Past speakers

Speaker: Jacqueline Cummine

Speech Pathology & Audiology Department at the University of Alberta

Title: Integrating Behavioural and Neuroimaging Data (functional and structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging) in a Model of Reading br />

Abstract:

Neuroimaging technologies have evolved rapidly over the past 30 years and are prolific in studies of human behaviour. Coupling neuroimaging techniques with behavioural methodology provides a powerful window into the basic process of the human central nervous system; however, the connections among modern imaging measures and traditional behavioural assessments are not well understood. Understanding such relationships is essential to optimize the value of each research approach, and ultimately to provide a methodological platform which serves the development of coherent models of human behaviour. In this presentation, I will be discussing several methods and approaches I have been using to combine behavioural and neuroimaging data within a framework of basic reading processes.

Nov. 19, 2010

Speaker: Vladimir Pravosudov

Department of Biology, University of Nevada Reno

Title: "The Relationship between Environment, Cognition and the Brain: From Natural History to Mechanisms."

Abstract:

Animal species present a great diversity of cognitive skills and associated neural mechanisms and it is likely that both have been shaped by natural selection. My research integrates behavioural ecology with experimental psychology, physiology and neurobiology within an evolutionary framework to better understand both ultimate questions about cognitive function and proximate questions about the underlying mechanisms of cognitive traits.

April 8, 2011

Speaker: Lawrence W. Barsalou

Emory University

Title: “Grounding Knowledge in the Brain’s Modal Systems”

Abstract:

The conceptual system in the brain contains categorical knowledge that supports online processing (perception, categorization, inference, action) and offline processing (memory, language, thought).  Semantic memory, the dominant theory of the conceptual system, typically portrays it as modular and amodal.  According to this approach, amodal symbols represent category knowledge in a modular system, separate from the brain’s modal systems for perception, action, and introspection (e.g., affect, mental states).  Alternatively, the conceptual system can be viewed as non-modular and modal, sharing representational mechanisms with the brain’s modal systems.  On a given occasion, multimodal information about a category's members is reenacted (simulated) across relevant modalities to represent it conceptually.  Behavioral and neural evidence is presented showing that modal simulations contribute to the representation of object categories and abstract categories, and to the symbolic operations of predication and conceptual combination.  Further evidence demonstrates that these simulations are situated, containing information about background situations central to goal-directed action.  Evidence also shows that language as well as simulation plays central roles in conceptual processing.

October 22, 2009 @ CAB 243

Speaker: Stephen Hart

Simon Fraser University

Title: “Psychopathy and Violence Risk: How Accurate are Violence Risk Assessments Made Using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)?

Abstract:

The PCL-R is one of the most widely used psychometric instruments in the field of clinical-forensic psychology. One of the primary applications of the PCL-R is in violence risk assessment, an application supported by extensive research on the association between psychopathy and crime. But to what extent can evaluators use the PCL-R to make accurate quantitative estimates of violence risk? This talk will analyze conceptual and statistical problems underlying the question and provide some tentative answers. The discussion is relevant to any situation in which psychologists try to make decisions in individual cases based on psychometric tests or research findings.

November 20, 2009

Speakers: Nancy Galambos, Elena Nicoladis, Cyrus Shaoul, Chris Sturdy

University of Alberta - Psychology Department

Title: Forum on work-life balance

Abstract:

Faculty and graduate students in the Department of Psychology will discuss issues surrounding work-life balance. Speakers will share tips and strategies for achieving or maintaining a work-life balance, especially as a grad student. Topics may include: how to manage specific time periods in your career, time management in general, strategies and tips for grad students, starting a family/strategies for balancing family life as an academic, healthy work-life ratio: what is it and how to get it.

