coggroup October 2017

coggroup@mx1.psych.mcgill.ca

2 participants
6 discussions

[Coggroup] CRAM Session: Friday, November 3
by Mehrgol Tiv 03 Nov '17

03 Nov '17

Dear all, Dr. Mathieu Roy (McGill Psychology) will be speaking at the CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) Session this Friday, November 3, 11:45-12:45 PM (Room 735, 2001 McGill College). His talk is titled, "Pain’s impact on attention, learning, and decision-making" For a full abstract, see below the dashed line. Please join us at this event! The full speaker list can be found here<https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series>. —————————————————— Pain’s impact on attention, learning, and decision-making Mathieu Roy, McGill Psychology Pain signals the presence of an urgent threat of injury; it calls for our complete attention and commands immediate action. Moreover, pain also marks an error in the long chain of decisions that ultimately led to it, and therefore compels us to reassess our future actions. Pain’s effects thus resonate far beyond the immediate painful experience: anticipation of future pain based on past painful experiences influences our current decisions, mood, and pain sensitivity. In this presentation, I will present the results of recent experiments we have conducted on pain’s behavioral function (attention, learning, and decision-making). ___________________________________ Mehrgol Tiv Ph.D. Student, Psychology, McGill University Language and Multilingualism Lab *mehrgoltiv.com<http://mehrgoltiv.com>

1 1

[Coggroup] Special talk on Bilingual Reading, Professor Anat Prior, Friday, 3:30-5, 2001 McGill College Ave, room 735
by dtitone 03 Nov '17

03 Nov '17

Dear colleagues, Please see the following link for a special talk on Bilingual Reading by Professor Anat Prior (University of Haifa), **this coming Friday** at 3:30-5pm, at 2001 McGill College Ave., Room 735.. The title and abstract for Professor Prior's talk are at the following link. http://crblm.ca/invited-speaker-anat-prior-university-of-haifa/ If you are interested in meeting with Professor Prior, please contact me. There will likely be a graduate student lunch with her at 1 pm on Friday, and dinner Friday evening. Space will be limited in both, but let me know if you are interested by the end of the day. Best, Debra Titone —— Debra Titone, Ph.D. Professor Graduate Program Director Department of Psychology McGill University 514-398-1778 dtitone(a)psych.mcgill.ca

1 1

[Coggroup] CRAM Session: Friday, October 27
by Mehrgol Tiv 27 Oct '17

27 Oct '17

Dear all, Dr. Thomas Shultz (McGill Psychology & School of Computer Science) will be speaking at the CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) Session this Friday, October 27, 11:45-12:45 PM (Room 735, 2001 McGill College). His talk is titled, "Understanding the spread of innovation in wild birds: the importance of undecided states" For a full abstract, see below the dashed line. Please join us at this event! The full speaker list can be found here<https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series>. —————————————————— "Understanding the spread of innovation in wild birds: the importance of undecided states" Thomas Shultz, McGill University This talk discusses application of computational and mathematical models to recent experiments on social learning in wild birds, with comparisons of three distinct algorithms. Although some of the phenomena are simulated by all three learning algorithms, several manifestations of social conformity bias are simulated by only the Approximate Majority (AM) algorithm, which has roots in chemistry, molecular biology, and theoretical computer science. The simulations and mathematical analyses generate testable predictions and provide several explanatory insights into the diffusion of innovation through a population. AM’s success is based on its unique ability to convert agents from decided to undecided states, and raises the possibility of its usefulness in studying group dynamics more generally, in several different scientific domains and a variety of species. This work is the first application of AM in behavioural science and features a style of computer simulation (agent-based modeling) that is largely unknown in psychology. ___________________________________ Mehrgol Tiv Ph.D. Student, Psychology, McGill University Language and Multilingualism Lab *mehrgoltiv.com<http://mehrgoltiv.com>

