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A Triton Day Take-over

by Jeremy B. Karnowski


Triton Day 2012 was marked by an outpouring of departmental participation, as Cognitive Science undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and staff spent their Saturday showcasing the interdisciplinary research of the department. The booth highlighted the many ways Cognitive Science approaches the study of the mind, having demonstrations of concepts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and human computer interaction. (more)



Kiang, M., Christensen, B.K., Kutas, M., Zipursky, R.B., Electrophysiological evidence for primary semantic memory functional organization deficits in schizophrenia, Psychiatry Research, 2012, DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2012.02.026
N400, an event-related brain potential (ERP) waveform elicited by meaningful stimuli, is normally reduced by stimulus repetition (N400 repetition priming), and relatedness between the eliciting stimulus and preceding ones (relatedness priming). Schizophrenia patients' N400 relatedness priming deficits suggest impairment in using meaningful prime stimuli to facilitate processing of related concepts in semantic memory. To examine whether this deficiency arises from difficulty activating the prime concept per se, as indexed by reduced N400 repetition priming; or from impaired functional connections among concepts in semantic memory, as reflected by reduced relatedness priming but normal repetition priming; we recorded ERPs from 16 schizophrenia patients and 16 controls who viewed prime words each followed at 300- or 750-ms stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) by an unrelated, related or repeated target word, or a nonword, in a lexical-decision task. In both groups, N400s were largest (most negative) for unrelated, intermediate for related, and smallest for repeated targets. Schizophrenia patients exhibited subnormal N400 relatedness priming at the 300-ms SOA, but normal repetition priming at both SOAs, suggesting that their impairment in using primewords to activate related concepts results from abnormal functional connections among concepts within semantic memory, rather than inability to activate the prime concept itself.
Saygin, A.P. & Stadler. W. (2012) The role of visual appearance in action prediction. Psychological Research. In Press.
We used a novel stimulus set of human and robot actions to explore the role of humanlike appearance and motion in action prediction. Participants viewed videos of familiar actions performed by three agents: human, android and robot, the former two sharing human appearance, the latter two nonhuman motion. In each trial, the video was occluded for 400 ms. Participants were asked to determine whether the action continued coherently (in-time) after occlusion. The timing at which the action continued was early, late, or in-time (100, 700 or 400 ms after the start of occlusion). Task performance interacted with the observed agent. For early continuations, accuracy was highest for human, lowest for robot actions. For late continuations, the pattern was reversed. Both android and human conditions differed significantly from the robot condition. Given the robot and android conditions had the same kinematics, the visual form of the actor appears to affect action prediction. We suggest that the selection of the internal sensorimotor model used for action prediction is influenced by the observed agent's appearance.
DeLong, K.A, Groppe, D.M., Urbach, T.P., Kutas, M., Thinking ahead or not? Natural aging and anticipation during reading, Brain and Language, 2012, DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2012.02.006
Despite growing evidence of young adults neurally pre-activating word features during sentence comprehension, less clear is the degree to which this generalizes to older adults. Using ERPs, we tested for linguistic prediction in younger and older readers by means of indefinite articles (a’s and an’s) preceding more and less probable noun continuations. Although both groups exhibited cloze probability-graded noun N400s, only the young showed significant article effects, indicating probabilistic sensitivity to the phonology of anticipated upcoming nouns. Additionally, both age groups exhibited prolonged increased frontal positivities to less probable nouns, although in older adults this effect was prominent only in a subset with high verbal fluency (VF). This ERP positivity to contextual constraint violations offers additional support for prediction in the young. For high VF older adults, the positivity may indicate they, too, engage in some form of linguistic pre-processing when implicitly cued, as may have occurred via the articles.

Featured Classes
2nd Summer Session 2012:
  • COGS160: Creativity in Ethnography
    How can we do ethnography in artistic environments? Dance rehearsals are fuzzy and apparently messy social settings. Given the complexity of social interaction, a reflexive and structured methodology makes a difference in getting valid results. This course is a practicum in ethnography for developing a methodology for dance cognition & creativity. At a theoretical level, we will be covering modern topics in Cognitive Science, such as body skill, physical thinking and multimodal instruction. At a practical level, students will go through the methodological steps of a real ethnography of dance. We will provide access to the ICL unique video archive we collected in the making of Dyad1909 (2009) and FAR (2010), which premièred in London, at the Sadlers Wells Theater. We will dwell on the specific do’s and dont’s of using the digital camera for data gathering, and the implications of using visual analysis software. In all, this class is a hands-on experience for students who are interested in qualitative research of professional teams. We provide the students with skills for observation, interviewing, transcription, and coding in an artistic field.

