[CaBSSem] Cognition & Brain Sciences Seminar: Friday, October 4, 2024 @ 3:00 pm; Anna Lawrance (UVic)

[David Medler]

The Cognition and Brain Science Seminar (CaBSSem) will take place on Friday, October 4 at 3:00pm in the Psychology Reading Room (Cornett A228) featuring Anna Lawrance who will be presenting on another task using PsiZ

Title: Visuoperceptual and Semantic Category Restructuring in Undergraduate Geology Students​

Abstract:
o the untrained eye, rocks offer little perceptual information to aid in accurate categorizations. Given this, geology serves as an ideal domain to observe the emergence of category knowledge. This study examined the formation and reorganization of perceived rock-type categories in students (N=48) enrolled in a post-secondary introductory-level geology course. Through this work, we addressed three key questions: 1) How do categories for rock knowledge develop? 2) How does category knowledge of rocks change following conceptual and perceptual learning? and 3) Is the trajectory of category learning indicative of academic performance? In this study, shifts in category structure were assessed using PsiZ, a machine learning package that generates a multi-dimensional category representation (i.e., psychological embedding) based on the participant’s similarity judgments. On each trial, participants were presented with a visual array of nine images and were asked to select the two most similar peripherally presented reference images to the central query image. Using the similarity ranking trial data, category structure was inferred at two time points: at the beginning of the course before formal instruction began and later, towards the end of the course, after participants received instruction in course content. Our analysis encompassed both perceptual and conceptual dimensions. Similarity judgments on images of rocks assessed the structure of participants’ perceptual categories, while judgments on rock type labels (e.g., “basalt” and “granite”) assessed the structure of their conceptual categories. To investigate the relationship between perceived category structure and performance on formal academic assessments, participants’ grades on lab tests assessing rock identification skills were obtained. In this talk, I will detail how category structures shifted pre- to post-instruction among the top 25% and bottom 25% of students, as determined by their lab test performance.


Many attend FTF, but we also livestream sessions at
https://uvic.zoom.us/j/81764468633?pwd=L2qpMid4hLXCGQrv9QQdY1bpleAnrm.1

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.

Our new CaBSSem website is now active (https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/cabssem/) [albeit, a bit bare bones right now]

Hope to see you there!

David



--
David A. Medler, PhD
Associate Teaching Professor
Associate Chair
Department of Psychology
University of Victoria

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/cabssem/attachments/20241001/6e449e00/attachment.html>