1 1

[Coggroup] CRAM Session: Friday, October 20
by Mehrgol Tiv 20 Oct '17

20 Oct '17

Dear all, Dr. Ross Otto (McGill Psychology) will be speaking at the CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) Session this Friday, October 20, 11:45-12:30 PM (Room 735, 2001 McGill College). His talk is titled, "The Interplay between Prediction Errors, Twitter Mood, and Real-World Gambling” For a full abstract, see below the dashed line. Please join us at this event! The full speaker list can be found here<https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series>. —————————————————— "The Interplay between Prediction Errors, Twitter Mood, and Real-World Gambling” Ross Otto, McGill University A growing body of work reveals how unexpected positive outcomes can alter risk attitudes, presumably through changes in moods, resulting in increased risk-taking behavior. Moreover, the effect of these positive outcomes upon mood appears to be nuanced: an outcome exerts a stronger effect when it is unexpected rather than expected, and this manifests in both affective experience and momentary, subjective well-being. Here we examine how real-world unexpected outcomes can shift mood states which are observable at the level of a city, in turn predicting changes in consequential risk-taking behaviour. By analyzing mood language extracted from millions of daily, location-specific Twitter messages, we examine how real-world 'prediction errors' predict day-to-day mood states observable at the level of a city. Studying US six cities over two years, we reveal that day-to-day fluctuations in Twitter-inferred mood states could be predicted by prediction errors stemming from local sports and weather outcomes. These mood states in turn predicted increased per-person lottery gambling rates in a subset of these cities for which we could measure gambling rates, revealing for the first time the real-world interplay between prediction errors, moods, and risk attitudes. Our results demonstrate that fluctuations in mood states underlying real-world risk-taking behavior can be measured through social media. ___________________________________ Mehrgol Tiv Ph.D. Student, Psychology, McGill University Language and Multilingualism Lab *mehrgoltiv.com<http://mehrgoltiv.com>

1 2

[Coggroup] No CRAM Session Today
by Mehrgol Tiv 13 Oct '17

13 Oct '17

Dear all, Kind reminder that there will be no CRAM session today due to the Hebb lecture this afternoon. McGill’s own Dr. Frances Aboud will be delivering the Homecoming Hebb lecture at 3:30 PM in the McIntyre Medical Building (Room 522). The abstract for her talk is included below, and additional information about the lecture series can be found here<https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/hebb-lecture-series>. The CRAM sessions will recommence next week. —————————————————————————————— The McGill Ethiopia Salt Project: effects of iodizing salt on children’s cognitive functioning Abstract: Insufficient iodine in one’s diet is thought to be the main cause of preventable cognitive delay around the world. Most countries lack environmental iodine; some add it to salt, though many people still buy un-iodized salt. What impact is this having on children’s ability to learn and think? Ethiopia did not produce iodized salt until 2011 when legislation was passed to make all salt iodized. This provided an opportunity to conduct a cluster randomized effectiveness study to examine the effects on cognitive development of introducing iodized salt to infants and to children 4 to 6 years of age in Ethiopia, where there were reportedly high levels of iodine deficiency. The challenges of randomizing villages, monitoring the gradual fortification and distribution of iodized salt, measuring cognitive development in infants and preschool-aged children, transporting a team of local research assistants across the mountains of Amhara, and reporting results back to the government were managed. Findings show that even in a resource-poor setting, where children lack adequate nutrition and psychosocial stimulation, iodized salt benefits children’s cognitive functioning. ___________________________________ Mehrgol Tiv Ph.D. Student, Psychology, McGill University Language and Multilingualism Lab *mehrgoltiv.com<http://mehrgoltiv.com>

1 0

[Coggroup] CRAM Session: Friday, October 6
by Mehrgol Tiv 06 Oct '17

06 Oct '17

Dear all, Dr. Francesca Capozzi (McGill Psychology), a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Jelena Ristic, will be speaking at the CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) Session this Friday, October 6, 11:45-12:45 PM (Room 735, 2001 McGill College). Her talk is titled, “As many as you can: Social attention in groups and multi-agent contexts" For a full abstract, see below the dashed line. Please join us at this event! The full speaker list can be found here<https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series>. ———————————————— “As many as you can: Social attention in groups and multi-agent contexts” Francesca Capozzi, McGill University Humans spontaneously pay attention to social cues displayed by other people: for example, we look at their faces to grasp their emotions, and we follow their gaze to look where they are looking and to foresee their intentions. Remarkably, however, this “social attention” has so far mostly been investigated in dyadic social settings, that is, situations where two individuals interact. On the contrary, little is presently known on how social attention operates to support social interactions in multi-agent contexts, that is, situations where more than two individuals are present. In these multi-agent settings, multiple people might display multiple and often divergent social cues: how does attention respond to such cues? In this talk, I will present some of my past and current works on this frontier topic, particularly focusing on small social groups (i.e., three-five people interacting, like at a family dinner), a fundamental unit of our everyday social life. I will show how social attention processes change dynamically as the complexity of the social context change. I will also discuss some future directions that will contribute to revealing the mechanisms through which social attention remains a powerful tool to navigate our complex social world. ___________________________________ Mehrgol Tiv Ph.D. Student, Psychology, McGill University Language and Multilingualism Lab *mehrgoltiv.com<http://mehrgoltiv.com>

1 2

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

coggroup October 2017