March 5, 2010

Wendy Rodgers

University of Alberta, Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation

“Health Behaviour Performance and Change: Relationships with Perceptions of Control and Self-Determination”

Abstract:

The idea that high levels of perceived control influences behavioural adoption and persistence is prominent in social-cognitive and motivational theories. ‘Perceptions of control’ have been multiply interpreted and operationalized with respect to health behaviour change. Prominent among these interpretations is the idea of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986). The extent to which self-efficacy, perceived control and other conceptualizations of control are redundant, however, has yet to be firmly established. Beginning with a micro-theoretical approach, adhering to the tenets of both self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986) and theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) we can empirically distinguish self-efficacy from perceived behavioural control and behavioural difficulty (Rodgers et al., 2008b). In terms of producing a long-term behaviour change, however, it is necessary to think of more than the elemental aspects of a behaviour (Maddux, 1993). By isolating specific behavioural subsets associated with long-term behaviour adherence, can we better identify better targets for intervention? Development of behavioural specific self-efficacy (Rodgers et al., 2008a) is useful in determining intervention needs and also in examining the unfolding of behavioural adoption from a phase specific perspective (Scholz et al., 2000). Both the determination of key behavioural sub-components and relevant phases are somewhat contentious (cf. Sutton, 2005), but worthy of consideration if behavioural adoption is an adaptive process.

April 9, 2009 @ 2pm in BS P226

Niko Troje

Queen’s University

“All creatures great and small: Visual detection of animate motion”

November 23, 2007 @ 3pm in BS M145

Liam Ennis

University of Alberta, Alberta Hospital Edmonton

“The Science of Violence Risk Assessment”

December 7, 2007 @ 3pm in BS P226

Bob Uttl                               &                 Amy Siegenthaler

Red Deer College                                  Lifemark Health

“Factors Influencing Size of Age-Related Declines in Prospective Memory”

Abstract:

We rely upon prospective memory proper (ProMP) to bring back to awareness previously-formed plans and intentions at the right place and time, for example, a plan to buy groceries as we drive by a supermarket.  ProMP is distinguished from other subdomains of prospective memory (ProM) such as vigilance and habitual ProM. We conducted a meta-analysis of thirty years of research to determine the size of age-related differences in ProM and the factors that modulate the size of such age-effects using graphical and modeling methods as well as more traditional meta-analytic methods.  Our key findings reveal substantial age declines in ProM, but the size of age declines depends on ProM subdomain.  Specifically, age declines in ProM Proper are much larger than age declines in vigilance.  Surprisingly, the review also revealed a number of severe methodological problems with previous research on ProM including poor reliability, poor validity, prevalent ceiling effects, and frequent age confounds in study designs that invalidate findings of many previous studies. Thus, contrary to some claims in the literature, our findings demonstrate conclusively that there are substantial age-related declines in ProM and that magnitude of such declines depends on ProM subdomain.

November 3, 2006 @ 3pm in BS P226

Paul Vasey

University of Lethbridge                            

“Same-Sex Sexual Behaviour and Sexual Partner Preference In Female Japanese Macaques: Behavioural and Neuroanatomical Research”

Abstract:

Japanese macaques represent excellent models for examining issues related to sexual partner preference in animals because unmanipulated females, in certain captive and free-ranging populations, routinely engage in both heterosexual and homosexual behavior over the course of their life spans. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that female homosexual behavior in Japanese macaques is a sexual behavior, not a sociosexual one. Additional evidence indicates that female Japanese macaques do not engage in homosexual behavior simply because acceptable male mates are unavailable or unmotivated to copulate. Patterns of sexual partner choice by female Japanese macaques that are the focus of intersexual (male-female) sexual competition indicate that females of this species choose same-sex sexual partners even when they are simultaneously presented with a motivated, opposite-sex alternative. Thus, in some populations of Japanese macaques, females prefer certain same-sex sexual partners relative to certain male mates, and vice versa. Taken together, this evidence suggests that female Japanese macaques, in certain populations, are best characterized as bisexual in orientation, not preferentially homosexual or preferentially heterosexual. Previous research on humans and unmanipulated domestic sheep has demonstrated that sex-atypical sexual partner preference is associated with sex-atypical nuclei (the human INAH3 and sheep oSDN) in the medial pre-optic anterior hypothalamus (MPO-AH). In contrast, similar research indicates that female Japanese macaques do not possess sex-atypical nuclei in the MPO-AH, despite their potential for sex-atypical sexual partner preference.