Research Opportunities (199s)
  • Research on Aging and Development Laboratory
    EEG/ERP Studies of Sensory and Attentional Processing in Typical and Atypical Development. We are studying attention and sensory processing in children and adults with typical and atypical development (e.g., autism). Students will learn to design experiments and collect and analyze Event-Related Potential (ERP) data. Each quarter's emphasis will be slightly ...
    (click for details)
  • Thinking and Driving
    Why does talking on a cellular phone lead to distracted driving? Is it the device itself or the conversation? What specific cognitive impairments do each cause? Is it different when you're talking to a passenger? The Language and Cognition Lab (http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~bkbergen/lcl/) is looking for outstanding students interested in getting involved ...
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  • Emotion processing tasks in children and adolescents
    A number of brain regions have been linked to emotion processing, perception, and expression in EEG and functional imaging studies. However, structural correlates of these processes are not well understood, and individual differences in the development of these processes are even less clear. One potential obstacle to understanding these developmental ...
    (click for details)
  • Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Acquisition and Word Processing
    We study how the brain processes words on a very fine spatiotemporal scale. We use neurophysiological methods including magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG), and intracranial recordings, where electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain in patients undergoing surgery for the treatment of epilepsy. We also work with structural ...
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  • Event Memory in Spanish-English Bilinguals
    People witness, experience, and describe hundreds of events every day. These events are then encoded into memory and recalled as needed. This project focuses on the factors which can affect this encoding and subsequent recall. We are specifically interested in the extent to which speaking a particular language--Spanish or English--can ...
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  • Sound recognition in language
    The Language Acquisition & Sound Research lab is seeking enthusiastic, motivated, and reliable undergraduate research assistants to assist with a study. The study investigates how different people interpret sounds when processing language. Successful applicants will receive course credit and gain valuable experience with language research! Interested students should contact Carolyn ...
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  • Project on bilingual language development: Spanish-English bilingual researchers needed!!
    Are children really better than adults at learning languages, and why? Learning even one language presents a challenge: children must figure out what sounds are meaningfully different and what sounds are not. This gets very complicated when children grow up learning more than one language! Researchers are very interested in ...
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  • Developing an Interactive, Intelligent System for Second Language Learning and Teaching on the Web
    Learning a second language is difficult, and we want to help make it easier. As a 199 research assistant, you would have the opportunity to participate in the development of a new online system for second language learning. We are using tools from computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, ...
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  • Speech perception and organization in bilinguals
    The Language Acquisition & Sound Research lab is seeking enthusiastic, motivated, and reliable undergraduate research assistants to assist with a study. The study investigates how different people (monolinguals and bilinguals) interpret sounds when processing language. Successful applicants will receive course credit and gain valuable experience with language research! If interested, ...
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  • Language Development and Remediation in Children
    We are evaluating two interventions for dyslexia that involve training the temporal dynamics of the visual system (magnocellular pathway) and the auditory system, and whether the two interventions together have super-additive effects. As a Research Assistant, you would be traveling to one or two of five participating local elementary schools ...
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  • Human-Centered Driver Assistance Systems
    The Laboratory for Intelligent and Safe Automobiles (LISA) is a multidisciplinary effort to explore innovative approaches to making future automobiles safer and "intelligent". Our research considers issues in sensing, analysis, modeling, and prediction of parameters associated with drivers, occupants, vehicle dynamics and vehicle surroundings as well as transportation infrastructures. This ...
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  • Speech Accents and Production Errors
    Human speech proceeds at an extremely rapid rate. In order to successfully understand language, the comprehension system must be able to extract meaning from speech as quickly as it comes in. To some extent, speech comprehension thus must involve predicting upcoming words and the information they convey before they have ...
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  • Language Development Project
    Get involved with eyetracking studies that explore language development in children. Duties will include testing children and adults in eyetracking and behavioral studies, recruiting children, data entry, preparing experimental stimuli, and attending lab meetings.
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  • Psycholinguistic research
    Computational Psycholinguistics Lab. We study how language comprehension unfolds in real time through psycholinguistic experiments. Duties include preparing experimental sentences, recruiting participants, running experiments, compiling results and assisting with analysis. Training is provided on these tasks, and you will learn a lot about both the structure of language and human ...
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  • Temperament and emotion in adolescents
    A number of brain regions have been linked to emotion processing, perception, and expression in EEG and functional imaging studies. However, structural correlates of these processes are not well understood, and individual differences in the development of these processes are even less clear. The Center for Human Development is looking ...
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Recent News & Links (see all)


Ingrid Olson - Social Memory

Job talk in CSB 003. Wed. May 9th @ noon


ECE Design Competition

The ECE Department and Rady School of Management invite you to participate in the ECE Design Competition.


Department Events (see all)

Wa! Speaker Series

Mon, May 21st, 12:00pm-1:00pm
(4 days, 22 hours from now)


Anders Dale (CogSci Distinguished Speaker)

ANDERS M. DALE, PhD
Multimodal Imaging Laboratory
Department of Neuroscience and Radiology
University of California, San Diego

Please direct questions to: Burcu A. Urgen (burgen@ucsd.edu) or Tim Mullen (tmullen@ucsd.edu)
(click for details)

Mon, May 21st, 1:00pm-2:00pm
(4 days, 23 hours from now)


CRL talk

Tue, May 22nd, 4:00pm-5:00pm (CSB 280)
(6 days, 2 hours from now)


Wa! Speaker Series

Mon, May 28th, 12:00pm-1:00pm
(1 week, 4 days from now)


CRL talk

Tue, May 29th, 4:00pm-5:00pm (CSB 280)
(1 week, 6 days from now)


Campus-wide Events (see all)

Sarah Creel (iDEV talk)

Seen and not heard? How children learn to recognize voices

A popular account of speech-sound acquisition suggests that learners converge on native-language perceptual categories in the first year of life. Non-speech variability is attentionally "tuned-out" during speech perception, though it is used for other tasks, like identifying talkers. Thus, learners attentionally tune to different subsets of speech-sound variability in different contexts. My research suggests that voice information and speech-sound information are strongly intertwined, providing a challenge to "tuning out" ...
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Fri, May 18th, 11:00am-12:00pm (Applied Physics & Math Building, Room 4301)
(1 day, 21 hours from now)