Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Cognitive Science Seminar Series (February 24, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72212 72212-17957420@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 24, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hyesue Jang, U-M graduate student in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, will give a talk titled "Losing money and memory: The effect of loss incentives on working memory in young and older adults."

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 04 Feb 2020 10:05:39 -0500 2020-02-24T14:30:00-05:00 2020-02-24T15:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Lecture / Discussion Hyesue Jang
Cognitive Science Study Abroad with CGIS-Please RSVP! (March 9, 2020 11:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/71331 71331-17888056@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 9, 2020 11:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Come learn all about Study Abroad through CGIS and how you can get CogSci credit for your classes abroad! You will also receive information on course petitions/credit, scholarships, highlighted programs, alumni experiences, and more!

There will be two presentations at 11:00am and at 12:15pm. Students who attend either presentation will receive CGIS "First Steps Information Session" credit! Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP: https://tinyurl.com/sqvfqnp

To set up a Cognitive Science advising appointment, please visit https://tinyurl.com/sd8kxy8 or email Weinberg-Institute@umich.edu
To learn more about CGIS, visit lsa.umich.edu/cgis or email cgis@umich.edu

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Meeting Fri, 14 Feb 2020 07:51:34 -0500 2020-03-09T11:00:00-04:00 2020-03-09T13:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Meeting Poster
Cognitive Science Seminar Series: The challenge of heritability: genetic determinants of beliefs and their implications (March 9, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/73643 73643-18276412@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 9, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Department of Linguistics

Wade Munroe, postdoctoral research fellow in the Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, will give a talk titled "The challenge of heritability: genetic determinants of beliefs and their implications."

ABSTRACT

Ethical, political, and religious attitudes are not randomly distributed in a population. Attitudes of family members, for example, tend to be more similar than those of a random sample of the same size. In the fields of social psychology and political science, the historically standard explanation for these attitude distribution patterns was that social and political attitudes are (at least partially) a function of environmental factors like parental socialization and prevailing social norms. This received view is, however, complicated by more recent work in behavioral genetics, which consistently and repeatedly demonstrates that certain ethical and political attitudes dealing with issues like censorship, abortion, capital punishment, and immigration policy have a significant heritability coefficient, to wit, a substantial percentage of attitude variance in a population can be attributed to genetic variance, independent of environmental factors. In this paper, I argue that the genetic influence on our ethical and political attitudes is mediated by what we can agree—without relying on any first-order ethical or political claims—to be irrelevant and distorting factors that can lead moral reasoning astray. Further, I argue that we should significantly lower our credences in ethical and political attitudes that fall within the domains of belief that involve significant genetic influence.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:31:04 -0500 2020-03-09T14:30:00-04:00 2020-03-09T16:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Department of Linguistics Lecture / Discussion Weiser Hall
CANCELED: 4th Annual Cognitive Science Community Colloquium (March 28, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/73090 73090-18140506@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, March 28, 2020 10:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium on Saturday, March 28th at Weiser Hall 10th Floor. As part of the Undergraduate Research Showcase, we’re currently looking for students to apply to share their work. If you’ve contributed to a cognitive science research project at any level of involvement, we’d love to have you! We encourage submissions from related fields such as computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and more!

Submit an abstract and the submission form through this site: https://sites.google.com/view/csccolloquium2020/home

Submissions highlighting interdisciplinary research are especially welcome. Please apply by March 10th at 11:59pm. If this deadline is an issue, feel free to contact us at cogscicmty@umich.edu and we will be happy to work with you. You can also reach out to us via that email with any other questions you may have.

Anyone interested in attending can also RSVP here: https://forms.gle/qafD3VdB5QsZZJVv6 and follow the colloquium website linked above for updates.

Sincerely,

Cognitive Science Community

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:14:20 -0400 2020-03-28T10:00:00-04:00 2020-03-28T16:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Conference / Symposium Call for submissions
CogSci Connections: Virtual Backpacking (March 31, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/72627 72627-18033402@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 10:00am
Location:
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Join the CogSci advisors and Peer Facilitators on Zoom any time between 10a & 2p on Tuesday, March 31st for virtual backpacking! Come and ask questions about your schedule, hear about your classmates’ favorite classes, and just generally enjoy the (virtual) company of other CogSci students.

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 26 Mar 2020 16:12:35 -0400 2020-03-31T10:00:00-04:00 2020-03-31T14:00:00-04:00 Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
TO BE RESCHEDULED: Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium (April 10, 2020 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/64256 64256-16268497@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 10, 2020 2:00pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Students and faculty are invited to attend the 10th anniversary Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium on Friday, April 10, and Saturday, April 11, 2020, at the U-M Michigan League.