October 20, 2005 @ 3:30pm in BS P121

Penny Pexman

University of Calgary                            

“Meaning in Mind: What Cow and Camel Can Tell us About Semantic Representation”

Abstract:

One of the great puzzles in cognitive science is the nature of semantic representation: how is meaning represented in the mind? One proposal is that meanings, at least for concrete entities, are represented by activation of semantic primitives, or features (e.g., McRae, Seidenberg, & de Sa, 1997). This approach has been controversial but has had some success explaining various aspects of semantic processing and also characteristics of category-specific semantic impairment. As a way of further testing this proposal, I have been investigating number of features effects. That is, in a feature-listing task, participants will list many features for some concrete concepts (e.g., cow) and fewer for others (e.g., camel). Results of several experiments show that high number of features words are recognized more quickly than low number of features words in various lexical and semantic tasks. Further, these number of features effects are observed for both word and picture stimuli. Implications for theories of semantic representation are discussed.

November 3, 2005 @ 3:30pm in BS P121

Henderikus Stam

University of Calgary                            

“‘Starting out from the facts of the human consciousness:’ Sentience and the history of animal psychology”

Abstract:

In our recent fascination with consciousness in psychology, sentience rarely receives more than a token acknowledgement.  In this talk I discuss a history of sentience in psychology in so far as that history is embedded in a history of animal experimentation and the conceptualization of the animal as a repository of psychological attributes.  What is it that a sentient creature that is not human can teach us about a human psychology?  And what does it mean to be sentient?  I argue that not all such questions are settled by evolution or neurophysiology and the questions of sentience raise the problem of anthropomorphism as a form of empathy.

November 3, 2005 @ 3:30pm in BS P121

Ron Weisman

Queen’s University                          

“The Comparative Psychology of Absolute Pitch”

Abstract:

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify, classify, and memorize pitches without an external referent. Musical AP adds the further requirement of pitch naming in the notation of Western music. Here, I consider the more general kind of AP, without the requirement of note naming. I report several experiments in which two mammals, (humans and rats), a songbird, (zebra finches), and a parrot, (budgerigars), discriminated and categorized individual tones or ranges of tones. As the discriminations became more difficult, the avian species, who learn their vocalizations, maintained highly accurate AP but the mammals slipped from lackluster to nonexistent AP. The findings illustrate Darwin's hypothesis (The Descent of Man, 1874) that quantitative differences in mental abilities can eventually produce differences in kind among species.

November 2003

Rob Wilson

University of Alberta                           

“Essentialism and Nativism in the Biological and Cognitive Sciences”

Abstract:

This talk sketches a novel view of how we should understand nativist debates in the biological and cognitive sciences.  The basic idea is that, in contrast to nearly all other approaches, we need to recognize two distinct dimensions to nativism, not one (the traditional view) or many (as the philosopher Fiona Cowie and psychologist Frank Keil have both suggested more recently).  We can use this approach to understand many particular debates, including those within developmental psychology over the theory of mind and "psychological essentialism".  In this connection, we will examine some recent work on psychological essentialism, including that of Francisco Gil-White on race and ethnicity, and that of Susan Gelman.

March 2004

Geoffrey Loftus

University of Washington                    

“Why is it Easier to Identify Someone Close than Far Away?”

Abstract:

On October 10, 1997, a gang of hoodlums in Fairbanks Alaska committed a number of acts of mayhem that left one person dead and another badly wounded. Eventually, four men were arrested and tried for the crimes. The prosecution's case against them rested primarily on the testimony of an eyewitness who claimed to have watched the defendants as they beat up one of the victims. A major issue, from the defense's perspective, was that the eyewitness's position was 450 feet (approximately 150 meters) away from the perpetrators. This is pretty far. I served as an expert witness in this case and the experience prompted me to seek ways in which one could represent—to a jury or to the scientific community—what specific information is lost to the visual system (and hence not encodable in memory) when an observer is some particular distance from a person whose appearance they are trying to encode. I will talk about how I have solved this problem and about experiments that confirm my solution to it.

March 2004

Fred Conrad

US Bureau of Labor Statistics               

“Survey Error”

2000-2001

Gretchen Hess

University of Alberta             

N/A

2000-2001

Walter Bischof

“Seeing over time: On the temporal characteristics of vision”

September 12, 1997

Chris Paniak

“Concussion: Research and clinical practice”

October 10, 1997

John Mills

University of Saskatchewan                   

“On the outside looking in: Writing the history of psychology”

Abstract:

Professor Mills will discuss various approaches to the writing of history with specific reference to behaviorism. He will deal with positivism, intellectual (or internalist) history, and contextualist history. He will end by demonstrating that the writing of histories of psychology, if pursued in a thorough-going fashion, result in a transformation of the subject matter of those histories.

