Center for Cognitive Science
The Puzzle of the Mind
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Center for Cognitive Science The Puzzle of the Mind |
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Last Update: 1 April 2009
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in
and are open to the public.
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Background readings for each lecture are available to UB faculty and students on UB Learns. Once you have logged in to UB Learns, select "Center for Cognitive Science", then "Course Documents", then "Background Readings for Spring 2009 Colloquium Series". (Or you can link directly to the background readings.)
If you are affiliated with UB and do not have access to our UBLearns website, please contact Gail Mauner, mauner@buffalo.edu.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Orientation for SSC 391
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Motivated and Medicated Attention:
Insights from Startle Modulation Studies
ABSTRACT:
For many years, cognition and motivation have largely been either considered in isolation or pitted against one another. More recently, psychologists have increasingly explored interactions between the two domains. We have used modulation of the acoustic startle reflex to study this interface. Specifically, we examine prepulse inhibition, the attenuation of the eyeblink startle reflex caused by the presentation of a brief non-startling stimulus 60-300 ms before the onset of the reflex-eliciting probe. Prepulse inhibition is theorized to reflect an early, partially-automatic gating or filtering process; the basic effect is enhanced by active attention to the prepulse. With interest in both clinical disorders and neurobiological models of reinforcement and certain classes of drugs, we have conducted a family of studies to address questions about moderators of early attentional processing in children, adults, and even rats.
Ashare, Rebecca L.; Hawk, Larry W., Jr.; & Mazzullo, Rebecca J. (2007), "Motivated attention: Incentive effects on attentional modification of prepulse inhibition", Psychophysiology 44: 839-845.
Background reading online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
UB Department of Learning and Instruction
and
The UB Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction
(emeritus)
and
UB Department of Computer Science & Engineering,
UB Department of Philosophy,
and
UB Department of Linguistics
Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition:
(1) From Algorithm to Curriculum
and (2) An Introspective Self Case Study of CVA while Reading a Novel
ABSTRACT:
Deliberate contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is a reader's ability to figure out a (not "the") meaning for (not "of") an unknown word from its "context", without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. The appropriate context for such CVA is the "belief-revised integration" of the reader's prior knowledge with the reader's "internalization" of the text. (1) Rapaport will present and defend an implemented computational theory of CVA and its adaptation to a new classroom curriculum designed to help students use CVA to improve their reading comprehension. (2) Kibby will then report his use of CVA while reading a novel. During the reading, he encountered 91 words whose meanings he did not know. He did not look up the meaning of any word until the first draft of a manuscript on this experiment was completed 25 months after the reading. While reading, he recorded for each word his hypothesized meanings, rationales for the meanings, and judgments of the correctness of the hypothesized meaning and the helpfulness of the context. He completed posttests 3 and 20 months after the reading to assess recall of the meanings of the 91 words. Kibby will report characteristics of the unknown words (e.g., frequency in English, part of speech), and analyses of his judgments of the hypothesized meanings and the correctness of the meanings by dictionary definitions, but the focus will be summarizing and describing the major rationales he used for deriving hypothesized meanings: global and local text comprehension, the use of character traits and settings, prior knowledge of the content, and, most important, reasoning.
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
UB Department of Physiology & Biophysics
Visual Experience and Axon Growth in the Xenopus Tectum
ABSTRACT:
The developing brain is actively shaped by early experience. One model system for understanding how sensory experience governs the growth of axons in the visual system is the Xenopus frog optic tectum. The axons that bring binocular input to the tectum depend upon visual input in order to make orderly connections. My studies focus on assessing how the axons change their morphology in response to normal and experimental situations and on discovering the underlying mechanisms. In this talk, I'll present some of my past work and will introduce some new work on studying axons in the living animal.
and
The Relationship between Perceptual Learning, Plasticity, and Intelligence
ABSTRACT:
Learning experiences and cortical function contribute to individual and species differences in intellectual abilities. These factors impact cognitive capacity throughout an organism's lifespan. Traditionally, intelligence researchers have treated variability in capacity associated with age and experience as confounds to objectively measuring an individual's ability, and have suggested that specializations in frontal circuits are the source of superior capacity. Consequently, the role of cortical plasticity in intellectual development largely has been ignored. Similarly, an organism's intellect is widely assumed to be independent of its perceptual abilities. In this talk, I will describe a model of the neural mechanisms of intelligence that suggests direct links between perceptual capacity, experience-dependent cortical plasticity, and intellectual ability.