Hosted by the Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, the Weinberg Symposium features presentations, posters, and discussion centered on the theme: “The Cognitive Science of Concepts: Contrasting Perspectives Across the Disciplines.” Concepts--mental representations that underpin thought and reasoning--are understood and investigated in different ways across cognitive science's sub-disciplines, for example in developmental psychology, the study of animal cognition, and the study of artificial minds / artificial intelligence (AI).

A keynote lecture, “Do Apes Believe? The Concept of 'Belief' in Great Apes and Human Children,” by Michael Tomasello (Duke University) kicks off the two-day symposium on Friday, April 10. The lecture will be followed by a poster session and reception.

The second day of the symposium, Saturday, April 11, will feature a range of contrasting and potentially complementary perspectives on concepts by leading scholars in several disciplines. Guest speakers include Marjorie Rhodes (New York University), Sandra Waxman (Northwestern University), Surya Ganguli (Stanford University), and Michael Strevens (New York University).

Saturday’s activities will also feature a panel discussion with U-M faculty, and ample time for participant and student interaction.

Please visit the 2020 Weinberg Symposium webpage to see the full agenda including speakers, presentation titles, and registration details.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 25 Mar 2020 12:37:13 -0400 2020-04-10T14:00:00-04:00 2020-04-10T17:00:00-04:00 Michigan League Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Conference / Symposium Weinberg Symposium poster
TO BE RESCHEDULED: Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium (April 11, 2020 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/64256 64256-17275353@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, April 11, 2020 9:00am
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Students and faculty are invited to attend the 10th anniversary Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium on Friday, April 10, and Saturday, April 11, 2020, at the U-M Michigan League.

Hosted by the Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, the Weinberg Symposium features presentations, posters, and discussion centered on the theme: “The Cognitive Science of Concepts: Contrasting Perspectives Across the Disciplines.” Concepts--mental representations that underpin thought and reasoning--are understood and investigated in different ways across cognitive science's sub-disciplines, for example in developmental psychology, the study of animal cognition, and the study of artificial minds / artificial intelligence (AI).

A keynote lecture, “Do Apes Believe? The Concept of 'Belief' in Great Apes and Human Children,” by Michael Tomasello (Duke University) kicks off the two-day symposium on Friday, April 10. The lecture will be followed by a poster session and reception.

The second day of the symposium, Saturday, April 11, will feature a range of contrasting and potentially complementary perspectives on concepts by leading scholars in several disciplines. Guest speakers include Marjorie Rhodes (New York University), Sandra Waxman (Northwestern University), Surya Ganguli (Stanford University), and Michael Strevens (New York University).

Saturday’s activities will also feature a panel discussion with U-M faculty, and ample time for participant and student interaction.

Please visit the 2020 Weinberg Symposium webpage to see the full agenda including speakers, presentation titles, and registration details.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 25 Mar 2020 12:37:13 -0400 2020-04-11T09:00:00-04:00 2020-04-11T17:00:00-04:00 Michigan League Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Conference / Symposium Weinberg Symposium poster
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 13, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559841@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 13, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-13T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-13T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 14, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559842@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 14, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-14T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-14T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 15, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559843@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-15T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-15T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 16, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559844@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 16, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-16T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-16T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 17, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559845@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 17, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-17T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-17T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 18, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559846@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, April 18, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-18T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-18T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
Cognitive Science Community 2020 Digital Colloquium! (April 19, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74184 74184-18559847@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, April 19, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Hello everyone!

Are you interested in viewing research related to cognitive science or other related fields? We invite you to attend this year’s Cognitive Science Colloquium!

The Cognitive Science Community is excited to announce that we’ll be hosting our 4th annual colloquium online!  In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we will not be holding an in-person Colloquium this year. Instead, we will be moving the showcase to an online format which will be open for viewing April 13th - April 19th.

We hope you will tune into the online event to view the research projects being showcased! The website will be open to watch the videos, and there will be an opportunity to ask the researchers questions through our slack channel April 13th - April 19th. Our slack link is: cogscicommunity.slack.com. The channel for discussion is #research_showcase_discussion_Let us know if you have any questions regarding using slack.


We hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

Best, 
Cognitive Science Community

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 08 Apr 2020 16:10:52 -0400 2020-04-19T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-19T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual CSC Logo
CANCELED: CogSci Connections (April 19, 2020 7:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72629 72629-18033405@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, April 19, 2020 7:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Join the Cognitive Science peer facilitators at this month's CogSci Connections gathering, organized as a pre-finals study session. Study snacks and coffee will be provided.

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Other Thu, 19 Mar 2020 10:34:30 -0400 2020-04-19T19:00:00-04:00 2020-04-19T23:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Other Weiser Hall
CANCELED: Cognitive Science Graduation Reception (April 30, 2020 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72301 72301-17972521@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 30, 2020 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

The Cognitive Science Graduation Reception will be held on Thursday, April 30, 2020 from 5:00 to 6:30 pm on the 10th floor of Weiser Hall. Director remarks begin at 5:20 p.m. followed by recognition of graduating seniors. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP by April 1.

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Reception / Open House Thu, 19 Mar 2020 10:35:30 -0400 2020-04-30T17:00:00-04:00 2020-04-30T18:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Reception / Open House
Cognitive Science Seminar Series (September 21, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77448 77448-19854032@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, September 21, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Join the Cognitive Science Seminar Series for its first meeting of the Fall 2020 semester.

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Social / Informal Gathering Fri, 18 Sep 2020 14:57:11 -0400 2020-09-21T14:30:00-04:00 2020-09-21T15:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Social / Informal Gathering
Motivation, Inside or Out? (September 24, 2020 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77498 77498-19877773@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 24, 2020 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Why do we do the things we do? Computational models in Cognitive Science such as Reinforcement Learning often focus on extrinsic motivation. However, motivational researchers have made a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation depending on whether motivation comes from outside (extrinsic) or inside (intrinsic) an individual. Research has shown that there is an interesting relationship between extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation. Based on this relationship, we will discuss how to effectively use external rewards to motivate behaviors.

Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/94054501865
Meeting ID: 940 5450 1865
Password: cogsci

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 21 Sep 2020 12:29:18 -0400 2020-09-24T17:00:00-04:00 2020-09-24T18:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Workshop / Seminar CSC logo
Cognitive Science Seminar Series (September 28, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77453 77453-19854035@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, September 28, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Linguistics graduate student Rachel Weissler will give a talk titled "Cognitive behavioral evidence of linguistic expectation based on both speaker identity and language variety in American Englishes."

ABSTRACT
In order to understand the intersection of linguistics, neurological processing, and race, I engage with language variation and social cognition to better understand how we as listeners interact with people who speak varying language varieties in the U.S., particularly African American English (AAE), through a three study dissertation using mixed methodologies. Bountiful neurolinguistics evidence shows that people invoke prediction during sentence processing through ERPs (Kutas et al 2014), and that these predictions are conditioned by the identity of the speaker, as early as 200-300 milliseconds after the beginning of a word(van Berkum et al 2008). However, ideologies about standard language in the U.S. often posit Standardized American English (SdAE) as a morally superior variety (Hill 2008). This hierarchical treatment of language varieties leads to negative perceptions of minoritized language varieties, such as AAE, which in turn makes them stigmatized, and ultimately perpetuates minoritized language discrimination. Thus, the first two studies ask, does positing SdAE as superior lead us to treat all minoritized language varieties equally, or do people have language variety-specific expectations? We test this using two EEG experiments. The final study (in progress) examines how the influence of varied linguistic knowledge modulates perception and online processing of AAE, as indexed by responses elicited from a virtual eye-tracking study. This final study seeks to understand how listeners of varied knowledges process linguistic variation in AAE & SdAE, and also brings together eye-tracking and emotion, expanding upon previous research which shows that various cultural groups are differently sensitive to emotional differences expressed in language, and arguably, through prosody (Weissler & Boland 2019). With this dissertation, I want to enhance the linguistics field by tapping into the find-grained knowledge correlates that listeners bring with them when processing language, specifically AAE. I also want to make the connection between language knowledge and racialization based on that language knowledge.This work has implications not only for intracultural perception, but more broadly, for understanding the functionality of the human language faculty in general. Ultimately, perceptions of stigmatized languages and language varieties leads to language discrimination, which affects the way speakers, people, are treated in their day to day lives. Through a multi-method neurolinguistic and sociolinguistic approach, we can better understand how the human language faculty is capable of recognizing and processing American English language varieties.