November 21, 1997

Mark Gierl

“Implications of Cognitive Psychology for Educational Measurement: A Case for Differential Item Functioning Statistics”

Abstract:

Large-scale achievement testing is pervasive in Canada today. At the provincial level, 9 of the 10 provinces have large-scale achievement testing programs. At the national level, the Council of Ministers of Education conduct national assessments in language arts, mathematics, and science. At the international level, Canada has participated in many comparative studies that use achievement test outcomes, the most recent being the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. In these types of assessments, differential item functioning (DIF) is a constant concern. DIF occurs in an item when examinees from separate groups (e.g., males vs. females or anglophones vs. francophones) but of equal ability on the construct measured by the test have a different probability of answering the item correctly (Angoff, 1993; Holland and Thayer, 1988). DIF may occur because a test item is flawed; DIF may reflect actual performance differences between groups; or DIF may result from an interaction between these two factors. The psychometric literature contains an arsenal of statistical methods for identifying DIF. The three most frequently used methods are based on item response theory, contingency tables, and logistic regression. And yet despite the use of these methods, researchers and practitioners consistently agree that it is unusually difficult to account for "large" DIF, as identified with statistical analyses, across the groups being compared (Angoff, 1993; Camilli & Shepard, 1994; O'Neill & McPeek, 1993). This outcome may be attributable to statistical Type I error or to complex sources of item difficulty that cannot be interpreted using the judgments of content experts who are asked to study the DIF items and to identify why these items are more difficult for one group of examinees compared to another. In short, experience and research has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, to interpret DIF effects psychologically across groups using existing judgmental approaches. These outcomes also suggest that differential item functioning may only be explained when the cognitive processes and knowledge used by examinees within different groups are examined as they respond to items that are associated with "large" DIF. To address this problem, a new program of research will be presented to investigate the psychology behind differential item functioning.

December 5, 1997

James Enns

University of British Columbia

“Perception With and Without Attention”

Abstract:

We open our eyes and see a rich visual world filled with shape, color, and texture. At least we think we do. Examination of the amateur photographs we take often shows that our conscious brain is blissfully unaware of objects and relationships that are faithfully recorded on our retinas. In my laboratory, we have been studying the consequences of attention and inattention on such phenomena as visual masking and perceptual grouping. Different rules seem to apply to the perception of attended and unattended events.

January 23, 1998

Stevan Harnard

University of Southampton

“Categorisation, Communication and Cognition: On the Advantages of Symbolic Theft Over Sensorimotor Toil”

Abstract:

To categorise is to respond one way to some kinds of things and another way to other kinds. This is a very general ability that we all have, covering everything from the frog catching flies and the rat pressing levers to the chess master pondering how to respond to a chess move and the physicist inferring the existence of quarks. Each is carving out a chunk of the blooming, buzzing confusion reaching the senses and marking it with a response, of which an arbitrary name, a symbol, is potentially the most powerful. For once a set of symbols is directly connected to the things they stand for through trial and error guided by corrective feedback ("toil"), further categories can now be formed in two ways: (1) as before, by interacting directly with the things the symbols stand for, through sensorimotor toil, or (2) by interacting instead with other categorisers, based on combining and recombining the names of lower-order categories into propositions describing new higher-order categories ("theft"). I will describe the results of experiments on category learning by people and will then compare the toil and theft strategies in artificial life simulations that show the advantages of symbolic theft over sensorimotor toil.

March 23, 1998

Doug Wahlsten

University of Alberta

“The false alarm raised by the genetic clapper in &QUOTThe Bell Curve&QUOT”

September, 1995

Bob Sinclair

University of Alberta

“Affective state and judgmental processes: Good moods can be bad and bad moods can be good”

October, 1995

Mike Dawson

University of Alberta

“Affective state and judgmental processes: Good moods can be bad and bad moods can be good”

Abstract:

Classical cognitive scientists have been primarily inspired by the Turing machine, which provides a complete and powerful description of what it means to be doing "information processing". But Alan Perlis writes "Beware the Turing tar-pit, where everything is possible, but nothing is easy." Connectionists have heeded this warning, and have tried to endorse a qualitatively different notion of "information processing". This move, too, has been fraught with problems. In particular, they have become mired in the Connectionist goo of their networks, which prevents network interpretation, and thus diminishes the impact of Connectionist theories.

