of understanding with respect to the material basis of the Language Faculty: a) The structure of words, b) the acquisition of words, c) the recurrence of words, and d) the sound-meaning-incongruity. It will be argued that these impasses are not marginal, but characteristic properties of language, the structure of which has to be taken into account in order to come to grips with the nature of language. It might be noted that this sort of incompleteness is the natural situation in many fields of scientific exploration. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

PLEASE NOTE: Our room has a limited capacity. Please arrive early to ensure you get a seat. The talk will begin promptly at 5. The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Joseph P. Forgas University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Date: Monday, Nov 19, 2012 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Feeling and Speaking: Affective Influences on Communication Strategies and Language Use Interpersonal communication is imbued with affect. Every social encounter can influence our affective state, and how we feel in turn plays an important role in determining the way we communicate, and how we use language in particular. Surprisingly, social and cognitive psychologists have remained uninterested in the investigation of the role that affective states play in interpersonal communication until quite recently. This talk will summarise a series of our recent experiments exploring mood effects on communication strategies, including informational effects (when affect influences the content and valence of communication), and processing effects (when affect influences the way communication is processed). The experiments will look at affective influences on verbal strategies involving request formulation, negotiation, persuasive communication, performance feedback, self-disclosure, as well as the interpretation of a variety of verbal messages. The results will be discussed in terms of recent theories linking affect to social cognition, and the implications of the findings for everyday social communication and for strategic interpersonal behaviour will be considered. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Nicholas Evans, Department of Linguistics, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra. / Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Köln Date: Wednesday, Jan 16, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Coordinating Minds: Engagement in grammar Our ability to interact with others by building a shared and complex mental world through social cognition is increasingly recognised as a central driver of human evolution, and as the key capacity underpinning the evolution of culture, including language. It is social cognition which enables us to construct functioning societies sharing knowledge, values and goals, and to undertake collaborative action. It is also crucial to empathising and communicating with others, to enriching imprecise signs in context, to maintaining detailed, differentiated representations of the minds and feelings of those who share our social universe, to coordinating the exchanges of information that allow us to keep updating these representations, and to coopting others into action. Linguistically, the centrality of social cognition raises several questions. Can we develop an elaborated architecture of what speaker/hearers encode in representing social cognition? How far does this architecture vary across languages, in other words how far have languages come up with different engineering solutions to the many difficult demands made on our minds by the complexities of social cognition? Can we harness the vast variation of the world’s languages to achieve what Ortega y Gasset called an ‘audacious integration’ of human possibilities for linguistically-mediated social cognition? This talk will draw on ongoing research on cross-linguistic differences in one crucial area of social cognition: the problem of monitoring how far mind-states of attention, knowledge or expectation – either of speaker and hearer, or successive mind-states of the speaker – are ‘on the same page’. While this includes some familiar phenomena, such as the use of articles or indefinite pronouns to track presumed identifiability by the hearer, or of discourse particles like German doch or Italian mica to monitor differences between expectation and actuality, more extensive typological research finds that these are only a small part of the full possibility space. Less familiar phenomena to be covered in this talk include demonstrative systems where speaker or hearer attention or knowledge plays a crucial role beyond spatial considerations, systems of verbal inflection which indicate the extent to which the phenomenon is deemed already known to the address, and a family of categories leading out from the ‘mirative’ (evaluating states of affairs as new to the speaker, at the moment of speech) to evaluations of cognitive newness at earlier points in time. There have been recent calls for a ‘second person neuroscience’ in studies of social cognition – for an approach that places dialogue at the centre of social interaction. If language differences are capable of significantly reshaping cognition, as seems increasingly clear, it is likely that they will target social cognition as well. By laying out how differently grammars can configure the task of mental and attentional coordination, we gain an initial map of where psycholinguistic studies can go on to look for likely cognitive effects. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer University of York Date: Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Understanding Others: the impact of social settings on language comprehension Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer, University of York Language is a unique and powerful tool for communication. Nevertheless many cognitive neuroscientific studies of language fail to study language within communicative settings, and fail to take the final communicative goal of language into account when interpreting their results. In this talk I will present some of the research I have done in the past year looking at how social understanding and social settings can directly influence the cognitive processes underlying language comprehension. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Giovanni Pezzulo Date: Wednesday, Jan 30, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Sensorimotor communication: a theory of signaling in online social interactionsGiovanni Pezzulo, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome Abstract: The study of human communication has principally focused on language use, gesture, and deictics. In online social interactions these forms of communication are complemented by another kind of (sensorimotor) communication: signaling. For example, while we are together a table together, I can push it in a certain direction to signal you where I want it to be placed. Other examples of signaling are over-articulating words in noisy environments and over-emphasizing vowels in child-directed speech. In all these examples, humans intentionally modify their action kinematics to make their goals easier to recognize. We present a formal theory that describes signaling as a combination of a pragmatic and a communicative action (say, push table to move it and push table to inform you), and explains how it simplifies coordination in online social interactions. According to the theory, signaling requires solving a trade-off between the costs of modifying one's behavior and the benets in terms of interaction success. Signaling is thus an intentional strategy; it acts in concert with automatic mechanisms of resonance, prediction, and imitation, especially when the context makes actions and intentions ambiguous and difficult to read. The study of signaling provides an excellent opportunity to understand the adaptive (and evolutionary) value of communication in terms of coordination and interaction success. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Luciano Fadiga, University of Ferrara and The Italian Institute of Technology of Genova, Italy Date: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 “Sensorimotor processing of language” Despite the fact that the famous ‘motor theory of speech perception’ by Alvin Liberman dates almost fifty years, a strong debate still survives on the possibility that speech understanding does not rely on sensory processing alone. In my presentation I will provide evidence that Liberman was substantially right and that a motor framework for language processing exists, not only for speech but also for syntax. To this purpose I will present very recent TMS data, patients studies, and computational models, all converging in the same direction. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Pascal Mamassian, CNRS & Université Paris Descartes, France Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Uncertainty and confidence in visual perception Visual perception is often seen as an inference problem where uncertainty comes from ambiguities in the world (e.g. the two 3D interpretations of the Necker cube), noise in the world (e.g. identifying a scene behind falling snowflakes), or noise in the visual system (e.g. synaptic noise). To deal with ambiguities, the visual system relies on prior knowledge such as the assumption that light comes from above our head. We have measured the characteristics of this assumption and found a systematic bias to the above-left for the illumination direction preference. In addition, we found evidence that the above-left assumption for the light source position is encoded early in the visual system and processed in a bottom-up way. Perceived uncertainty also determines the confidence in our perceptual decisions. With experiments on orientation discrimination, we show that objective confidence judgments are correlated with discrimination performance, and that these confidence judgements are not just based on some visibility cues in the stimulus. Overall, these results open the door for a thorough investigation of the processing of uncertainty and confidence by the visual system. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by John Dewey Michigan State University, Dept of Psychology Central European University - Department of Cognitive Science Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Title: Sensory prediction and the sense of agency, from individual to joint action During voluntary action, forward models in the brain pre-activate representations of the predicted sensory consequences. These forward models are believed to play important roles in motor control and the sense of agency (SA), i.e. registration that one was the initiator or controller of the action. The majority of the literature on sensory prediction and its relation to SA has focused on individual action. An open question is whether, during joint actions, such forward models can be re-purposed to predict the additive consequences of multiple actors, for example two individuals trying to steer a moving object by coordinating their motor inputs, and how this relates to each actor’s SA. In this talk, I will present an overview of previous research, and outline plans for two upcoming studies to investigate sensory prediction and SA in the joint action context. The first study will investigate the impact of joint action on implicit and explicit measures of agency, by testing whether the additive consequences of two actors’ actions are attenuated by expectation (as would be expected by a forward model), and by comparing explicit agency judgments in the individual and joint action contexts. The second study will investigate whether SA for joint actions depends primarily on the match between one’s individual action and the sensory consequences, or alternatively, on the satisfaction of joint action goals. The proposed research would combine insights from the agency and joint action literatures to develop theories for why people may feel more or less responsible for the outcomes of group actions. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Cristina Becchio Date: Wednesday, MArch 6, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 On understanding intentions in action and interaction Cristina Becchio http://bsb-lab.org/people/cristina-becchio/ Starting from Descartes, philosophers, psychologists, and more recently neuroscientists, have often emphasized the idea that intentions are not things that can be seen. They are mental states and perception cannot be smart enough to reach the mental states that are hidden away (imperceptible) in the other person’s mind. Based on this assumption, standard theories of social cognition have mainly focused the contribution of higher-level cognition to intention understanding. Only recently, it has been recognized that intentions are deeply rooted in the actions of interacting agents. In this talk, I present findings from a new line of research showing that intentions translate into differential kinematic patterns. Observers are especially attuned to kinematic information and can use early differences in visual kinematics to anticipate what another person will do next. This ability is crucial not only for interpreting the actions of individual agents, but also to predict how, in the context of a social interaction between two agents, the actions of one agent relate to the actions of a second agent. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Alexander Todorov Princeton University Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Social perception of faces Research shows that people a) form instantaneous impressions of other people based on facial appearance; b) agree in these impressions; and c) often act on these impressions. Working with a computational framework, in which faces are represented as points in a multidimensional space, I describe two lines of research on identifying the basis of social impressions: configurations of facial features and statistical learning of face properties. Specifically in the first part of the talk, I will describe data-driven, reverse correlation methods that can be used to model evaluation of faces on any social dimension (e.g., trustworthiness) and to identify the perceptual basis of this evaluation. These methods provide an excellent discovery tool for mapping configurations of face features to specific social inferences. In the second part, I will describe research suggesting that statistical characteristics of the face – determined by the face’s position in a distribution of faces – can shape social perception. This research shows that exposure to different statistical distributions of faces leads to shifts not only in the perceived typicality of faces but also in social judgments. This statistical learning framework suggests a new parsimonious account of cultural, inter-group, and individual differences in social perception of faces. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Dear All, As part of its Interdepartmental Seminar series, the Department of Cognitive Science and the Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk by Prof. Keith Stenning http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/dtc/index.php?option=com_people&func=showall&am… The University of Edinburg Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013 - 11:00 - 12:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Title: "What is it to know a logic? To understand the discourse it specifies perhaps?" Although there has been more than a century of experimental psychology done on tasks which experimenters suppose to be understood by their subjects as classical logical tasks, there are good arguments that many of the subjects interpret these tasks in a nonmonotonic logic (Stenning and van Lambalgen 2006). So what do subjects know of classical logic? This talk proposes that the answer must lie in what they understand about the discourse classical logic specifies: paradigmatically, `adversarial' argument. An exploratory experiment which embeds categorial syllogisms in a discourse of dispute produces data which is encouraging of this approach. Subjects do produce performance nearer to classical reasoning, and the control conditions produce data persuasive that the conventional task is often interpreted nonmonotonically. If these results are sustained, where should we look for the psychological and historical origins of our understanding of classical logic? We suggest in our affective understandings of dispute. Reference: Stenning, K and van Lambalgen M. (2006) Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science. MIT Press. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: Attention: program starting time modification! The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Rita Astuti, London School of Economics Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 17:30 - 19:00 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 On why you need anthropologists Abstract: I normally present my collaborative work with development psychologists to sceptical anthropologists. In such cases, I have to convince them that psychology matters. In this talk, I will draw on my work in Madagascar to make the opposite if complementary point: that anthropology matters to the study of human psychology. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Frederic Chavane, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Budapest, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Functional roles of lateral interactions in the visual cortex Sensory stimuli are encoded by large neuronal populations that have to elaborate rapid and robust representation of the input image. This is a computational challenge since these inputs are ambiguous, dynamical, segmented into a myriad of piecewise cues and constantly influenced by frequent eye movements. To overcome this problem, our visual system must link sensory inputs with a priori knowledge at multiple spatial and temporal scales. One important candidate for these lateral interactions are the intra-cortical axons that dynamically links neurons separated by millimeters in the cortical tissue, the so-called �horizontal� connectivity. This connectivity functionally subtend lateral interactions within these cortical areas that are usually organized into cartographical functional maps. In the primary visual cortex, that possesses a retinotopic organization, the horizontal connectivity generates spreads of activity that links together cortical columns sensitive for displaced regions of the visual field (1, 2). In this talk, I will present experimental evidences using optical imaging of voltage sensitive dye that suggests that lateral interactions in the primary visual cortex play indeed a key role in several key neural computations at the level of neuronal populations, ranging from input normalization to stimulus representation. First I will show that any local stimulus is dynamically normalized through lateral interactions as a function of the context in which it is embedded (3). In a second series of experiment, I will provide evidence that such spatio-temporal normalization can then lead to the emergence of motion signal in response to a sequence of static images, a cortical correlate of motion illusions (4, 5). These results suggest that lateral interactions within a cortical area plays a major role in shaping visual processing at the mesoscopic population scale, setting the conditions for an optimal decoding by downstream areas. 1. V. Bringuier, F. Chavane, L. Glaeser, Y. Fr�gnac, Science 283, 695�699 (1999). 2. F. Chavane et al., Front Syst Neurosci 5, 1�26 (2011). 3. A. Reynaud, G. S. Masson, F. Chavane, Journal of Neuroscience 32, 12558�12569 (2012). 4. D. Jancke, F. Chavane, S. Naaman, A. Grinvald, Nature 428, 423�426 (2004). 5. F. Chavane, A. Reynaud, G. Masson, JOV 8, 226�226 (2008). We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Martin Eimer, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 ERP studies of face processing in developmental prosopagnosia: Neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental perspectives People with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) show severe face recognition deficits that typically emerge in early childhood, without history of neurological damage. I will present and discuss recent findings from ERP studies of face perception and face recognition in DP. The generic face-sensitivity of the N170 component is preserved in most DPs, suggesting intact rapid detection of face components. In contrast, DPs show atypical N170 face inversion effects, indicative of impaired configural face processing. In line with a neurodevelopmental interpretation of DP, these effects are similar to those observed for other developmental disorders, and during earlier stages of typical development. Identity-sensitive ERP components (N250, P600f) that are markers of successful face recognition are very similar for DPs and control participants, indicating that some aspects of the core face processing network operate normally in DP. However, there is a distinct sub-group of DPs which shows covert face recognition effects for the N250 component, indicating that visual face memory is intact but is disconnected from semantic memory in these individuals. I will discuss the implications of these findings for neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental perspectives on DP. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Brigitte Roeder Universitat Hamburg Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 "Developmental and adult plasticity of multisensory functions“ Recent data have suggested that the development of multisensory functions follows a protracted developmental time course. One example is the spatial matching of crossmodal input. Spatial functions necessary for crossmodal matching seem to emerge in mid and late childhood. They depend on visual input and their development is incomplete if vision is missing during the first years of life. These results point towards sensitive phases for the development of multisensory functions at least if crossmodal matching is based on spatial congruency. However, due to changes of the sensory systems, the body and the environment, it is important that adults are able to recalibrate their multisensory representations as well. Evidence for the neural mechanisms of adult crossmodal recalibration and context dependent adaptation will be presented. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Quentin Huys ETH, Zurich Date: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Reusing thoughts and experience Substantial work over the last decade has emphasized the distinction between habits and goal‑directed decisions. Theoretically, goal‑directed decisions have been characterized as involving computationally costly model inversion, for instance a tree search. Habits, on the other hand, have been thought to result from experience accumulated in lookup tables, summarizing past experience about state‑action pairs for efficient future re‑deployment without incurring further computational cost. While the former structure allows for fast adaptation, the latter relies on sampling the new consequences of behaviours in the world before it can change. However, theoretical work always suggested a softer distinction in a number of ways. First, efficient game playing algorithms replace subtrees with lookup table values to cut down on computational costs. Second, direct transfer of internal samples might shape habits without the need to rely on the costly experiential samples from the world. Finally, habits are typically characterised as one‑step state‑action pairs. But there is no strong theoretical reason to limit lookup tables to such simple structures. This opens up the possibility of directly transferring entire solutions to actor‑like habits. Here, we re‑analyse data from an explicitly goal‑directed tree‑search task and find evidence for generalization and re‑use of complex action sequences. We use this to analyse the process by which complex behaviours are stored for future re‑use, either arising through experience or as memorized solutions. This reveals richer habits and less sharp distinction between habits and goal‑directed choices. Joint work with Anthony Cruickshanck, Neir Eshel, Peter Dayan, Paul Falkner, Sam Gershman, Niall Lally, Peggy Series and Jon Roiser We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The Department of Political Science and the Department of Cognitive Science cordially invite you to the Departmental Colloquium The Devoted Actor: A Framework for Understanding Intractable Conflict and Existential Decision Making presented by Scott Atran University of Michigan Date: October 24, 2013 – 5.30 p.m. Venue: CEU, Nádor u. 9, Auditorium. Scott Atran is presidential scholar in sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and Research Director in Anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. He has repeatedly briefed Congress and national and homeland security staff at the White House on his field research with terrorist groups around the world. His wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach to social, psychological and cultural issues, along with the unusual breadth and depth of his personal experience in both the Arab and Israeli Middle East, provides Atran’s analysis of the roots of suicide terrorism a rare blend of intellectual and practical force. Atran's books include Talking to the Enemy, the Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, and The Native Mind: Cognition and Culture in Human Knowledge of Nature (co-authored with Douglas Medin and forthcoming from Oxford University Press). In addition to his work on the roots of terrorism, Atran conducts on-going research in Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S. on universal and culture-specific aspects of biological categorization and environmental reasoning and decision making funded by France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. We're looking forward to see you there! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. Andreas Roepstorff, (Aarhus University) Date: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Budapest, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Plural perspectives for social cognition Recent discussions of the 'second person' and the 'we-mode' have opened new conceptual ground in social cognitive neuroscience. They each provide an extension to the neo-classical distinction between first-person and third-person perspective, which, in some ways, are similar, in others orthogonal. I will discuss how they may be related and explore a novel taxonomy of perspectives for social cognition. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Prof. H. Clark Barrett, UCLA Department of Anthropology Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Budapest, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Social cognition across cultures: Case studies in evolved reaction norms H. Clark Barrett CEU Department of Cognitive Science and UCLA Department of Anthropology Human nature isn’t just what’s identical across all individuals and cultures. Humans vary in personality, language, culture, and many other traits that are the result of the evolutionary process. At least some of this variation may be the result of evolved developmental systems, or reaction norms, that project developmental experience into phenotypes, creating universality along some dimensions and variation along others. If so, how do we develop theories and methods that allow us to understand these evolved mapping functions, and to test between different hypotheses about their design? In this talk I present a series of experimental studies of social cognition across cultures, and ask how we can begin to understand the variability and universality that these studies reveal within a common evolutionary, developmental, and cultural framework. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Lawrence W. Barsalou Department of Psychology, Emory University Date: Friday, November 22, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Situated Conceptualization Lawrence W. Barsalou Department of Psychology Emory University One way of construing brain organization is as a collection of systems that processes the components of a situation in parallel, including its setting, agents, objects, actions, and internal states. In a given situation, each situational component is conceptualized individually, as when components of eating in a kitchen are conceptualized as kitchen (setting), diner (agent), food (food), chewing (action), and hunger (internal state). In turn, configural concepts integrate these individual conceptualizations into larger structures that conceptualize the larger situation, such as eating and meal. From this perspective, a situated conceptualization is a distributed record of conceptual processing in a given situation, across all the relevant component systems. On later occasions, a situated conceptualization can become active to simulate the respective situation in its absence (e.g., activating a situated conceptualization to simulate eating). From this perspective, the concept that represents a category, such as kitchen or eating, is the collection of situated conceptualizations that has accumulated from processing the category across situations, similar to exemplar theories. The utility of situated conceptualization as a general theoretical construct is illustrated for situated action, social embodiment, social mirroring, and emotion, along with the central role of pattern-completion inference. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Patric Bach University of Plymouth Date: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Action understanding in an object context Multiple lines of evidence support the idea of ‘mirror systems’ in the human (and monkey) brain that represent other people’s bodily states in terms of the observer’s own sensorimotor experiences. This system has been proposed to provide observers with embodied knowledge of other people’s sensations, goals and intentions. In my talk, I will argue that conceptualising action understanding solely in terms of a sensorimotor matching process is too simple. Human action takes place in the context of objects, and I will provide evidence from behavioural and neuroimaging experiments that this object context is a prime contributor to action understanding. Object context directly influences how actions are perceived, determining both their motor and sensory-tactile representations, as well as guiding inferences about their goals. In many instances, object-based rather than motor-based processes may therefore be a primary driver of goal understanding processes in humans, and I will sketch a simple model that integrates these findings. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Max Burton University of Oxford Date: Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Cognitive Development Center, Seminar Room, Hattyu street 14, 3rd floor!!!! Prosocial preferences do not explain human cooperation in public-goods games It has become an accepted paradigm that humans have �prosocial preferences� that lead to higher levels of cooperation than those that would maximize their personal financial gain. However, the existence of prosocial preferences has been inferred post hoc from the results of economic games, rather than with direct experimental tests. Here, we test how behavior in a public-goods game is influenced by knowledge of the consequences of actions for other players. We found that (i) individuals cooperate at similar levels, even when they are not informed that their behavior benefits others; (ii) an increased awareness of how cooperation benefits others leads to a reduction, rather than an increase, in the level of cooperation; and (iii) cooperation can be either lower or higher than expected, depending on experimental design. Overall, these results contradict the suggested role of the prosocial preferences hypothesis and show how the complexity of human behavior can lead to misleading conclusions from controlled laboratory experiments. We're looking forward to see you there! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Christopher Summerfield Oxford University Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 "Adaptive gain control during human decision-making" The gain of neural responding adapts to background levels of stimulation. Adaptive gain control has been extensively studied in sensory systems, but overlooked in decision-theoretic models. Here, we describe evidence for rapid gain control during a categorisation task in which requires observers to average information occurring a rapid stream. The impact that each sample wielded over choices depended on how surprising their associated decision information was, given the statistics of stimulation, with consistent or expected samples carrying more weight. This bias was visible in the encoding of decision information in pupillometric and electroencephalographic signals. We account for these data with a new serial sampling model in which the gain of information processing adapts to ensure that expected information is more diagnostic of behaviour. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Laurence T. Maloney, Psychology and Neural Science, NYU Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Estimating and representing uncertainty in perception and action The key difficulty in making decisions is the uncertainty about the outcomes that could result from any particular decision. In classical decision making under risk the uncertainty is explicitly given as probabilities: a 50% chance of $100 or else nothing. In a wide range of biologically important tasks, though, the organism must estimate the uncertainties associated with outcomes. The sources of uncertainty can be perceptual, motor, or environmental. Estimation can be based on simple frequency counts or explicit models – as when we assume that a coin is fair despite never having tossed it. Surprisingly, human performance in such tasks is often close to optimal (Trommershäuser et al, 2008; Warren et al, 2012) despite the added burden. I will describe a series of studies that let us examine how we estimate uncertainty in a variety of perceptual, motor and cognitive tasks. There is considerable evidence that humans systematically distort estimates of uncertainty in making decisions and any complete description of how we estimate uncertainty must explain such errors. I’ll present a model that captures how we distort frequency in decision tasks and experimental evidence testing it. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Dezso Nemeth ELTE, Hungary Date: Wednesday, February 5th, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Cooperative and competitive neurocognitive networks underlying sensorimotor, cognitive and social skills Sequence learning underlies the acquisition of motor, cognitive, as well as social skills; therefore, it is crucial in everyday life from childhood to old age. Previous studies have shown the involvement of the frontostriatal networks in this type of learning. The specific functions of the components of these networks are, however, still debated. In this talk recent results will be presented focusing on 1) age differences across life span, 2) the competition between internal models and detection of probabilities, 3) the role of sleep in the consolidation of sequence knowledge, 4) how non-invasive brain stimulation affects learning, and 5) what aspects of learning are impaired/preserved in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). These studies shed light not only on different learning mechanisms underlying probabilistic sequence learning but also on their neurocognitive background. References Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., Polner, B., & Kovacs, Z. A. (2013). Boosting human learning by hypnosis. Cerebral Cortex, 23(4), 801-805. Janacsek, K., Nemeth, D. (2013). Implicit Sequence Learning and Working Memory: Correlated or Complicated? Cortex, 49(8), 2001-2006. Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., Király, K., Londe, Z., Németh, K., Fazekas, K., Adam, I., Király E. & Csányi, A (2013). Probabilistic Sequence Learning in Mild Cognitive Impairment. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 318. Hallgató, E., Győri-Dani, D., Pekár, J., Janacsek, K., & Nemeth, D. (2013). The differential consolidation of perceptual and motor learning in skill acquisition. Cortex, 49(4), 1073-1081. Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., & Fiser, J. (2013). Age-dependent and coordinated shift in performance between implicit and explicit skill learning. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 7, Article 147. Janacsek, K., Fiser, J., & Nemeth, D. (2012). The best time to acquire new skills: age related changes in implicit learning across human life span. Developmental Science, 15(4), 496-505 Nemeth, D., Csabi, E., Janacsek, K., Varszegi, M., Mari, Z. (2012). Intact implicit probabilistic sequence learning in Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Journal of Sleep Research, 21, 396-401 Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., Londe Zs., Ullman, M. T., Howard D. V., Howard, J. H. Jr (2010). Sleep has no critical role in implicit motor sequence learning in young and old adults. Experimental Brain Research, 201(2), 351-358 We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Stephen Shennan (UCL) Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Modelling prehistoric cultural transmission The archaeological record provides the only source of information on cultural transmission in prehistory. It is therefore an important source of information on the kinds of transmission bias and selection processes prevalent in the past; for example, it can potentially tell us about the likely importance of conformist transmission, which plays an important role in many accounts of cultural evolution, as well as providing information on the degree of transmission fidelity. A major problem of course is that the only information we have is from the artefacts themselves and their spatial and temporal position. On the other hand, archaeological data are intrinsically quantitative and provide information on intra-population variation rarely available from other naturalistic (as opposed to experimental) studies, which mainly offer normative descriptions. The talk will outline some recent modelling studies designed to take advantage of the latter to overcome the former and thus throw light on cultural transmission in Europe’s first farming communities. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u . 30-34)!Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Deirdre Wilson (UCL and CSMN, Oslo) Date: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Developmental studies of irony comprehension: Relations between theory and practice Abstract Fifteen years ago, Marlena Creusere (1999: 256-8) noted that while there were clear links between theory and experimental work in some studies of irony comprehension in adults, these links were largely absent in developmental studies: While many of the studies related to children’s understanding of irony may be consistent with and possibly influenced by theories of adults’ understanding of verbal irony, few developmental investigations have specifically tested the claims made within these perspectives.) … Just as consideration of theories concerning adults’ use and processing of irony and sarcasm is likely to inform researchers interested in pragmatic language development, attention to the results of developmental studies of non-literal speech-act comprehension is certain to enlighten those interested in pragmatic theory. In this talk, I will consider what light the growing literature on the development of irony comprehension can shed on theoretical debates about the nature of irony, and how such debates might point out worthwhile directions for future developmental research. Creusere, Marlena, 1999. Theories of adults’ understanding and use of irony and sarcasm: Applications to and evidence from research with children. Developmental Review 19, 213-262. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u . 30-34)!Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: ________________________________ The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Uta Frith (UCL) Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room 303, 3rd floor (note the venue change!) Autism – the first fifty years. The history of experimental research into autism goes back hardly more than 50 years. Since that time researchers have applied paradigms developed in experimental psychology and neuropsychology, and later cognitive neuroscience. Although many questions about the nature and the causes of autism remain unresolved, some progress has been made in explaining two of the most puzzling features of autism: the missing reciprocity in social interactions and the presence of exceptional talent. One idea, ‘mindblindness’, can explain the difficulties in reciprocal social interaction. Another idea, ‘detail-focus’, begins to explain features of autism that are manifest in an uneven profile of abilities. I will suggest that a constellation of three factors in the cognitive strengths and weaknesses in autism is conducive to the development of talents. First, lack of spontaneous mentalising frees the individual from conventions. Second, a detail focussed attention strategy is conducive to novel segmentation of perceptual input. Third, novelty aversion and perseveration make light weight of the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u . 30-34)!Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Jamie Tehrani (Durham) Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 ‘Descent with Imagination: Evolution in Oral Tradition’ Cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and linguists have become increasingly interested in understanding what happens to information that gets repeatedly transmitted from person to person, and from generation to generation. What kinds of features remain stable, what kinds get distorted, and how? So far, most research into these questions has been carried out in the lab, for instance through iterated learning/transmission chain type experiments. In this talk I discuss how they might be addressed using the folklore record. Like other orally-transmitted stories, folktales represent natural transmission chains that stretch across generations and regions. I demonstrate how phylogenetic methods that were originally developed to study the evolution and diversification of biological organisms can be used to reconstruct these traditions, and shed light on the cognitive and cultural factors that stabilise and/or modify them. I argue that this approach – “evolutionary folklore”, if you will – complements experimental approaches to cultural transmission and discuss some areas where the two could be usefully combined. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Bahador Bahrani (UCL) Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 A social interpretation of metacognition A long history of research is dedicated to how decision, reaction time and confidence are connected to one another in the context of perceptual/motor tasks. More recently, the same ideas have been extended to economic decision making. I will discuss the possibility that confidence in a decision is not just a consequence of perceptual evidence and economic gain/loss but in fact a means for social interaction among decision making agents. The fact that we often resolve disagreements by comparing how confident we are in our opinions demonstrates this point clearly. In my talk I will explore the social nature of decision confidence and discuss a few empirical and theoretical approaches we have taken to understand the cognitive and computational basis of collective decision making. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Bahador Bahrani (UCL) Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 A social interpretation of metacognition A long history of research is dedicated to how decision, reaction time and confidence are connected to one another in the context of perceptual/motor tasks. More recently, the same ideas have been extended to economic decision making. I will discuss the possibility that confidence in a decision is not just a consequence of perceptual evidence and economic gain/loss but in fact a means for social interaction among decision making agents. The fact that we often resolve disagreements by comparing how confident we are in our opinions demonstrates this point clearly. In my talk I will explore the social nature of decision confidence and discuss a few empirical and theoretical approaches we have taken to understand the cognitive and computational basis of collective decision making. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34, room G15)! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Thomas Griffiths (UC Berkeley) Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Revealing inductive biases by simulating cultural evolution People are remarkably good at acquiring complex knowledge from limited data, as is required in learning causal relationships, categories, or aspects of language. Successfully solving inductive problems of this kind requires having good "inductive biases" - constraints that guide inductive inference. Viewed abstractly, understanding human learning requires identifying these inductive biases and exploring their origins. I will argue that an effective way to solve this problem is to take a step outside the traditional methodology of cognitive psychology, which focuses on individuals learning from the world, and instead look at what happens when people learn from one another. A mathematical analysis using a simple Bayesian model predicts that inductive biases will determine the outcome of processes of cultural transmission in which learners learn from other learners. This provides the foundation for an experimental method in which cultural evolution is simulated in the laboratory as a means of magnifying the effects of human inductive biases. I will present the results of using this method to explore questions about both individual cognition and cultural evolution, and highlight some surprising connections to algorithms more commonly used in computer science and statisticsWe're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Peter Keller (University of Western Sydney - The MARCS Institute) Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Rhythmic interpersonal coordination: Psychological processes and brain mechanisms in musical ensemble performance Musical ensemble performance is a social art form that places exceptional demands upon the cognitive and motor capacities of co-performers. A remarkable feature of ensemble performance is the balance that individuals are able to achieve between precision and flexibility in interpersonal coordination. My talk will address the psychological processes and brain mechanisms that enable such coordination. I will give an overview of a theoretical framework and empirical approach for studying factors that determine an individual’s ability to coordinate with others in musical contexts. Select results will be presented from a research program targeting how this ability is affected by individual differences in relevant cognitive-motor skills assessed via behavioural and neuroscientific methods.We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by William Hoppitt( Anglia Ruskin University) Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - 18:00-19:30 (NOTE the time change) Location: CEU Auditorium, Nador street 9-11. (NOTE the venue change) Within the field of animal social learning, attention is shifting away from the question of whether non-human primates and other animals are capable of imitation and other types of social learning, to the question of how important social transmission is in natural populations. Network based diffusion analysis (NBDA) is a novel statistical method that has been developed to answer this question. NBDA infers social transmission if the order and time at which individuals acquire novel behaviour follows a social network. In this talk, I will explain the logic behind NBDA, and illustrate the use of the method in two cases. The first is a recent high profile case showing strong evidence for the social transmission of a novel feeding behaviour (lobtail feeding) among a wild population of humpback whales. The second is the application of NBDA to the spread of two novel behaviour patterns through the Sonso chimpanzee community. In the latter case, one behaviour pattern (moss-sponging) is shown to be socially transmitted, whereas the other (leaf-sponge re-use) is shown to be primarily asocially learned. We're looking forward to see you there (Nador street 9)! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