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:08:32 -0400 2020-09-28T14:30:00-04:00 2020-09-28T15:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual Rachel Weissler
Cognitive Science Seminar Series (October 5, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77842 77842-19933640@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 5, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Research fellow Elisa Felsche (U-M Psychology) will give a talk on "The origins of inference: A hierarchical Bayesian modelling approach to imitation and abstraction in children and primates."

NOTE: If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to cogsi-seminar@umich.edu to receive the passcode.

ABSTRACT

Humans have an immense behavioural and cognitive repertoire that has been shaped by cumulative cultural evolution. In my PhD project I investigated two cognitive abilities that crucially enlarge the efficiency of skill and knowledge acquisition: 1) the capability for abstraction that enables powerful generalization of information to make wide ranging predictions in new situations and 2) the ability to imitate others which allows the quick and low-risk adoption of new behavioural strategies. Despite decades of accumulating data in both domains, it is still debated to what extent other species share these abilities and how they develop in humans. Solving these persisting disagreements requires an alteration of how data are generated and analysed.
In my dissertation project, I introduced the approach of hierarchical Bayesian modelling to the field of comparative psychology to investigate abstract rule formation and action copying in capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees (only abstract rule formation) and children. In the first two studies participants had to use sampled evidence to infer abstract rules about the item distributions in containers and efficiently guide behaviour in novel test situations. In a third study, we investigated children's and capuchin monkeys' ability to integrate causal and social information when copying a goal-directed behaviour. Whereas children’s performance was mostly in line with the predictions of the computational models, showing that they are capable of abstraction and consider causal information when imitating, capuchin monkeys performed in all experiments at chance and chimpanzees showed some understanding of abstract rules.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 02 Oct 2020 15:51:03 -0400 2020-10-05T14:30:00-04:00 2020-10-05T15:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Workshop / Seminar
Cognitive Science Seminar Series: "Which linguistic theory for CogSci?" (October 12, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77894 77894-19941560@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 12, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Linguistics professor Jeffrey Health will give a talk titled "Which linguistic theory for CogSci?"

Please visit the seminar website for Zoom link and details.

ABSTRACT
The linguistic theory most familiar to cognitive scientists, the syntax-centric generativist model, has deep-seated problems for which no patches are available. Syntax-centrism alienates the model from processing and especially from speaking, and therefore from any natural cognitive processes. Its emphasis on economy now seems quaint in the context of the brain’s massive storage and computational power. The evo-devo theory that is joined to the theory’s hip makes no sense biologically. Under the microscope, current minimalism consists largely of ad hoc devices to account for language-specific linear ordering: functional projections some of which are meaningless, unnecessary specifier positions for these projections, phonological deletion due to unmotivated “computational efficiency,” and ad hoc processes like “remnant movement” when all else fails. Even with this proliferation of makeshift entities and processes, the model cannot account for basic morphosyntactic phenomena in many nonwestern languages. In this talk I discuss how a directional, speaker-centric model that stands up to crosslinguistic findings might be cobbled together from “cognitive linguistics” on the semantic end and morphophonological (including prosodic) theories on the output end. I describe some linguistic issues that are, and some that are not, amenable to experimental study and to computational modeling.

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:31:58 -0400 2020-10-12T14:30:00-04:00 2020-10-12T16:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
Science Success Series | Overcoming the Fear of Failure in Personal and Academic Pursuits (October 12, 2020 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76330 76330-19687523@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 12, 2020 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Science Learning Center

In this workshop, we'll build on the lessons of growth mindset and put failure into practice, with activities that allow us to focus on the learning that goes along with mistakes. This way, we can create environments that allow for innovation, personal, and professional growth.

Register on Sessions: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/session/29116

Email ScienceSuccessSeries@umich.edu with any questions.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 28 Aug 2020 17:08:58 -0400 2020-10-12T15:00:00-04:00 2020-10-12T16:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Science Learning Center Workshop / Seminar
Cognitive Science Seminar: Extending a task-general computational model of procedural learning (October 19, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77895 77895-19941561@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 19, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Bryan Stearns will give a talk titled "Extending a task-general computational model of procedural learning."

Please visit the seminar series website for Zoom link and details.