My students and I have rashly entered this fray by working on methods for interpreting connectionist networks. In this talk, I will describe how cognitive neuropsychology can be informed by such techniques, by talking about the relationship between another sticky problem -- the "locality assumption" -- and lesions applied to an interpreted network?

Do we come out with sticky fingers? Let the audience be the judge!

November, 1995

Kevin Dunbar

McGill University

“How scientists think, reason, and make discoveries”

Abstract:

The Department of Psychology and the Centre for Research in Child Development are pleased to announce Dr. Dunbar's participation in the PSYCHOQUIUM, a monthly colloquium series organized by graduate students in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Dunbar is a cognitive psychologist who is studying how scientists reason and solve problems in their scientific work. He has studied scientists in four molecular biology laboratories by observing laboratory meetings, interviewing participants, and examining drafts of papers and grant proposals. Using these data, he is building an account of the cognitive and social processes that are involved in reasoning, problem solving, and the generation of scientific discoveries. In his presentation, he will focus on (a) how scientists use unexpected findings, heuristics and analogies to formulate new hypotheses, and (b) how social and cognitive mechanisms interact when scientists reason in groups. Finally, Dr. Dunbar will argue that high-level cognitive processes can and should be investigated using a both in vivo and in vitro methods, just as this combination is used to study basic processes in other disciplines.

December, 1995

Vince DiLollo

University of Alberta

“How the visual brain makes up it's mind”

Abstract:

From the time a stimulus first enters the eye to the time a perception emerges into consciousness, the initial stimulus has been encoded at several levels through the visual system. Models of visual information processing have attempted to specify the temporal sequence of the encoding events, and to describe the underlying mechanisms. In traditional models (e.g., Selfridge's "pandemonium", Craik & Lockhart's "levels of processing"), the sequence of events was deemed to be unidirectional: processing is said to take place discretely at each level, and to be then transferred to the next level.

I consider -- and provide neuroanatomical and psychophysical evidence for -- the option that processing is accomplished through iterative exchanges amongst levels. On this option, an initial wave of stimulation ascends rapidly through the system, followed by descending signals between levels. The descending pathways form part of an iterative-loop system aimed at reducing noise and establishing the most plausible perceptual interpretation of the incoming stimulus.

January, 1996

Frank Epling

University of Alberta

“Activity Anorexia: Research and Theory”

Abstract:

When rats are fed one meal a day and allowed (not required) to run on an activity wheel, they run excessively, stop eating and die of starvation. Convergent evidence from several different research areas, indicates that the behavior of these animals and human anorexic patients is in many cases functionally similar. Research supporting this contention is presented and a biobehavioral theory of activity anorexia is detailed.

February, 1996

Tim Tully

Cold Spring Harbour Lab

“The biology of long term memory formation: It's the rest”

Abstract:

Dr. Tully's work is primarily concerned with long-term memory formation. A feature of memory formation across the animal kingdom is its progression from a short-lived labile form to a long-lasting stable form. During this period of consolidation, memory can be disrupted by a variety of amnesiac-inducing agents. Recent work by Dr. Tully on the genetics of learning and memory formation in Drosophila has greatly increased the understanding of this topic. Dr.Tully will present evidence that there at least two genetically distinct forms of consolidated memory and that the basis for long-term memory formation is a permanent protein change at the synapse, probably mediated by CREB family genes. Dr. Tully and colleagues have also recently shown that it is possible to enhance the long-term memory of flies through genetic manipulation. The possible universality of this model is strengthened by cross-species comparisons indicating that cAMP-responsive transcription is a evolutionarily conserved molecular switch involved in the consolidation of short-term memory to long-term memory. Dr. Tully's other interests include a variety of topics in behavior genetics, including the effects of pleiotropic gene action and gene interactions (epistasis) on behavior and structure-function relationships in nervous system gene expression.

March, 1996

Don Kuiken

University of Alberta

“Why unity in psychology is intellectually dangerous”

April, 1996