[CaBSSem] Cognition & Brain Sciences Seminar: Friday Feb 2, Darko Odic (UBC)

[Jordana Wynn]

The Cognition and Brain Science Seminar (CaBSSem) will take place this Friday, Feb 2 at 3:00pm in the Psychology Reading Room (Cornett A228) featuring Darko Odic (UBC) speaking on "The format of abstract perception: causes and consequences" (abstract below).

Many attend FTF, but we also livestream sessions at

https://uvic.zoom.us/j/81257812980?pwd=VndFY3hueDA2cWl0SXljK0ZSYVhxdz09

For students/faculty at UVic, best practice is to launch the Zoom app and then click "Sign in with SSO" so that you access the call from the UVic Zoom.

Schedule at https://www.wynnlab.org/cabssem

Hope to see you there!


The format of abstract perception: causes and consequences

How does perception represent abstraction? How does the mind coalesce across domains? Why is learning sometimes easy and sometimes difficult? In this talk, I propose that the answer to all of these questions can be gleaned from considering the representational format of mid-level perception, and especially number perception. I show that number perception is experience-independent, bipartite, and probabilistic. These facts carry consequences for the rest of the mind. For example, I show that (1) number perception is not derived from experience with mid-level perceptual objects (contrary to recent machine learning models suggesting otherwise); (2) that number perception readily integrates with other domains where their formats match (e.g., number and area perception) but not where they mismatch (e.g., number and long-term memory); and (3) that the bipartite format of number perception allows for radical adjustments in what counts as a unit of enumeration, allowing even children to showcase perceptual division and multiplication before exposure to symbolic mathematics. The study of representational formats, therefore, can tell us a lot about how facets of the mind sometimes quickly come together, and when they do not, and can help answer long-standing questions in cognitive science about nativism, modularity, and learning.
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