ABSTRACT
Can we understand human generality and learning well enough to make computer systems that learn the way we learn? Many models exist that help us describe various aspects of human learning or let us evaluate competing theories. It is harder to find models that specify processing at a level that is detailed enough to allow a computer system to actually perform human-like learning. This talk presents some of my thesis work that extends a model of human procedural learning to have more specific computational detail. In the process, I also extend the model by discovering connections with prior theoretical work in human skill acquisition and some neuroscience.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 19 Oct 2020 11:20:34 -0400 2020-10-19T14:30:00-04:00 2020-10-19T16:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
Psychology and Computer Science: What Goes On In Our Brains When We Read And Write Code? (October 22, 2020 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78684 78684-20105419@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 22, 2020 6:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Is reading code more like reading prose or more like doing math? Is balancing a tree data structure like balancing a pencil on your finger? Is learning a programming language like learning a natural language? How can we make novices more like experts faster? To answer these questions, this talk presents a high-level summary of work at the intersection of computer science and psychology, in which techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging are used to study patterns of neural activity associated with coding tasks. We will cover some background information on psychology as well as some recent results in computer science. In addition, we will highlight efforts involving U-M undergraduate researchers and elaborate on career paths for those interested in pursuing similar topics.

Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/97316042553
Meeting ID: 973 1604 2553
Password: cogsci

Interested in getting involved or want to attend one of our events? Contact us at cogscicmty@umich.edu.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 20 Oct 2020 08:54:09 -0400 2020-10-22T18:00:00-04:00 2020-10-22T19:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Lecture / Discussion csc logo
Cognitive Science Seminar Series: Children's intuitions about trade (October 26, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77896 77896-19941562@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 26, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Margaret Echelbarger, University of Chicago, will give a talk titled "Will she give you two cookies for one chocolate? Children’s intuitions about trade."

Please visit the Seminar Series website for Zoom link and access details.

ABSTRACT
Trade is a cornerstone of economic exchange and can take many different forms. In simple trades, one item is often exchanged for another; but in more complex trades, agents can trade different numbers of items, reflecting the differing value of the items being traded. Though young children regularly engage in simple trades, we examine whether they understand a key element involved in more complex trades—the idea that people may subjectively value the same item differently and accept trades that numerically disadvantage themselves in the service of acquiring more of a preferred item. To do so, we ran three studies with 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 314) in which they were asked to predict whether a third party would accept or reject different types of trades. Results revealed that children across this age range predict that a third party will accept a numerically disadvantageous trade when they prefer one resource over another, but not when they have an equal preference for both resources. Importantly, their predictions were not merely a reflection of what they thought was fair, but rather what was in the best interest of the third party—they thought a third party would be more likely to accept an “unfair” trade that benefitted himself rather than someone else. We discuss our findings in terms of what they reveal about children’s early economic intuitions.

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 23 Oct 2020 13:44:19 -0400 2020-10-26T14:30:00-04:00 2020-10-26T16:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
How to get involved in research as an undergraduate (and what to do if you can’t get a position this year) (October 27, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76438 76438-19717133@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 27, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Psychology Undergraduates

Getting involved in research is a great way to build your skills and get the “behind the scenes” look into the science that you later learn about in your textbooks and classes. If you’re thinking of going to graduate or medical school, ideally you want to be starting in a lab by your sophomore year and in most cases no later than your junior year. But how do you find and apply for a position? And what do you do if there’s a pandemic and no positions are available? We’ll go over tips for both these situations.

RSVP Required: https://myumi.ch/0W1zZ

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:33:26 -0400 2020-10-27T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-27T17:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Psychology Undergraduates Workshop / Seminar VIRTUAL FALL SEMINAR SERIES
Foundations & Frontiers Speaker Series: A Brief History of Computation; Computational Approaches for Mental Health (October 30, 2020 11:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/78429 78429-20042433@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 30, 2020 11:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

The Foundations & Frontiers Speaker Series brings leading cognitive scientists to U-M to present a special pair of presentations on the same day. The first presentation serves as an introduction to an important theoretical idea or method in the field (the Foundations). The second presentation concerns the application of that idea or method to an innovative topic, thus exploring the Frontiers of the field in a way that highlights the significance of the theoretical idea.

Frederike Petzschner is a Carney Institute Fellow in the Center for Computational Brain Science and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. Dr. Petzschner will give two presentations on October 30:

A Brief History of Computation (Foundations presentation)
Our notion of what the capabilities and function of the brain and mind are has evolved fundamentally in the past century. As a result, we have moved from early Psychophysics to Behaviorism to the Cognitive Revolution, when theories of computation entered the forefront of modern Cognitive Science. This history and the fundamental questions posed at different times provide a great deal of insight into our modern thinking and paves the way where the field might take us in the future. In this lecture, I will try to provide a short guide through the history of computation and discuss what could be learned from it.

Computational Approaches for Mental Health (Frontiers presentation)
The growing field of Computational Psychiatry provides a prime example of how theories of computation may provide not only insights into the function of healthy minds but also mental disorders. In this lecture, I will discuss three examples of where we apply computational methods to understand learning, perception or decision-making in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Gambling Addiction and Disorders of Interoception.

Presentation Schedule (EST):
11:00 - 11:30 am. Foundations presentation
11:30 - 11:45 am Q&A
11:45 am - 12:35 pm Frontiers presentation
12:35 - 1:00 pm. Q&A

Q&A Protocol
Please save any questions for the Q&A periods. If you would like to ask a question, please use the ‘Raise Hand’ feature of Zoom. If you have a follow-up question, please use the green ‘Yes’ feature of Zoom. I will manage the queue and call on participants in the order in which hands are raised. Once called upon, unmute your mic and ask your question.

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 29 Oct 2020 13:47:18 -0400 2020-10-30T11:00:00-04:00 2020-10-30T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual Foundations & Frontiers informational flyer
Reinforcement Learning for Sparse-Reward Object-Interaction Tasks in a First-person Simulated 3D Environment (November 5, 2020 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79137 79137-20215738@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 5, 2020 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

First-person object-interaction tasks in high-fidelity, 3D, simulated environments such as the AI2Thor virtual home-environment pose significant sample-efficiency challenges for reinforcement learning (RL) agents learning from sparse task rewards. To alleviate these challenges, prior work has provided extensive supervision via a combination of reward-shaping, ground-truth object-information, and expert demonstrations. In this work, we show that one can learn object-interaction tasks from scratch without supervision by learning an attentive object-model as an auxiliary task during task learning with an object-centric relational RL agent. Our key insight is that learning an object-model that incorporates object-relationships into forward prediction provides a dense learning signal for unsupervised representation learning of both objects and their relationships. This, in turn, enables faster policy learning for an object-centric relational RL agent. We demonstrate our agent by introducing a set of challenging object-interaction tasks in the AI2Thor environment where learning with our attentive object-model is key to strong performance. Specifically, by comparing our agent and relational RL agents with alternative auxiliary tasks with a relational RL agent equipped with ground-truth object-information, we find that learning with our object-model best closes the performance gap in terms of both learning speed and maximum success rate. Additionally, we find that incorporating object-relationships into an object-model's forward predictions is key to learning representations that capture object-category and object-state.

Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/99927591266
Meeting ID: 999 2759 1266
Password: cogsci

Wilka Carvalho is currently a PhD student studying machine learning at UM. Check out his website for research publications, experiences, helpful resources in machine learning or pursuing grad/PhD, and ways to reach out.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 03 Nov 2020 07:31:35 -0500 2020-11-05T17:00:00-05:00 2020-11-05T18:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Lecture / Discussion CSC logo
Cognitive Science Seminar: Daily cognition: The design and validation of open intensive longitudinal assessments (November 9, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77897 77897-19941563@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 9, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Dominic Kelly, U-M Department of Psychology, will give a talk titled "Daily cognition: The design and validation of open intensive longitudinal assessments."

ABSTRACT

Although cognition is often assumed to be stable, there is evidence that it can in fact vary over relatively short timespans, including from day to day. Investigations of cognitive fluctuations, especially fluctuations in cognitive skills that show gender differences, however, are limited by a lack of suitable instruments that are specifically designed for intensive longitudinal assessment (e.g., that reflect daily variation instead of practice effects). Our goal was to design and validate two new, freely available 75-occasion measures of gendered cognition – three-dimensional mental rotations and delayed paired verbal recall. We accomplished this by conducting a 75-day study with 121 participants who completed the novel cognitive measures every evening. Focusing on an age- and language-matched sample of 27 men and 27 women, results suggested that the novel measures are valid, and that they show parallel forms reliability across 75 days and the expected gender differences each day. Moreover, significant intra-individual variation was observed in cognition across the 75 days, indicating that gendered cognition fluctuates daily (in men and women). These findings encourage future work on the antecedents and consequences of cognitive fluctuations and on intra-individual variation in spatial and verbal skills with the new 75-occasion assessments.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 09 Nov 2020 10:31:31 -0500 2020-11-09T14:30:00-05:00 2020-11-09T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
Cognitive Science Seminar: Reinforcement Learning for Sparse-reward Object-interaction Tasks in a First-person Simulated 3D Environment (November 16, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77907 77907-19941573@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 16, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Wilka Carvalho will give a talk titled "Reinforcement Learning for Sparse-reward Object-interaction Tasks in a First-person Simulated 3D Environment"

ABSTRACT
Learning how to execute complex tasks involving multiple objects in a 3D world is challenging under any circumstances, and especially so when there is no ground-truth information about how to use the objects or any opportunity to learn by demonstration. Rewards for completing a task in such a setting are few and far between (sparse rewards), making it difficult for the agent to figure out what to do next. In this work, we show that these challenges can be overcome by including an auxiliary task: learning to predict how objects change upon interaction (the attentive object-model). We show that when this model is used to learn representations of objects, the core learner (a relational RL agent) receives the dense training signal it needs to rapidly find a solution. We demonstrate results in the 3D AI2Thor simulated kitchen environment with a range of challenging food preparation tasks. We compare our method's performance to several related approaches and against the performance of an oracle: an agent that is supplied with ground-truth information about objects in the scene. We find that our model achieves performance closest to the oracle in terms of both learning speed and maximum success rate. With further analysis, we also demonstrate that the attention model is key to the success of our method.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 16 Nov 2020 09:35:34 -0500 2020-11-16T14:30:00-05:00 2020-11-16T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
Cognitive Science Seminar: What we would (but shouldn’t) do for those we love: Universalism and partiality in “punish or protect” dilemmas (November 30, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77908 77908-19941574@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 30, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Laura Soter, U-M Department of Philosophy, will give a talk titled "What we would (but shouldn’t) do for those we love: Universalism and partiality in 'punish or protect' dilemmas."

ABSTRACT
After a long history of focusing primarily on judgments about anonymous strangers, moral psychologists have increasingly begun to study how social relationships influence people’s moral judgments. Weidman et al. (2020), for instance, found that in “punish or protect” dilemmas, people are more likely to say they would lie to protect a close other (vs. a distant other) who commits a crime, particularly when the transgression is severe. But do people believe it is morally right to behave this way? On the one hand, impartiality and universalism are key tenets in all three major philosophical ethical theories. On the other, there are philosophers who argue in favor of moral partiality, and there is increasing empirical evidence that social relationships matter for moral evaluations. In the context of Weidman et al.’s “punish or protect” dilemmas, these considerations deliver two competing hypotheses: either people think it is right to preferentially protect close others, suggesting that people believe moral norms are importantly sensitive to context; or people think they should treat close and distant others equally, revealing an inconsistency between judgments of what is right and how they would behave in the context of close relationships. I will present a series of studies that adjudicate between these hypotheses by exploring the relationship between what people think they would and should do in “punish or protect” dilemmas.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:24:50 -0500 2020-11-30T14:30:00-05:00 2020-11-30T15:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual
Cognitive Science Seminar: "Cognitive Tools for Learning and Communication" (virtual) (December 7, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76965 76965-19782527@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, December 7, 2020 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Dr. Judith Fan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, UC San Diego, will give a talk titled "Cognitive Tools for Learning and Communication."

ABSTRACT

How does the human mind transform a cascade of sensory information into meaningful knowledge? While traditional approaches to learning focus on how people process the data provided to them by the world, this approach leaves aside all of the powerful tools people have to actively reformat their experiences and generate new ones. For example, we choose what to look at, bring certain memories to mind, produce pictures to share, and compose stories to tell. The goal of our lab’s research is to “reverse engineer” the core mechanisms by which employing such cognitive tools enable humans to learn and communicate more effectively. Our recent work focuses on visual communication, one of our most basic and versatile tools, because it also represents a key challenge for understanding how multiple cognitive systems interact to support complex, natural behaviors. This talk will highlight our recent progress, as well as open research questions in this domain.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 07 Dec 2020 11:22:51 -0500 2020-12-07T14:30:00-05:00 2020-12-07T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Livestream / Virtual Judith Fan
Science Success Series | Growth and Grit: Developing a Mindset for Success (January 27, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/80591 80591-20759748@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 27, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Science Learning Center

What if your ability to succeed in your classes was determined in part before you even stepped into the classroom? What is the one quality you need to overcome adversity academically and in life? This workshop will detail the research of Dr. Carol Dweck and her groundbreaking work on the concept of mindset. Students will learn how to abandon a debilitating fixed mindset in favor of a growth mindset, leading to success in areas they once considered too difficult. The workshop will also introduce students to the research of Dr. Angela Duckworth, and how a growth mindset can lead to the development of grit, an essential characteristic to overcoming our fear of failure.