with
Micheal Dent, discussion leader
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences,
University of Rochester
Circuits and Biochemical Signaling Engaged for Vocal Learning
ABSTRACT:
Like language acquisition in humans, avian vocal learning entails memorizing an auditory stimulus, mapping motor output to auditory feedback, and gradually adjusting output to mimic the encoded auditory template. A well-studied neural circuit controls avian song behavior, and discrete regions within this system are implicated specifically in vocal plasticity. In this talk, I will focus particularly on the neural circuits, synaptic mechanisms, and intracellular signaling cascades that appear to be important for the accurate memorization of songs that will be used as a template for song development. This work suggests that elements of the basal ganglia may be involved in encoding sensory representations that eventually guide vocal development, and that ascending dopaminergic pathways could play an important role in defining stimulus constraints on learning.
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders,
Northwestern University
Neural Mechanisms of Verb Argument-Structure Processing
ABSTRACT:
Lesion-deficit studies showing dissociations between noun and verb production/comprehension suggest that verbs are processed in the anterior perisylvian region of the brain. However, neuroimaging studies with healthy volunteers show that verb processing is associated with both anterior and posterior parts of the language network. Patient studies also show that verbs with greater argument-structure (participant-role) density present more difficulty than verbs of lesser density, and recent neuroimaging studies show graded upregulation of posterior perisylvian tissue associated with argument-structure complexity. This presentation will highlight three interrelated sets of studies relevant to these issues: (a) cross-linguistic studies of aphasia, showing that naming is impacted by verb argument structure; i.e., verbs with a greater number of arguments or which encode for arguments that do not map directly onto the syntax are more difficult (Kim & Thompson 2000, 2004; Thompson 2003; Thompson & Lee, in press), (b) studies examining eye movements during production of verbs and sentences with 2- and 3-argument verbs, indicating that normal, but not agrammatic, speakers automatically encode verb argument-structure in their naming attempts (Thompson, Dickey, Lee, Cho, & Griffin, 2006; Lee & Thompson, 2008); and (c) neuroimaging (fMRI) data from both healthy and agrammatic speakers showing graded activation in the posterior perisylvian region associated with verbs with greater argument-structure density (Thompson, Bonakdarpour, Fix, Blumenfeld, Parrish, Gitelman, & Mesulam, 2997; Thompson, Bonakdarpour, & Fix, in press). Results of these studies will be discussed in the context of processing mechanisms involved in mapping linguistic form onto meaning (or vice versa) during sentence comprehension (or production).
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Department of Mathematics & Statistics,
University of Ottawa
Census-Based Prediction and Understanding
of Language Shift and Language Revival
in Bilingual Communities
ABSTRACT:
Linguistic revival programs do not produce the same effects over all age groups of the population. Differential outcomes can be observed by examining the distribution of linguistic competence according to age, several years after the beginning of the programs. Although population census data on usage and linguistic competence can be rather inaccurate and have systematic bias, they do benefit from two elements not present in other types of data. First, as they come from the total population, at least theoretically, they typically include several millions of people, allowing the cross-tabulation of many variables while keeping a significant number of individuals in each cell of the table. Secondly, the data should be comparable from one population to another, facilitating similar studies in different communities, regions, or countries. This talk focuses on the way the distribution of linguistic competence according to the age of the population can help us analyze and predict the progress of the historical processes that determine language shift and linguistic normalization: the intergenerational transmission of language, school education and the linguistic integration of immigrants.
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
No meeting
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Spring Break — no meeting
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
No meeting
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
UB Department of Communicative Disorders & Sciences
Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory
Coarticulatory Patterns in Dysarthria:
Implications for a Dysarthria Definition
ABSTRACT:
The definition of the communication disorder termed "dysarthria" has not undergone significant revision since this speech motor control disorder was described in the late 1960s by researchers at the Mayo Clinics. The Mayo dysarthria definition is explicit in stating that paralysis, weakness, and incoordination in the speech musculature contribute to reductions in speech intelligibility and naturalness for this population. Incoordination in motor speech disorders is suggested by case studies reporting movement decomposition, decoupling of movements, difficulties in phasing successive articulatory gestures, movement timing deficits, and intra and inter-articulatory spatial-temporal dyscoordinations. Our research has approached the construct of articulatory coordination by examining coarticulatory patterns within and between syllables produced by speakers with dysarthria. Results from these acoustic studies suggest mostly preserved coarticulation in speakers with a variety of neurological diagnoses and dysarthrias. Perceptual data from our lab further suggest that listeners are not sensitive to differences in the degree to which consonants (C) and vowels (V) in CV syllables are coarticulated, nor are coarticulatory patterns strongly related to intelligibility at the single word level. These data have implications for a definition of dysarthria.
and
Peter Q. Pfordresher and James Mantell
Vocal Imitation of Speech and Song:
Individual Differences and the Role of Articulation
ABSTRACT:
In previous research, our lab has made the case that deficits in singing (for the most part) may be considered as deficits in vocal imitation (Pfordresher & Brown 2006). More recent research that will be summarized today explores factors related to vocal imitation in more detail. Specifically, this research attempts to address how general vocal imitation abilities are with respect to domain (speech/song) and the degree to which different components of vocal production (specifically phonation and articulation) are integrated during imitation. We adopt a task in which participants explicitly attempt to imitate a recorded sequence and focus on the accuracy with which participants imitate pitch/time contours. Results suggest that imitation abilities overall are shared across the domains of music and language. At the same time, the relationship between phonation and articulation differs across domains, in that coupling between articulation and phonation appears to be more important for the imitation of speech than for the imitation of song. These data have implications for the use of music in the treatment of aphasia (melodic intonation therapy) and deficits in prosody (e.g., Asperger syndrome, Parkinson's dysphonia).
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Grant Brainstorming Session
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Department of Psychology
Binghamton University (SUNY)
Retrieval and Expression of Knowledge in Elementary Learning
ABSTRACT:
Changes in performance as a consequence of specific prior experience involve a long chain of events. A break in any link of the chain can impair performance. Historically, students of associative learning, neuroscientists, and some cognitive psychologists have emphasized differences in encoding of information when trying to explain the effects of manipulations at the time of training. However, in addition to encoding of target information, other information is encoded during training that can later impact retrieval of information concerning the target. A model of learning will be presented in which encoding is near veridical, and subsequent performance deficits arise from mechanisms underlying the retrieval and expression of knowledge.
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Speech Research Laboratory
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Cognitive Science Program
Indiana University
and
DeVault Otologic Research Laboratory
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis
I'm Not Crazy; I Just Can't Hear!!!:
Some Observations on Hearing Loss
and Neurocognitive Function
in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants
ABSTRACT:
This talk deals with research on neurocognitive processes underlying speech and language outcomes in prelingually deaf children following cochlear implantation. Past research on cochlear implants has been very narrowly focused on speech and language outcomes and efficacy of cochlear implantation as a medical treatment for profound hearing loss. Surprisingly, little—if any—basic or clinical research has investigated the underlying neurobiological and neurocognitive factors that are responsible for the enormous individual differences and variability in the effectiveness of cochlear implants.
This talk has two goals. The first goal is to present a summary of recent findings demonstrating that specific, domain-general, neurocognitive processes related to executive functioning—such as working memory, fluency-speed, concentration-inhibition, and organization-integration skills—are related to traditional endpoint clinical speech and language outcome measures. These executive function/cognitive control processes involve the global coordination, integration, and functional connectivity of multiple underlying brain systems used in speech perception, production, and spoken-language processing. These new findings on the underlying sources of variability in spoken-language processing will help both clinicians and researchers understand, explain, and predict individual differences in speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation.
The second goal is to suggest that these neurocognitive findings have direct clinical implications for developing new methods to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and early identification of young deaf children, especially deaf children who may be at high risk for poor speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation.
Background readings online at UB Learns. See instructions at the top of this page.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
To Be Announced
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