REMINDER: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science together with CEU Summer University cordially invites you to a talk by Pascal Boyer (University of Washington in St. Louis) http://artsci.wustl.edu/~pboyer/PBoyerHomeSite/index.html Date: Thursday, June 26, 2014 - 18:00 - 19:30 Location: CEU, Nador street 9, Faculty Tower, Auditorium Pascal Boyer is a Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis. Abstract: Religious representations are widespread in human societies. A tempting explanation is that religions somehow constitute some form of evolutionary adaptation for human minds, perhaps fostering cooperation and prosocial behavior. But the historical and anthropological record contradicts that interpretation. A better explanation for religious representations should [a] start from the observation that the term `religion` misleadingly lumps together three very different kinds of social-cultural processes; [b] model the diffusion of religious concepts in terms of cultural epidemics based on universal cognitive dispositions; and [c] explain why some (not all) religious concepts can serve as recruitment devices in building coalitions. We're looking forward to see you there (Nador 9, Auditorium) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Adam Johnson (Bethel University) Date: Friday, July 4, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 (note the change!) Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 Title -- Hippocampal based schema learning and exploration: A theory Abstract -- The hippocampus plays a critical role in spatial look-ahead, single-trial learning, memory consolidation, and imagination. Each of these learning dynamics depends on memory schemas. We have developed a hierarchical Bayesian inference approach learns the structure of behavioral tasks or schemas in order to predict future task observations. Using this general inference framework we show how the approach can account for (1) the hippocampal dependent of single trial learning, (2) variable time memory consolidation, (3) hippocampal place cell mapping and remapping, and (4) spontaneous object exploration in the rodent literature. Finally, we suggest how these results can be applied in human behavior and imaging research. We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu

Kind reminder: The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Guy Hoffman (IDC, Israel) Date: Sept 24, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 TITLE: Human-Robot Teamwork: Fluency and Embodiment in Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT: For personal robots to play a long-term engaging role in untrained humans' lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying performance that humans are accustomed to from each other. We propose a notion of human-robot fluency, in particular as it relates to meshed action timing and motion path quality. To this end we explore computational perception and cognition architectures, as well as experimental studies of user's responses to timing of nonverbal acts. In a collaborative construction task, we find participants to prefer anticipatory action, even at the cost of errors and without increase in task efficiency. In another study we show priming through embodied perceptual simulation to have significant effects on both the efficiency of a human-robot team, and on humans' perception of the robot's intelligence, fluency, and gender. In the field of entertainment robotics, we present a robotic theater control system using insights from acting theory, which enables robotic nonverbal behavior that is both reactive and expressive. We then discuss an interactive robotic Jazz improvisation system that uses embodied gestures for musical expression, enabling simultaneous, yet responsive, joint improvisation. Finally, we present the design of a new smartphone-based media companion robot. Human-subject studies show effects on music enjoyment and social presence when the robot responds to music that participants listen to, as well as perceived partner responsiveness based on the robot's nonverbal behavior. - See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events/2014-09-24/departmental-colloquium-gu… TITLE: Human-Robot Teamwork: Fluency and Embodiment in Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT: For personal robots to play a long-term engaging role in untrained humans' lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying performance that humans are accustomed to from each other. We propose a notion of human-robot fluency, in particular as it relates to meshed action timing and motion path quality. To this end we explore computational perception and cognition architectures, as well as experimental studies of user's responses to timing of nonverbal acts. In a collaborative construction task, we find participants to prefer anticipatory action, even at the cost of errors and without increase in task efficiency. In another study we show priming through embodied perceptual simulation to have significant effects on both the efficiency of a human-robot team, and on humans' perception of the robot's intelligence, fluency, and gender. In the field of entertainment robotics, we present a robotic theater control system using insights from acting theory, which enables robotic nonverbal behavior that is both reactive and expressive. We then discuss an interactive robotic Jazz improvisation system that uses embodied gestures for musical expression, enabling simultaneous, yet responsive, joint improvisation. Finally, we present the design of a new smartphone-based media companion robot. Human-subject studies show effects on music enjoyment and social presence when the robot responds to music that participants listen to, as well as perceived partner responsiveness based on the robot's nonverbal behavior. TITLE: Human-Robot Teamwork: Fluency and Embodiment in Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT: For personal robots to play a long-term engaging role in untrained humans' lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying performance that humans are accustomed to from each other. We propose a notion of human-robot fluency, in particular as it relates to meshed action timing and motion path quality. To this end we explore computational perception and cognition architectures, as well as experimental studies of user's responses to timing of nonverbal acts. In a collaborative construction task, we find participants to prefer anticipatory action, even at the cost of errors and without increase in task efficiency. In another study we show priming through embodied perceptual simulation to have significant effects on both the efficiency of a human-robot team, and on humans' perception of the robot's intelligence, fluency, and gender. In the field of entertainment robotics, we present a robotic theater control system using insights from acting theory, which enables robotic nonverbal behavior that is both reactive and expressive. We then discuss an interactive robotic Jazz improvisation system that uses embodied gestures for musical expression, enabling simultaneous, yet responsive, joint improvisation. Finally, we present the design of a new smartphone-based media companion robot. Human-subject studies show effects on music enjoyment and social presence when the robot responds to music that participants listen to, as well as perceived partner responsiveness based on the robot's nonverbal behavior. - See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events/2014-09-24/departmental-colloquium-gu… We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu