CS Wednesday Talk Archive

= Fall 2012 =

November 14, 2012: Ariel M. Goldberg, Associate Professor of Psychology, Tufts University

"Towards a theory of the phonological processing of multimorphemic words: The Heterogeneity of Processing Hypothesis"

Abstract: Although there has been extensive research investigating the lexical aspects of multimorphemic word processing (e.g., whether words are represented in a holistic or decomposed fashion), very little is known about how post-lexical phonological processes operate over multimorphemic words in production. I propose the Heterogeneity of Processing Hypothesis, which takes as its basis a simple observation: since post-lexical phonological processes in general are influenced by lexical properties, the post-lexical processing of morphologically complex words will have multiple lexical influences. Two consequences of this organization are identified: 1) post-lexical representations must be assembled on the fly, binding together phonemes from different morphemes and 2) phonemes inherit different levels of activation depending on the properties of their parent morpheme. I argue that both of these consequences will cause post-lexical processing to vary across the word, that is, processing is predicted to be heterogeneous. In the first case, weaker structural relationships between the phonemes in different morphemes will cause phonological processes to be weaker when acting across morphemes than within. In the second case, different levels of activation will cause each morpheme to have different articulatory properties (e.g., hyperarticulation, vowel space, etc.). I report three studies supporting weaker heteromorphemic processing and morpheme-based levels of activation.

November 7, 2012: Laura Wenk, Dean of Curriculum and Assessment for the college and Associate Professor of Cognition and Education

Building Your Own Education at Hampshire: What's Pedagogy Got To Do With It?

Abstract: Hampshire was created over 40 years ago in order to challenge the structure and pedagogy of higher education. Today, as higher ed finds itself the subject of pressures to consider efficient content delivery, Hampshire still focuses on self directed learning. The structure of our divisional system supports students in developing their own questions and selecting activities to help them answer those questions. But what kind of pedagogy is necessary to develop self directed learning? What does the literature on self-regulated learning and metacognitive approaches to teaching and learning tell us we might do to create more self- directed learners? And what does research on science learning at Hampshire add to this discussion? In this talk I argue that with more explicit attention to metacognitive strategies, students would be even more successful at developing the tools needed to be successful at Hampshire and beyond.

October 31, 2012: Laura Sizer, Dean of Cognitive Science

Scary Movies and Revolting Monsters: Paradoxes in the Philosophy of Horror 

Abstract: The horror movie genre is extremely popular, with a loyal audience that always wants new ways to be terrified and revulsed. How do these movies manage to frighten people (when they do), and why do audiences seek out such experiences? This talk will discuss horror, monsters, and our reactions to them, in an attempt to understand why and how we seem to delight in horror.

October 17, 2012: David Mednicoff, UMass, Ph.D.

"What's law got to do with it? Legal issues in the contemporary Arab world"

Abstract: David Mednicoff is Director of Accelerated Programs for the Center for Public Policy and Administration, as well as Director of Middle Eastern Studies in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dr. Mednicoff holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science, also from Harvard. He has a broad background in international law and politics. His research focuses on the rule of law in contemporary Arab societies and their prospects for political democratization. Dr. Mednicoff has been a Fulbright scholar in both Morocco and Qatar; other recent awards in support of his research include a grant from Georgetown University to study the regulation of migrant workers in Arab countries and a 2010-2011 (non-resident) research fellowship from the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Mednicoff is a frequent commentator in the media on issues related to politics in the Middle East, and has presented his work to policymakers in Washington at forums sponsored by the Department of State and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

October 10, 2012: Sarah Partan, Associate Professor of Animal Behavior, School of Cognitive Science

The Future of Animal Communication: Do climate change and urbanization affect animal signaling behavior?

Abstract: Animal survival relies on the successful transmission of communication signals through the environment, because animals use signals to avoid predation, find mates, raise young, and negotiate their social worlds. The global environment, however, is becoming less conducive to signal transmission as a result of climate change and urban and suburban sprawl, which creates noise -- including acoustic noise, visual "noise" and chemical pollution. Animal communication systems evolved to transmit information through natural environments that, while they vary in noise and light levels, have never experienced current and predicted levels of noise and pollutants. Can they change quickly enough, through behavioral plasticity or rapid evolution, to overcome the new environmental challenges and allow successful communication? I will outline the challenges that animals face, present what little data has been published so far on this topic, and suggest that those animals that employ multiple sensory systems for communication should be better poised to survive into the future, because they have the flexibility to switch between sensory channels when there is too much noise in one channel.

October 3, 2012: Students present "Lightning Talks!" about their research funded by grants from the Ray and Lorna Coppinger Endowment.

Sara Berk: Latitudinal variation in feather corticosterone levels and parental effort in four species of Tachycineta swallows Abstract: Methanol extraction of corticosterone (stress hormone) from feathers is a new measure of stress physiology that provides insight into hormone levels during the period of feather growth. Previous research has shown that birds are less responsive to stress during molt, though it is unclear how this suppression of HPA activity varies with ecology. In collaboration with the Golondrinas project based out of Cornell University, I am extracting corticosterone from four different species of Tachycineta swallows from tropical and temperate latitudes. I will specifically focus on my work at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory in Alberta, Canada during Summer 2012. My work is supported by the Coppinger fund, the Justine Salton fund (from NS) and the Golondrinas project.

Jon Butler: Sustainable Aquaponics Abstract: Sometimes, solutions to human problems hide right in front of our noses, hidden in plain sight by the most prolific inventor known to man: nature herself. After being frustrated by plant burrs constantly sticking to his dog after walks, Swiss engineer George de Mestral came up with Velcro. Windmill turbine blades are now being designed with serrated edges that mimic the tubercles on humpback whale flippers; the new blades are quieter, and capture significantly more wind. Organisms have lived, died, coexisted, and cycled through our planet for millions of years, and nature has come up with some pretty incredible ways of keeping the ship running smoothly. By borrowing a few of these powerful innovations, there is potential to transform the industry we rely on most to survive: the industry of food production.

Emma Opitz: Cataloguing the grey squirrel vocalizations Abstract: My research this summer was an attempt to catalogue and analyze all grey squirrel vocalizations. My findings suggest that previous work does not offer a complete understanding of the grey squirrel vocalization system and I suggest some new names and differentiations of calls.

September 29, 2012: Salman Hameed, associate professor of integrated science and humanities

From Death Threats to Islamophobia: Making Sense of Islamic Creationism in England

Abstract: The rise of Islamic creationism has been a serious concern in England, and Europe in general. There have been reports in the media of boycotts of university evolution lectures and, in one extreme case, even a threat of violence. How widespread is the rejection of evolution amongst Muslims and how do we make sense of these public spectacles of creationism in England? While religious/theological objections are indeed at play in some cases, it is likely that the broader narrative of Muslim rejection of evolution in UK may be bound up in reactions to the secular culture and in the formation of their own minority religious identity.

September 12, 2012: Melissa Burch, assistant professor of cognitive development

Locating events in time and place: Developmental changes in episodic memory

Abstract: The ability to recall the time and place when events occurred is central to episodic memory. I will present two studies exploring age-related changes in children’s ability to remember these specific details of past events. To examine children’s memory for time, my collaborators and I asked 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children to make judgments about the relative recency of two naturally occurring personal events and to estimate the time of the events according to conventional time scales, such as time of day and month. We found developmental differences in the ability to make judgments about relative recency of the events and to place the event on conventional time scales. To examine children’s ability to recall place information, we tested 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds’ ability to recall the location of specific laboratory events. Older children were better able to recall the events and their locations after a one-week delay. This research provides insight into some of the component processes that support autobiographical memory.

= Spring 2012 = March 28th, 2012: Erik Thomsen, founder of DSS Labs

“Unifying Syntax and Semantics: From the historical rift between Russell and Wittgenstein and the present day gap between the predicate calculus and lexical analysis to its impact on NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming)”

Abstract: Thousands of person-years of effort have failed to produce a robust NLP system using the consensus foundations consisting of the predicate calculus (with the possible addition of frames a la Cyc) as a logical method for representing (and reasoning with) the semantics of the sentence, and Lexical/syntactic categories (e.g., noun, verb, adjective, article etc.) as a linguistic method for representing the atomic functions (or terminal nodes) that attach to words. Maybe the foundations are misguided. Maybe there is no fundamental distinction between syntax and semantics. Maybe they’re like Hesperus and Phosphorus.

In this talk I will share some of my research and real world application stories suggesting that syntax and semantics are one and the same. Towards that end, significant problems will be raised regarding the predicate calculus, a new logic based on cognitive processing will be introduced, and examples showing how it can impact NLP will be given.

March 14th, 2012: Tom Cain, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology  "Fear, politics, and leader selection: How our emotional state may influence what we look for in a president"  Abstract: Fear and anger are very similar emotions, yet they elicit contrasting perceptions of risk. In general, fear leads to an increase in risk perception, while anger leads to a decrease in risk perception. This will be a discussion of whether we may seek to regain feelings of certainty and control, when afraid, by seeking out an angry or aggressive leader. Will fearful people seek out an angry leader as a perceived (though not necessarily consciously) way to reduce fear? Will a fear related political campaign lead people to find an angry/aggressive presidential candidate more appealing? Scientific and anecdotal evidence will be discussed.

Biographical statement: Tom Cain, visiting assistant professor of psychology, received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Rutgers University and a B.A. in psychology from DePaul University. He is teaching CS-145 "Social Psychology of Stereotyping" this term. Tom is currently interested in examining the ways in which fear may bias a personâ€™s perceptions, judgments, and behavior. He is particularly interested in how these biases may impact person perception. Additionally, Tom has conducted research on, or has been generally interested in, the psychological processes involved in political affiliation, intergroup relations, and the willingness to commit genocide.

March 7th, 2012: Jennifer Corns, Five College Fellow at Mount Holyoke College and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with The Pain Project at the University of Glasgow

"Pain and Idiosyncrasy"

Abstract: The last 30 years of pain research has resulted in the increased complexity and generality of the dominant models of pain. Correspondingly, the traditional medical model of pain that seeks to eliminate pain by eliminating a presumed underlying pathology has come in for scrutiny. Antagonists advocate a mechanism-based classification approach, sometimes dubbed pain analysis. The goal of this approach is to categorize pain, by types, as a function of correlations between symptoms and signs and the activity of underlying mechanisms. The problem is that the hoped-for correlations are not forthcoming. What we are finding instead is that each token pain involves the activity of multiple mechanisms, no one of which is reliably correlated with pain or any pain type. Moreover, the convergence of the activity of these multiple mechanisms is idiosyncratic. In this talk, l present reasons for thinking that each token pain is explained by an idiosyncratic convergence of activity across multiple mechanisms and argue that this idiosyncrasy undermines the reliability of generalizations about both pain and pain types for treatment purposes. l conclude by exploring the implications of idiosyncrasy for understanding the relationship between everyday, folk types and mechanistic explanations in cognitive science more generally. Brief Bio: Jennifer Corns specializes in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. She is interested in understanding how everyday, folk-psychological categories can be appropriately employed in ethics and scientific inquiry. Her PhD dissertation, Pain is Not a Natural Kind, was completed under the supervision of Jesse Prinz at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is currently a Five College Fellow at Mount Holyoke College and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with The Pain Project at the University of Glasgow. http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/philosophyresearch/grantsprojects/headline_217060_en.html

February 15th, 2012: Bob Davis, adjunct assistant professor of psychology

Using Neurotherapy to Reduce or Eliminate the Symptoms of ADHD

Abstract: There is a large and rapidly evolving literature on the effectiveness of neurotherapy approaches in the treatment of many psychological, behavioral and medical disorders. Evidence-based neurotherapy approaches are rooted in current neuroscientific research, are non-invasive, do not involve medication and are not associated with any significant negative side effects. The effectiveness of neurotherapy interventions has been demonstrated for a range of psychological disorders, including symptoms associated with ADHD, Asperger's/autism, anxiety, depression, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury (TBI), sleep difficulties, and substance abuse. For example, for attention difficulties and impulsivity related to ADHD, neurotherapy interventions have demonstrated strong positive effects equal to that of stimulant medication as well as greater lasting effects (e.g., over 2 years post-treatment) than medication, and is considered a 'Level 5: Efficacious and Specific' treatment, the American Psychological Association's highest level of clinical efficacy. Similar to traditional biofeedback treatment, evidence-based neurotherapy utilizes monitoring devices to provide moment-to-moment information to an individual about the state of their brain's functioning. Neurotherapy interventions are typically preceded by an objective assessment of an individual's brainwave activity via a quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG). Based on the results of the QEEG, an individually-tailored neurotherapeutic treatment plan is created which utilizes basic principles of learning to systematically change the individual's brain patterns to those associated with more positive physical, emotional, and cognitive states. My talk will briefly review the history of neurotherapeutic approaches and describe several treatment modalities, with an emphasis on the current evidence base for using neurotherapy to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of ADHD.

February 8th, 2012: Thom Long, Five College Assistant Professor of Architecture and Design Hampshire's Creativity Center Abstract: Thom Long will discuss the activities of The Creativity Center which was founded in 2011 to foster imaginative thinking and collaboration across fields of knowledge.

February 1st, 2012: Karen Danna, CBD Postdoctoral Fellow

"Making Mental Errors: How the Flaws and Foibles of our Cognitive Systems Affect our Social Lives"

Abstract: In this work-in-progress, I integrate sociological, psychological, and neurological perspectives to inform an analysis of mental errors and everyday mistakes. I present empirical data garnered from interviews with working parents to demonstrate how known brain processing errors (such as ‘choking on thought’ or the ‘over-valuing of immediate rewards’) translate into socio-cultural patterns of behavior. I link these patterns to the organization of everyday social life as well as the organization of culture. I demonstrate, for instance, not only how the limitations of the brain effect the types of mistakes and errors people commonly make, but how American culture is organized in ways that promulgate (rather than alleviate) these errors. In this way, the multidisciplinary bio-social lens employed in this study contributes to an understanding of mental mistakes that spans multiple levels of analyses simultaneously (from the individual to the collective).

= Fall 2011   =

September 14th, 2011: Salman Hameed, assistant professor of science and humanities ''What does it mean when people say they accept or reject evolution? Lessons from the Muslim world'' Abstract: The topic of biological evolution often flares up in American politics. Rick Perry has recently stated that evolution is "just a theory". Scientists often cite that more than half of the US population does not accept biological evolution. But what does it mean when people say they don't "believe" in evolution? We have been conducting oral interviews with Muslim physicians and medical students in 8 countries. Our survey is still in progress, but we are finding complex ways in which these educated Muslims view evolution, and the broader relation of science and religion. I will highlight our preliminary findings from Malaysia, Pakistan, and from Pakistani physicians working in the US, and place the evolution-creation debate in a broader context.

September 21st, 2011: Paul Dickson, assistant visiting professor of computer science Recording Hampshire Abstract: How often have you gone to class, participated, taken great notes, and then a day or to later realized that you missed something critical? Have you ever missed a class and struggled to catch up on the material presented that day? Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL) is an ongoing research project run jointly between Hampshire and UMass that seeks to automatically record lectures to make it easier to review classroom material. This talk will describe the project and discuss recording classes at Hampshire. PAOL will be used as an example to open a discussion about the appropriate place for recorded lectures in the college environment.

September 28th, 2011: Cognitive Science- The Next 20 Years, A Town Hall Meeting Abstract: Bring your ideas to this open discussion facilitated by Laura Sizer, Dean of Cognitive Science.

October 5th, 2011: Timothy D. Wilsoon, Ph.D., University of Virginia Affective Adaptation and the Pleasures of Uncertainty Abstract: How do people adapt to emotional events? I will present a model of affective adaptation that argues that people attend to self-relevant, unexplained events, react emotionally to them, explain or make sense of the events, and thereby adapt to the events (i.e., they attend to them less and have weaker emotional reactions to them). One implication of this argument is that if people can be prevented from making sense of positive events, the pleasure that these events cause might be prolonged. I will present evidence for this Apleasure of uncertainty” effect and discuss its implications.

October 12th, 2011: Tom Cain, visiting assistant professor of psychology Fear, Dissonance, and Bias Abstract: A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that fear causes people to exaggerate the likelihood of risky things happening, regardless of what caused them to feel fear. I will discuss research in which I examined the proposal that this exaggeration may be due to a disconnect between a person's cognitive appraisal of a situation and their emotional reaction to it. It was hypothesized that this disconnect creates a dissonance that people are then motivated to reduce. Additionally, I will be discussing research that examined whether fear leads to increased bias against Muslims.

October 19th, 2011 Panel on Applied careers in Animal Behavior Abstract: Four panelists will speak about applied work in animal behavior, followed by Q&amp;A. Hampshire alum Elise Gouge is an animal trainer and behavior consultant for companion animals in homes, shelters, and farms. She will speak about how to make a living as a trainer/animal behavior consultant and give an overview of the world of companion animal work. Trustee Kenneth Rosenthal, past president of The Seeing Eye, will discuss the world of guide dogs and how to pursue a career in guide dog training and behavior. Current Div III student Claire Wurcer spent the past year raising a guide dog puppy for another school, Guiding Eyes for the Blind, and will talk about how to raise a service animal in the campus environment. Finally, Dr. Noah Charney, a naturalist and biologist, will talk about the role of animal behavior in conservation. He will focus on his work with salamanders and other sensitive species in Massachusetts, and will discuss career opportunities in this field.

Panelists to Include:


 * Elise Gouge, animal trainer and behavior consultant, graduated from Hampshire in 1995 and consults widely in the valley. * Kenneth Rosenthal is a Hampshire trustee, former Hampshire staff, parent of a Hampshire alum (04F), and the past president of The Seeing Eye in Morristown, NJ. * Claire Wurcer is a Div III student working on a study of acoustic and visual cues used for dog training. * Noah Charney received his PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Massachusetts, has taught at Hampshire, and recently published a book on Tracks &amp; Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates. * The panel will be introduced by Sarah Partan, Associate Professor of Animal Behavior at Hampshire.

October 25th, 2011- Professor Jane Campbell Moriarty, Carol Los Mansmann Chair in Faculty Scholarship and Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship, Duquesne University School of Law Scientific Evidence in the Courtroom: At the Crossroads of a Contentious Relationship Abstract: Science has been a frequent presence in American courtrooms since the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. The remarkable advances in science and technology have increased the prominence of expert testimony in contemporary trials and have put pressure on the legal system to develop standards to evaluate the reliability of such evidence in both civil and criminal cases. The types and uses of science in the courtroom are multifaceted. DNA evidence is used to convict, identify, and exonerate individuals. Scientific and medical evidence is used to establish causes and degrees of illness and injury. Behavioral and social science is admitted on matters relating to eyewitness identification, insanity and incompetency matters, and child sexual abuse. Most recently, neuroscience has begun to help juries understand abhorrent behavior and effects of injury on cognition, while litigants have attempted to introduce neuroscience as a form of lie detection and to support a claim that violent video games negatively influence adolescent brain activity. Despite the remarkable interdependence of science and the judicial system, the relationship between them is contentious. The differing goals, values, and methods in the respective fields have led to much consternation for science professionals and the legal community. This discussion will provide a foundation for understanding science in the courtroom, examining the differing roles of science and law, and highlighting ways to make the marriage between the two more harmonious.

November 9th, 2011- Jose Fuentes, Hampshire alum, Carnogie Mellon University research associate, computer science department "Stories in Human Computation: Learning a Language While Translating the Web and Watching Porn While Removing Porn on the Web" Abstract: In this talk I will discuss how translating massive amounts of text and eliminating undesired exposure to porn can be solved by using human computation. The presentation encompasses two projects in which I have been engaged at Carnegie Mellon University since graduating from Hampshire.

Story 1: Language differences are a major barrier for the global sharing of knowledge, and although computers can help us to translate massive amounts of text and video human still do a much better job. Duolingo is a language learning site where the more you learn, the more knowledge you make accessible to the world. Since users create shared value when they learn on Duolingo, they don’t have to pay for using Duolingo.

Story 2: Porn is a big chunk of all the images and videos available on the Web, and although many find porn offensive and don't want to see it many also find it enjoyable and do want to see it. Buffer is a site where users consume porn while creating a buffer zone between pornographic and non-pornographic content. The more pornographic content users consume on Buffer, the better Websites and Search engines get at either removing porn or just serving porn to those who actually want to see it.

November 16th, 2011- Student Lightning Talks Lyndie Wood NMDA Receptor-Independent Learning Though NMDA receptors were long thought to be essential for learning and memory, recent work has demonstrated that NMDAR-independent learning is possible after pre-training on similar tasks. Using Morris water maze training and contextual fear conditioning with mice, we determined that NMDAR-independent learning is only possible when animals are pre-trained on the same behavioral task, and when initial learning is successfully encoded into long-term memory.

Sam Nordli (Semi-)subjective Optimization of the Human Individual I'm going to be talking about my Div III, which deals with the (semi-)subjective optimization of the human individual. I'll be drawing on work from psychology, philosophy, and evolutionary ecology, tying it together with a methodical approach designed to specifically and deliberately alter various aspects of the self.

Brian Martin The Belief Propagation Algorithm and its Variants This project is a survey of a specific set of approximate inference algorithms for graphical models. More specifically, the belief propagation algorithm and its variants. Graphical models have been applied to topics as varied as natural language processing \cite{yao_collective_????} \cite{peng_chinese_2004}, information extraction \cite{pinto_table_2003} \cite{mccallum_maximum_2000}, and genomics \cite{culotta_gene_2005} to name a few. This project involved acquiring requisite background knowledge of probability, statistics, graphical models, machine learning, and the current state-of-the-art in probabilistic inference. The products include sequential and parallel implementations of belief propagation inference algorithms which integrate into an existing probabilistic programming framework, a novel approximate technique for parallel inference in tree-based models, and lastly this manuscript.

Kira McCoy Marijuana on the Brain The neural effects of cannabis on adolescents

November 30th, 2011- James Miller, professor of communications Mediatization “Mediatization” is a term that theorists, especially Europeans, have come to use to describe the emerging condition of media ubiquity and growing social centrality. Today, other social institutions, like politics, can scarcely function without the media. This fosters the growth of independent media power. As new media proliferate, they become unavoidable, embedded in many aspects of our personal and built environments. This makes them nearly invisible, their functions taken for granted. Finally, extreme forms of mediatization are on the horizon, blurring the distinction between human subjectivity and digital devices. This talk will review these significant developments.

December 7th, 2011- David Havas, Spring 2012 adjunct assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience The emotional power of fiction: A view from Affective Neuroscience Abstract: Philosophers have puzzled over the paradox of fiction: how can we feel moved by a fictional situation or character that we know doesn't exist? In this talk, I propose an answer based on my research on emotional language comprehension. Beginning with Darwin and ending with Botox, I trace the development of, and evidence for, a theory that emotional expressions play a causal role in how we understand emotional sentences. I will highlight the role of brain and bodily systems involved in emotional experiences, and present recent data that explore the implications of the theory for applied interpersonal communication such as psychotherapy, and multicultural competence.

= Spring 2011 =

February 9th, 2011- Discussion CS Vision Panel This Wednesday Talk panel discussion will serve as an open forum within The School of Cognitive Science in hopes of creating an open dialogue about the strategic planning process and the specific role of CS.

February 16th, 2011- Paul Dickson, visiting assistant professor of computer science Ubiquitous Computer Abstract: Over the years computers have shifted from being room size behemoths that only a limited number of people use to hand held devices that almost everyone has. This ubiquitousness of computers changes their perceived uses and interfaces. This talk will address questions of where computing is going and what computers will be used for in the future. We will look at how mobile computers are effecting human interaction and changes it is having on society. This talk will also address what the possibilities are at Hampshire for being a part of this change.

February 23rd, 2011- Charles Ross, assistant professor of evolutionary biology The personal nature of speciation Abstract: Speciation is often considered as a population level phenomenon described in terms of divergence of genes and genomes across groups. For example, populations may diverge in their genetic makeups due to geographic isolation. The divergence of specific genes may lead to reproductive isolation across these populations, resulting in speciation. These perspectives – looking from the viewpoint of both populations and genes – are informative for understanding the pattern and processes of speciation. Speciation from the perspective of individuals is often overlooked even though individuals are the functional components that make up populations as well as the “phenotypic results" of gene expression (along with environmental influences). Looking at speciation from the perspective of individuals can help to understand the mechanics how populations are isolated, how genes contribute to reproductive isolation, and how speciation actually happens “on the ground.”

March 2nd, 2011- Lee Spector, professor of computer science Biologically-Inspired Evolution of Computer Programs: Tag-Based Modularity in Genetic Programming Abstract: Genetic programming is a computational technique that uses ideas from evolutionary biology --- random variation and natural selection --- to automatically produce computer programs. Natural adaptive systems invariably make use of modularity, and human programmers are more productive when they use modular program architectures. For these reasons it is generally accepted that genetic programming systems will be more powerful when they can more readily evolve programs with modular structures.

In this talk I will present a new technique for evolving modular programs, based on the use of "tags" that evolving programs can employ to label and refer to code fragments. The essential idea of a tag is that it supports binding through matching, even though specific tags may initially have no intrinsic meaning and even though matches may sometimes be inexact. Everyday examples of tags given by John Holland, who first developed the concept, include banners or flags used by armies and the active sites that enable antibody/antigen binding. Systems based on tags have been used to explore a variety of phenomena including the evolution of altruism, but the work that I will present here is the first to apply the concept to general program evolution. I will demonstrate that tag-based modules readily evolve, that this allows problem solving effort to scale well with problem size, and that the technique is effective even in complex environments for which previous techniques perform poorly.

This is joint work with Hampshire College student Brian Martin, Hampshire College alumnus and Brandeis University graduate student Kyle Harrington, and UMass Amherst graduate student Thomas Helmuth.

March 9th, 2011- Ernie Lapore, Director of Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science Context and Shared Content Abstract: Contextualism looms large over cognitive science, linguistics and philosophy. Ordinary folk have apparently missed the fact that many of our most puzzling and paradox-ridden expressions are sensitive to their context of use Familiar words like “know”, “believes”, “truth”, “good”, and “beauty” turn out to require contextualization for application. Fears of the Liar Paradox, the Paradox of the Heap, reconciling Skepticism with Compatiblism, Moral Relativism, all are alleged to vanish once key expressions are recognized as context sensitive.

Though there is much observational support for contextualism, I want to draw your attention to the observation that most speakers face no difficulty whatsoever in using many of the alleged context sensitive words to say (or make) the exact same claim, assertion, etc., across a wide array of contexts. So, on the one hand, for many sentences there is evidence that what their utterances contribute depends on features of their contexts of use; while, at the same time, there is evidence (as I will remind you ) that relevantly distinct utterances of these sentences in distinct contexts express agreement.

March 23rd, 2011- Carol Trosset, director of institutional research Perceptions of Welshness in Patagonia Abstract: In 1865, the Welsh became the first European settlers in southern Argentina, and they remain the dominant ethnic group in the state of Chubut. Some towns retain large populations of Welsh-speakers, and a strong awareness of their Welsh cultural heritage. In 2002, Trosset did ethnographic fieldwork in several of these towns. This talk will present an overview of contemporary Welsh culture in Patagonia, which has maintained close ties to Welsh-speaking Wales. Trosset will discuss the results of her structured interview study, which made it possible to compare Patagonian views of Welshness to views held by Welsh people living in Wales, revealing both similarities and differences.

March 30th, 2011- Neil Stillings, dean of cognitive science and professor of psychology ''Does Hampshire Need More Examinations, Tests, and Quizzes? A Cognitive Psychological Approach'' Abstract: A notable feature of Hampshire’s classroom environment is the rarity of exams, tests, and quizzes in comparison to common practice at other colleges. A number of arguments, based on various combinations of principle and evidence from psychological and educational research, have been generated for the relative infrequency of tests at Hampshire. In this talk I explore one potentially challenging line of evidence. An extensive body of recent research demonstrates that testing enhances student learning. On the one hand this research offers an opportunity to revisit aspects of Hampshire’s educational philosophy. On the other hand Hampshire’s educational philosophy provides a framework for interpreting the testing effect that differs from the ones commonly seen in popular media coverage of the effect.

April 6th, 2011- Melissa Burch, assistant professor of cognitive development "Cross-cultural perspectives on autobiographical memory: A comparison of narratives from Chinese, Russian, and English adults" Abstract: Socialization processes have been studied extensively within autobiographical memory literature. The effects of socialization have been explored within the context of parent-child interaction both within the US and by comparing parent-child interaction across cultures. It has been hypothesized that different socialization practices reflect the relative importance of social and self identity, with individuality emphasized over group connections for those raised in the US and greater significance of group connections for those raised in China. This perspective has been used to explain the later age of earliest memories for Chinese adults compared to American adults as well as differences in the content of memory narratives. In this talk, I will present data comparing memory ratings and reports from American, Chinese, and Russian adults living in the US. Three methods were used to gain information about memory for previous experience. Under some conditions, we replicate findings reported in the literature. However, when we prompted participants to provide specific types of memory (using a cue word technique, or requesting memories for events related to “shame” and “honor”), the differences were more limited. I will discuss how these findings may reflect larger cultural values as well as similarities across cultural groups in memory for personally meaningful events.

April 13th, 2011- Chris Bishop, adjunct professor of computer animation Behind the Scenes of "Caldera": A Computer Animated Short Film Production at Hampshire College Abstract: Beginning in the summer of 2009, myself and fellow alumnus Evan Viera have been in production on a new short film titled “Caldera”. The project is one of two films being produced through the Bit Films Internships in the School of Cognitive Science - a program that brings together students and professionals dedicated to collaborative, independent graphics work. I will be discussing the interdisciplinary nature of the process behind computer animation and how our program facilitates this process, as well as presenting a showcase of work from “Caldera” which combines the skills of various technical specialists and visual artists.

April 20th, 2011- Laura Sizer, associate professor of philosophy Looking for God in the Explanatory Gap: Thoughts on What Makes An Explanation Good, Bad or Gappy Abstract: Some efforts to prove the existence of God point to gaps in scientific knowledge, and use these to argue that the existence of God or an intelligent designer is needed to bridge the gap. The most well known of these “God of the Gaps” arguments have revolved around issues in evolutionary biology. However another emerging target of these arguments is neuroscience, particularly open questions related to consciousness and the mind-body problem. Philosophers have long debated the possibility of a fundamental ‘explanatory gap’ between physicalist explanations of mind and our subjective, conscious experiences. Can this debate fuel a god-of-the-gaps strategy? Why do some open questions strike us as more-work-to-be-done, while others impress us as unbridgeably gappy?

April 27th, 2011- Joanna Morris, associate professor of cognitive science Declarative/ Procedural Memory and Bilingual Word Recognition Abstract: The declarative/procedural model of language processing states that the later in life words are acquired, the more their processing will rely on direct lexical retrieval instead of grammatical computation. In this model, word recognition depends on two distinct memory subsystems: declarative memory, situated in the temporal lobe, and procedural memory, located in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia. The declarative system provides mechanisms to store and access whole-word representations. The procedural system on the other hand, provides mechanisms to acquire and use grammatical rules. I will present some data on English complex word recognition from native English, Dutch and Spanish speakers showing that bilinguals largely adopt the same processing strategies as native speakers. These data pose a problem for models of word recognition that propose fundamentally different way of handling native and non-native language input.

May 4th, 2011- Lightning Talks Building a Semi-Robotic Lizard Model by Seth Toles and Omri Bernstein

The Effects of Caesarian Section and Nursing On Postpartum Behavior and Emotionality by Sasha Allegretta-Fuller

Investigating Whether Differentiated Pitch Stimuli Can Aid Performance in a Purely Auditory Brain-Computer Interface Four-Choice Task by Jake Vogel

= Fall 2010 =

September 15th, 2010 - Mara Breen, adjunct assistant professor of psychology Stress matters: the role of word stress in silent reading Abstract: We know that spoken language preceded written language historically, and that children learn to read aloud before they read silently. An open question in research on silent reading is the extent to which it mirrors the process of reading aloud. Specifically, are silent readers activating the same sound representations during silent reading that are activated when reading aloud? In this talk, I present data from two eye-tracking studies that provide evidence that readers sound out the stress patterns of words even when reading silently.

September 22nd, 2010 - Joanna Morris, associate professor of cognitive science Morphological priming of regular and irregular verbs Abstract: In this talk I will present evidence about how the brain recognizes complex words. Do we decompose complex words into their component parts in order to recognize them and reassemble them in production? Or are they stored intact in our mental dictionary? Recent masked priming experiments have brought to light a morphological level of analysis that is exclusively based on the orthographic appearance of words, so that it breaks down corner into corn- and -er, as well as dealer into deal- and –er. Because this level of analysis ignores meaning, it cannot capture the morphological relationship between irregularly inflected words and their base forms (e.g., fell–fall, bought–buy). I will present behavioral and electrophysiological data from an experiment comparing irregular and regular inflections that provide support for a level of morphological analysis that takes semantic as well as orthographic information into account.

September 29th, 2010 - Tony Mc Caffrey, UMASS grad., professor of computer science, UMass graduate student A New Psychology of Innovation Based On Two Principles: The Obscure Features Hypothesis and the Just Outside the Box Hypothesis Abstract: Insight problems (that often involve aha moments) have been studied since the early part of the 20th century. Recent analysis has determined that insight problems are solved by noticing a rarely noticed or never-before noticed (i.e., obscure) feature of the problem’s elements and then building a solution based on that obscure feature. Besides toy problems in psychology labs, obscure features are also often crucial for solving engineering design problems (e.g., design a new type of shovel) as the novel designs are usually built upon an obscure feature of the object. This Obscure Features Hypothesis for innovation opens up a research program based on two questions. What inhibits people from noticing the obscure? What techniques can help overcome these sources of inhibition? First, I will present results from my lab on the techniques that have been tested. Second, I will present results from analyzing the structural properties of semantic networks that are important for problem solving. For example, drawing a box around the semantic network of all the common associations for an object shows the common thoughts close to that object, which are “inside the box.” The key information for solving

October 6th, 2010 - Ray Coppinger, professor emeritus of biology Dogs are Lousy Mothers Abstract: The canids have some of the most complex parental behaviors in the animal world. How could it be possible that dogs (the most recent form in the genus Canis has evolved a minimal care pattern, more crude than any other mammal. At first glance it seems unlikely that bad mothering or fathering or even sistering could be a selective advantage -- but it seems be true?

October 13th, 2010- Daniel Altshuler, mellon postdoctoral fellow in language, mind and culture Aspectual meaning meets discourse coherence Abstract: One reason why linguists study aspectual markers (e.g. progressive and the perfect) is that they reveal what event parts are linguistically relevant and how these parts are located in time in a given discourse or story. Aspectual markers, however, are rarely precise about the temporal location of a given event part. Inferences about an event’s temporal location are also dependent on independently motivated temporal constraints imposed by so-called coherence relations, which characterize the possible ways in which successive utterances could be connected to form coherent discourse. In this talk, I will discuss how aspectual meaning interacts with coherence relations by looking at the Russian imperfective. In this way, I will also provide a sneak preview for my class next semester, Literature and Cognition.

October 20th, 2010- Jane Couperus, assistant professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience Evidence for a Two-process Model of Visual Selective Attention Abstract: Selective attention modulates activity at early levels of visual processing, as is reflected in changes in the P1 event-related potential (ERP) component. Although some have suggested that the process of selection involves primarily signal enhancement (e.g., Mangun et al., 1991), others have suggested that it involves both the enhancement of the signal of the attended stimulus as well as suppression of the unattended stimulus (e.g. Awh, Matsukura, and Serences 2003; Couperus and Mangun, in press, Dell’Acqua et al., 2007). In addition to presenting recent electrophysiological work with adults that begins to provide evidence of these two process, this talk will also examine behavioral and preliminary electrophysiological evidence from children.

October 27th, 2010- A Panel of CS faculty and students- introduced by Laura Wenk, associate professor of education and cognition What Could Community Engaged Learning Mean in CS? Abstract: Hampshire College is in the middle of a shift from a Division II Community Service requirement to a Community Engaged Learning (CEL) requirement. These are very different things with big implications for course development and for student work. Come hear about what this requirement means and how some CS students have been meeting the requirement. Perhaps most importantly, help us think about what opportunities we could create to help students mesh their academic learning with the world beyond the classroom. There will be short talks by a few CS students and faculty, followed by lively discussion. Oh yeah, and of course, there will be pizza, salad, fruit, and the like.

November 3rd, 2010- Joanna Morris, associate professor of cognitive science How wlel do we raed copmlex wrods with trnaspsoed lteters? Abstract: Recent studies have shown that semantically opaque pseudo-complex words (e.g. corner) prime their embedded pseudo-stems (i.e. corn) as much as semantically transparent word-stem pairs do (e.g. hunter-hunt). These data suggest suggest that morphological structure affects visual word recognition uniquely via sub-lexical morpho-orthographic segmentation. Here, we show that priming with transparent and opaque primes is differentially affected by transposing morpheme boundary letters. Whereas priming remains intact for transparent items (relative to replaced letter primes; viewer-view ~ vieewr-view &lt; vieakr-view), it is reduced to the level of replaced letter primes for opaque items (corner-corn &lt; corenr-corn ~ coratr-corn). This pattern of results was predicted by a model of complex word recognition that involves both sub-lexical morpho-orthographic and supra-lexical morpho-semantic processing. Transposed letters at the morpheme boundary are harmful for the fine-grained sub-lexical orthographic code that drives morpho-orthographic processing, but not for the coarse-grained lexical orthographic activation that initiates morpho-semantic processing.

November 10- Daniel Asia, (71F) Professor of Music and Director of the Center for the Study of American Ideals and Culture at the University of Arizona. Composition: The Act Thereof, and a Few Results Abstract: The creative process is rich with complexity and fraught with problems. I will speak about some of the questions to ask to help you develop your own best practices in dealing with yours. This will pertain to composers in particular, artists more generally, those engaged in creative thinking, or those who wish to understand more about the creative/cognitive process. This will be supported with the playing of a few of the composer’s selected works.

November 17th, 2010- Carol Trosset, director of institutional research Welsh Concepts of Personhood Abstract: During two years of fieldwork in Welsh-speaking Wales, I studied views of what defines a person as Welsh, and what it means to be a good person within Welsh culture. This talk will review the dominant definitions of Welshness and four hegemonic concepts of personhood: egalitarianism, martyrdom, emotionalism, and performance. I will then present a follow-up study in which I and a colleague used formal interview and statistical methods to test (and ultimately confirm) the results of my earlier immersion fieldwork.

December 1st, 2010- Lighting Talks, Dan Chapsky, Nathan Whitmore, Kat Mott

Dan Chapsky Psychometric Test Prediction Using Facebook Data and Bayesian Networks:

Can an indivual’s personality be predicted? What attributes of an individual effect his or her personality? My Div 3 involves using a person’s Facebook data and using it to create a model that will predict their score on the big 5 personality test. To do this I am using a machine learning method known as a Bayesian network to model the relationship between individual interests, attributes and personality. One of the greatest strengths of Bayesian networks is that, given the correct assumptions, they are able to demonstrate hypothetical causal links in data, rather than just correlation.

Nathan Whitmore Fingerpainting in Thin Air

A demonstration of the hackerhat, a wearable augmented reality system that I am constructing. The goal of the hackerhat is to enable easy, natural, and instantaneous access to the “informational dimension” of the everyday world—in other words, allowing a user to see not only a specific scene but also extraneous information connected with that scene. The hackerhat aims to be a common platform for AR applications that can run on a wide variety of hardware, including very cheap homemade systems. The latest version of the hackerhat software is capable of recognizing objects, using gestural controls, taking speech recognition input, and running applications written in Java. In this demonstration, I will briefly explain the philosophy behind the hackerhat and demonstrate the software and prototype hardware by “finger-painting in thin air” using the hackerhat's object-tracking and visualization capabilities.

Kat Mott Graph Spectral Analysis of Dementia

I took resting state EEG data that had been previously been collected from subjects with Alzheimer's Disease, Frontotemporal Lobe Dementia, and controls, and applied a new form of analysis to it. EEG data can be used to graph the connections between areas of the brain. I applied graph spectral analysis to this network for each group of patients. This allowed me to show that there are disease-specific differences in several network properties in the brains of patients with the two different types of dementia.

= Spring 2010 =

February 10th, 2010: Neil Stillings, Professor of Psychology &amp; Dean of Cognitive Science Space, Time, &amp; Complexity: Thinking &amp; Learning about the Earth &amp; Climate Abstract: Over the past six years I have participated in two NSF-funded projects to promote research on thinking and learning in the geosciences, titled Bringing Research on Learning to the Geosciences and Synthesis of Research on Thinking &amp; Learning in the Geosciences. The projects involved collaborations among researchers and teachers in the geosciences and cognitive scientists who work on learning and development, thinking and reasoning, visual cognition, and instructional design. I will talk about what we learned on these projects, particularly about the roles of space, time, and complexity in thinking and learning about the earth and climate change.

February 17th, 2010: Ray Coppinger, faculty emeritus The Mexico City Dump- and Island Paradise of Dogs Abstract: Within any well-defined area dogs will find food, reproduce and try to stay out of trouble. Mexico City, perhaps the largest city in the world creates an enormous amount of waste food delivered daily to the 700 dogs in the dump. “All species of animal are limited by food,” says Darwin. But if Darwin had studied the dogs in the Mexico City dump he might not have come up with that theory. The 700 dump dogs have a 24/7/365 reliable food resource. So that is the problem for those dogs living in the dump? That is a very interesting question!

February 24th, 2010: Charlene D’Avanzo, professor of ecology Using Diagnostic Questions to Improve a Notoriously Poorly Taught Course: Introductory Biology Abstract: For the last several years I have been working on an NSF supported program that integrates research on Diagnostic Question Clusters (DQCs) and their use by faculty teaching introductory biology and ecology. The Questions, developed by an education research team at Michigan State, are designed to: 1) help faculty better understand their students’ reasoning about key biological processes, 2) focus on thinking and reasoning most problematic, 3) use targeted active learning approaches to help students improve and 4) assess students progress. I will describe the Framework for these questions focusing on energy and matter, example student responses to some of the DQCs, and how faculty from a wide range of institutions are responding to this project.

March 3rd, 2010: Meagan Curtis, post doctoral fellow, Tufts The Pitch Patterns of Emotional Speech Mirror Those Used in the Musical Communication of Emotion Abstract: This research examines the prosodic contours of emotional speech and identifies specific pitch patterns that typify the expression of sadness and anger. Direct comparisons between speech and music reveal strikingly similar pattern usage across domains. These findings have implications for the fields of emotion, psycholinguistics, music cognition, clinical psychology, and evolutionary psychology.

March 10th, 2010: Salman Hameed, assistant professor of integrated sciences and humanities and Don Everhart Evolution and Islam: A preliminary report on the acceptance of evolution in the Muslim World Abstract: We are in the process of conducting an inter-disciplinary study on understanding the reception of evolutionary biology in the Muslim world. Our survey is focusing on Muslim physicians and medical students in 5 Muslim majority countries (Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey) and three diasporas (Germany, UK, US). While the last couple of decades have seen an increasing confrontation over the teaching of evolution in the US, the next major battle over evolution is likely to take place in the Islamic world. Low education standards, in combination with widespread misinformation about evolutionary ideas, make the Muslim world a fertile world for widespread rejection of the theory. Biological evolution, however, is still a relatively new concept for the majority of Muslims and a serious debate over its religious compatibility has not yet taken place. At the same time, a complex interaction between evolution, culture and religion is already underway. We will present a status report of the study. Salman Hameed is Assistant Professor of Integrated Science &amp; Humanities. He teaches courses on Science &amp; Religion, Science in the Muslim World, Search for life in the Universe, and Astronomy. His science &amp; religion research work focuses on understanding the rise of creationism in the Muslim world and on conflicts over scared objects and places of astronomical importance. Don Everhart is a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. His undergraduate thesis at Hampshire was titled “Coherence in Science and Religion” and was an attempt to define a formal method of coherence with particular application to epistemic debates in science and religion. He is currently working with Hampshire Professors Salman Hameed, Laura Sizer, and Laura Wenk as well as Northeastern Professor Berna Turam and Johns Hopkins Professor Anila Asghar on a project that investigates the attitudes towards evolution held by doctors and medical students in the Islamic world.

March 31st, 2010: Jacob Reider, alumn Interactive Authoring Revolution: Changing How Videogames and Apps are Made Abstract: As videogames have become more visually sophisticated, their development teams have grown from a few highly technical programmers to teams of hundreds, many of whom are artists and designers. To effectively empower these huge teams new ways of developing games needed to be created. Advanced tools with visual components have allowed the large number of artists and designers to author more and more of the game experience without programming. Led by the iPhone, the complexity and visual sophistication of mobile applications is rapidly increasing, and similar to the videogame industry, tools are starting to emerge that address the challenges of developing content for these devices. In this talk I will discuss the evolution of tools used in videogame development, and how those tools and techniques are applicable to mobile applications. I will also demo the development platform for mobile applications my company is currently creating to solve these challenges and expand the number of people who can develop mobile apps.

April 7th, 2010: Katherine Midgley, Tufts research Lexis nexus: Investigations of cross-language interactions in bilingual word processing Abstract: In 1989 François Grosjean remarked that a bilingual is not simply two monolinguals in one. Grosjean was referring to the high level of interactivity between a bilingual’s two languages. In Wednesday’s talk evidence of this interactivity in the lexicons of a bilingual’s known languages will be presented. This evidence, in the form of electrophysiological data, or brainwaves, comes from experiments involving second language learners and proficient bilinguals in the USA and France. With this line of research we aim to address the specification of cognitive mechanisms involved in written word recognition in bilinguals and second language learners.

April 14th, 2010: Student Lightning Talks, Evan Silberman, Dan Taub, Ian McEwen Foxes, Ontologies and Turing Abstract: Evan Silberman on the joys and sorrows of theoretical computer science. Dan Taub on fox tails and phenotypic variation. Ian McEwen on the Semantic Web and why ontologies are awesome.

April 21st, 2010: Charles Ross, assistant professor of evolutionary biology Using hybrid zones to elucidate adaptation and barriers to gene exchange in crickets Abstract: Hybridization in nature presents a paradox: it should homogenize two hybridizing species, yet in many cases they remain genetically distinct. For this reason, hybrid zones (areas where two species meet and produce offspring of mixed ancestry) are useful to study because they potentially can tell us about how speciation works, as well as reveal how organisms become adapted to their environments. Barriers to genetic exchange may be important in maintaining the species integrity between two hybridizing species. Two North American ground crickets (Allonemobius socius and A. fasciatus) that hybridize in a band from New Jersey to Illinois exhibit a barrier called, "conspecific sperm precedence" (CSP), which may play an important role in keeping the species distinct. Here I will show data on a potentially new barrier to gene exchange, micro-habitat association, that may act before CSP. Together with CSP, habitat segregation may provide an effective barrier to genetic exchange, maintaining the integrity of these species despite hybridization.

April 28th, 2010: Student Lightning Talks: Lindsay Barbierie and Brenna Sommer Mars, Massages and Mozzarella Cheese

May 5th, 2010: Chris Perry Improving The Hub In this talk I will discuss a recent and exciting curricular experiment in interdisciplinary collaboration known as Improving TheHub. The students, faculty, and staff participating in this spring 2010 course applied techniques from the field of Goal-Oriented Interaction Design to try and make TheHub a better tool for helping its users meet their goals. The talk will include an overview of our methodology (derived largely from interaction designer Alan Cooper) and a demonstration of some of our results.

= Fall 2009 =

September 23rd, 2009: Ted Stankowich On the Evolution of Weaponry in Female Ungulates Abstract: Weaponry is ubiquitous in male ungulates and is driven by intrasexual selection, but the mystery surrounding its sporadic presenc in females has persisted since the days of Darwin and remains unsolved. Female honrs are often smaller and shaped differently than males horns, suggesting a different function; indeed, hypotheses explaining the presences of female horns include competition for food, male mollification, and defense against predators. Here we use comparative phylogenetic analyses to show that females are significantly more likely to bear horns in bovids that are conspicuous due to large body size and living in open habitats than inconspicuous species living in closed habitats or that are small. An inability to rely on crypsis or take refuge in deep vegetation has apparently driven the evolution of horns for defense against predators in female bovids, a finding supported by many field observations. Typically, exceptions are small species where females are territorial (e.g., duikers) and use horns in intrasexual contests. Furthermore, we suggest that conspicuousness and territoriality hypotheses may explain other instances of femal cranial weaponry (i.e., antler and ossicones) in other horned ruminants. Our phylogenetic reconstruction indicates that the primary function of horns in females is linked to antipredator defense in most clades but occasionally to intrasexual competition in others.

October 1st, 2009: Pervez Amir Ali Hoodhboy Can the Taliban Win in Pakistan and Afganistan? Abstract: Over a period of 25 years, Dr. Hoodbhoy created and anchored a series of television programs that dissected the problems of Pakistan's education system, and two other series that aimed at bringing scientific concepts to ordinary members of the public. He is the author of "Islam and Science - Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality", now in 7 languages. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science. Also in 2003, Dr. Hoodbhoy was invited to the Pugwash Council. He is a sponsor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists. Over the years, he produced and directed several documentary films that have been widely viewed on national television which deal with Pakistan's political, nuclear, and scientific matters. He is frequently invited to comment on nuclear and political matters in Pakistani and international media.

October 7th, 2009: Linnaea Stockall How Understanding ‘Undoable’ Might be Doable Abstract: The word ‘undoable’ can either mean ‘not able to be done’ or ‘able to be undone’. The difference in these two meanings of the whole word can be understood as the result of differences in the way the three pieces ‘un’, ‘do’ and ’able’ are combined together. In this talk, I’ll describe how my colleagues and I have been measuring people’s eye movements while they read sentences containing ambiguous words like ‘undoable’ to better understand how we go about assembling complex words from simple pieces. I’ll discuss the possible roles of such factors as the larger linguistic context, and the lexical semantics of the verb stem might play in resolving ambiguity.

October 14th, 2009: Ernie Alleva Genes and Justice, What, if anything, Follows Morally Speaking if “The Bell Curve” (or similar conjectures) Turns Out to be True? Abstract: It is often thought that, if there are significant genetic-based differences in human cognitive (and perhaps other) capacities that are associated with race or sex, certain kinds social inequality related to race or sex are morally acceptable. One can find views like these in the work of ancient thinkers, such as Aristotle, and in contemporary work by Herrnstein and Murray in “The Bell Curve”. In response, critics of such views typically challenge the empirical claims involved, denying that there is a genetic connection between race and intelligence or sex and mathematic and spatial abilities. I shall argue that the widespread emphasis on the empirical issues in these debates often misses or obscures something important: Even if the empirical claims in works like "The Bell Curve" turn out to be true, race- or sex-related social inequality needn’t be morally acceptable. Whatever the empirical facts, in drawing conclusions about acceptable or unacceptable social inequalities, one also needs to determine the appropriate moral principles for evaluating such inequalities.

October 21st, 2009: Laura Sizer ''Do you need to feel it in order to hear it? A debate over musical emotions'' Abstract: What does it mean to say that a piece of music sounds happy or sad? Is the emotion expressed by music a property of the music or the listener? I will discuss several different philosophical positions on these questions, and perhaps go on to make some grandiose claims about what this debate reveals about human affect and cognition more broadly.

October 28th, 2009: Ethan Gilsdorf Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks Abstract: Join Hampshire College grad Ethan Gilsdorf, f84, who will discuss some of the themes of his new book, "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms." In "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks," a blend of travelogue, pop culture analysis, and memoir, forty-year-old former D&amp;D addict Gilsdorf crisscrosses America, the world, and other worlds from Boston to Wisconsin, France to New Zealand, and Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. Delving into Dungeons &amp; Dragons, live-action role playing games, World of Warcraft, the Society for Creative Anachronism, Tolkien fandom, and other fantasy subcultures, Gilsdorf embarks on a quest that begins in his own geeky teenage past and ends in our online gaming future. He asks: Who are these gamers and fantasy fans? What explains the irresistible appeal of such "escapist" adventures? How do the players balance their escapist urges with the kingdom of adult-hood? Gilsdorf will talk about the culture's discomfort with the geek/nerd/gamer stereotype and will look at society's ambivalent relationship with gaming and fantasy play, and the origins of that prejudice, as well as the author's own past misgivings and final acceptance of his "geek" identity. Since the origins of D&amp;D, the culture has widely embraced gaming and role-playing as an "acceptable" activity since, a shift largely brought on by the digital revolution. The shame of being a gamer and social isolation are gone, but in their place are other concerns: the loss of "place" and "hereness," and the way games with richly-textured digital landscapes may demand less of the imagination.

November 4th, 2009: Student Lightning Talks Abstract: Three students. Thirty minutes. Twelve pizzas. This Wednesday: The first Cognitive Science Student Lightning Talks, featuring original work from students working in and around the School of Cognitive Science. Each ten-minute talk will be short, sweet, and science-tastic. This week's speakers and topics: Marco Carmosino on natural language processing Auburn Lutzross on speech differences and sexuality stereotypes Jarred de Beer on the computer graphics incubator program Come. Learn. Share. Eat.

November 11th, 2009: Mark Feinstein CHARGE Abstract: CHARGE Syndrome is a rare genetic/developmental disorder that occurs in approximately 1 of 10,000 births. It was first described some 30 years ago as an apparently non-random association of six anomalies: C (colobomas, or defects of the visual system); H (heart defects); A (atresia, or blockage of the nasal passages); R (retardation of growth and development); G (genital defects); and E (ear deformation). It is now recognized as a distinct syndrome caused by mutations or deletions in a single regulatory gene, CHD7. Although the brain itself is usually spared by the defective action of this gene, CHARGE Syndrome has a dramatic impact on the peripheral nervous system and other anatomical and physiological systems. Multiple sensory input and motor control systems are affected: CHARGE children typically have moderate to profound hearing loss; significantly impaired vision; olfactory impairment or complete anosmia; strong aversion to touch; deformed or absent semicircular canals leading to profound difficulty with balance and movement; generally ‘hypotonic’ musculature, poor head control and difficulty in manual manipulation; and impairment of tongue control and swallowing. Not surprisingly, the usual course of cognitive and behavioral development is significantly delayed or disrupted in CHARGE. Many children with CHARGE will not (or cannot) eat or drink normally. Unaided walking often does not occur until age three or later. Perseverative, obsessive-compulsive, aggressive, and self-abusive behaviors can occur, and social interaction may be impaired. Language development in particular can be highly compromised: one third of CHARGE children do not ever exhibit productive symbolic language ability (vocal or gestural) even when their hearing and/or visual challenges are remediated. But there are also children with CHARGE who go on to learn and use language essentially normally, and adults with CHARGE syndrome who attend college and attain advanced degrees. Indeed, non-linguistic assessments of cognitive ability (though difficulty to perform on many of these children) suggest that most individuals with CHARGE are intellectually quite capable. Perhaps most surprisingly, the single strongest predictor of linguistic success in CHARGE children is relatively early emergence of walking. CHARGE therefore may shed some light on long-standing questions about the nature of language and language acquisition: What are the necessary biological/developmental and social preconditions for language? How are language and 'general intelligence' related? What kind of perceptual input is necessary? Are there developmental time-constraints (‘critical periods’) in the course of learning? What role do motoric abilities such as balance and locomotion play in cognitive development? What is the relationship between productive linguistic ability and language comprehension in these children?

November 18th, 2009: Anne Pycha, University of Pennsylvania Acoustic signatures in speech production and perception Abstract: Every language contains a set of sounds that people combine to produce words and sentences. When we analyze these sounds acoustically, we see that they are created with an extremely limited set of basic elements -- pitch, duration, and loudness -- and that speakers use a given element for multiple, unrelated purposes. For example, a speaker may increase the duration of a vowel in order to accomplish a linguistically important phonological goal, such as changing the meaning of a word (because the vowel in "bead" is longer than the vowel in "beat"), but she may also increase the duration of a vowel in order to accomplish an arguably less important phonetic goal, such as signalling the end of a sentence (because "beat" is longer at the end than in the middle of a sentence). This creates a serious problem for listeners, and for our understanding of speech perception more generally: how do listeners know if a duration increase signals a meaning change or not? In this talk, I present evidence from speech production and perception studies which demonstrates that not all duration increases are created alike. The production studies show that speakers signal a meaning change by warping the duration of a vowel according to a specific signature; for less important linguistic goals, speakers omit this signature. The perception studies show that listeners can actually use this signature to distinguish between words with different meanings, such as "bead" versus "beat" -- even in the absence of an overall duration increase. The implications are that a) changing meaning is a categorical linguistic behavior which is distinct from other behaviors; that is, phonological processes are independent of phonetic ones, and b) people use distinct perceptual strategies to detect phonological versus phonetic processes during listening.

December 2nd, 2009: Jonathan Westphal Sorting Out the “Self” Abstract: What is the Self? It cannot be something eliminable, or psychological or mental or made of consciousness. The grammar of the first person singular pronoun tells a different story: "a whole cloud of philosophy dissolved into a drop of grammar" (Wittgenstein). "I" is like a variable whose type sense is "the speaker", and whose token sense is a variable that ranges over speakers.

December 9th, 2009: CS Student Lightning Talks, Andrew Fulmer, Erik Hoel/Michael Hogan, John Schanck Abstract: CS Lightning Talks are an opportunity for students to present their work and areas of interest to the School of Cognitive Science community. This month: Andrew Fulmer on courtship displays and bat harems, Erik Hoel and Michael Hogan on the neural correlates of consciousness, John Schanck on anonymized filesharing, so the spooks can't track your...totally legal Linux downloads