Notre Dame Cognitive
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New meeting time: Wed. 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. (talks start at 12:15 p.m.)
If you are interested in cognitive science and want to contribute to our interdisciplinary project of bringing ND cognitive scientists together, feel free to join the ND cognitive science group!
Students interested in cognitive science are particularly welcome!
| Day | Presenter | Title | Abstract/Remarks |
| 09-12 | Laura Carlson Psychology, ND |
TBA | Dr. Carlson will talk about her work investigating the representation and processing of spatial relations and their mapping onto linguistic expressions (i.e., prepositional phrases). She will present a theoretical perspective that is informed by the mathematical modeling of results from her empirical research. |
| 10-10 | William Ramsey Philosophy, ND |
"Philosophical Dimensions of Cognitive Representations: A Critical Look At One Perspective". | For the past 20 years, much of the philosophical work on the foundations of cognitive science has focused on the notion of mental representation. In my talk, I'll try to make a methodological point about this work, and a substantive point about one popular notion of representation in cognitive science. The methodological point is that philosophers have dwelled too much on the issue of representational content, and not enough on the issue of representational function. The substantive point is that when we look closely at questions regarding representational function, certain popular notions of representation in cognitive science begin to look highly dubious. I'll discuss one such notion -- what I'll call the "receptor" notion -- and offer reasons for dropping this notion from theories about the mind. |
| 11-07 | Patrick Flynn CSE, ND |
Local and Global Shape Characterization | The advent of affordable range imaging sensors has fostered a number of emerging application areas such as model-based object recognition, inspection, reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, clothing design, prosthodontic design, orthotic design, and character design for animation. Many applications require (or can exploit) local and global shape descriptions to good effect. This presentation will summarize the speaker's work in (i)local surface characterization based on differential geometry, and (ii) global shape characterization, namely rotational symmetry extraction. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of novel applications that can exploit these shape features. |
| 11-28 | Steve Boker Psychology, ND |
Consequences of continuity: The hunt for intrinsic properties within parameters of dynamics in psychological processes | Click here for abstract |
| 12-12 | Michael Wenger Psychology, ND |
Dynamics of dual retrievals: Initial models and data | A long-standing issue in human memory concerns the extent to which it is possible to perform more than one access of memory at a time. Over the past 10-15 years, data from one particular experimental paradigm has suggested that multiple accesses of memory are possible only in tightly constrained situations, and that, in general, memory retrieval represents a "bottleneck" in cognitive processing. Recently, however, this view has been challenged by data from a novel variation on the standard experimental paradigm. In this talk, I will present an approach to modeling this question, based on linear systems theory, augmented with stochastic elements and decisional operators. The modeling approach is intended to be general, in that it allows for multiple competing hypotheses to be represented using the same theoretical "language." An initial application of this approach shows that it is possible to distinguish, in a reasonably strong manner, competing hypotheses, and to generate data that can be used to develop increasingly refined models of memory retrieval. |