Register at: myumi.ch/DEDPD

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 11 Jan 2021 11:23:23 -0500 2021-01-27T16:00:00-05:00 2021-01-27T17:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Science Learning Center Workshop / Seminar growth and grit
CogSci Community Mass Meeting! (January 28, 2021 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/81314 81314-20885822@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 28, 2021 5:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

We're having a mass meeting THIS Thursday 5 pm (ET). Join to learn about our board, our planned speaker events, or to ask any questions.

Otherwise, hope you had a good first week!

Mass meeting:
Thursday (1/28) 5-6pm (EST)
https://umich.zoom.us/j/95607140044
Meeting ID: 956 0714 0044

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Rally / Mass Meeting Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:38:12 -0500 2021-01-28T17:00:00-05:00 2021-01-28T18:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Rally / Mass Meeting CSC logo
Cognitive Science Seminar Series: "Aristotle on Light and Vision: An 'Ecological' Interpretation" (February 1, 2021 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/81506 81506-20903714@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 1, 2021 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Philosophy graduate student Sean Costello will give a talk about his work on Aristotle's conception of light and vision, titled "Aristotle on Light and Vision: An 'Ecological' Interpretation."

ABSTRACT
Scholarship on Aristotle's theory of visual perception has traditionally held that Aristotle had a single, static conception of light and that he believed that illumination occurred prior to and independent of the actions of colours. I contend that this view precludes the medium from becoming actually transparent, thus making vision impossible. I here offer an alternative to the traditional interpretation, using contemporary conceptual tools to make good philosophical sense of Aristotle's position. I call my view the 'ecological' interpretation. It postulates two conceptions of light: non-visible mobile propagated light and visible static illumination produced by the interaction of propagated light with the environment's coloured textured surfaces. I argue that these contemporary conceptual tools can find a foothold in and consistently enrich Aristotle's extant position and that, with their aid, we can restore coherence to his theories of light and vision.

Please visit the Cognitive Science Seminar Series website for Zoom access information.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 29 Jan 2021 13:29:32 -0500 2021-02-01T14:30:00-05:00 2021-02-01T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Lecture / Discussion
Science Success Series | Make It Stick: Research-Based Learning Strategies You Need to Know (February 3, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/80585 80585-20759746@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 3, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Science Learning Center

The study and learning strategies students often bring to college are often insufficient to help them succeed at the university level. Particularly in challenging STEM courses, students can't simply memorize or cram their way to a good grade. This workshop will focus on the popular learning strategies to avoid, as well as the top three strategies you don't know but are shown by research to be the most effective for long-term learning.

Register at: myumi.ch/885DK

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 11 Jan 2021 11:24:23 -0500 2021-02-03T16:00:00-05:00 2021-02-03T17:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Science Learning Center Workshop / Seminar make it stick
Cognitive Science Seminar Series (February 8, 2021 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/81508 81508-20903719@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 8, 2021 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science

Linguistics graduate student Justin Craft will present "Linguistic and Social Expectation Beyond The Gender Binary," coauthored by Justin T. Craft, Ian Calloway, and Dominique A. Bouavichith.

ABSTRACT
Previous research has demonstrated social information affects listeners’ linguistic decision-making. Strand and Johnson (1996) showed that imputed gender shifts listeners’ sibilant category boundaries. Further research has shown sibilant identity influences listeners’ binary categorization of gender, suggesting social-linguistic bidirectionality (Bouavichith et al., 2019). This study extends this body of literature by investigating how sibilant categorization changes when acoustically masculinized speech is framed within differing social contexts.
Participants completed a lexical decision task, where each word consisted of a synthesized sibilant onset and a naturalistic rime. In Block 1, rimes were minimally manipulated; listeners were told the speaker identified as female during the recording. In Block 2, rimes were masculinized; this manipulation was contextualized in Condition 1 as the speaker’s gender transition and in Condition 2 as digital manipulation.
If sensitive to the use of phonetic variation to convey social meaning, Condition 1 listeners would be more likely than Condition 2 listeners to adopt a categorization strategy in Block 2 consistent with hearing a male-sounding voice (i.e., more likely to categorize ambiguous sibilants as /s/). As expected, Condition 1 participants were more likely to categorize a sibilant as /s/ in Block 2, while Condition 2 participants did not differ across blocks.

Please visit the Cognitive Science Seminar Series website for Zoom access information.

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 04 Feb 2021 14:26:02 -0500 2021-02-08T14:30:00-05:00 2021-02-08T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science Lecture / Discussion