Thursday, May 29th @ 12:00 PM in Beecher 101 – Marie Mazerolle – Aging and Stereotype Threat: Cognitive Mechanisms and Psychosocial Intervention

Our final Cognitive Workshop of the year will be on Thursday, May 29th at 12:00 PM in Beecher 101. Marie Mazerolle, a postdoctoral scholar here in the Psychology department, will be presenting her talk, “Aging and Stereotype Threat: Cognitive Mechanisms and Psychosocial Intervention.”

Abstract:

The influence of salient stereotypes in our societies has intensively been examined in the past two decades using experiments demonstrating their role in the maintenance of certain differences between social groups, in the domain of cognitive performances among other things. Negative stereotypes about social groups would maintain stigmatized individuals’ performances at a suboptimal level, thus contributing to the observed differences. The talk will focus on the differences frequently observed between younger and older people regarding memory performances, and considered in the light of the stereotypes associated with cognitive aging. Specifically, our results clarify the nature of the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat in the older people (impact on controlled and automatic memory access) and also deliver ways to reduce this threat (via expressive writing) in test situations. Thus, without denying the idea of cognitive aging, our results therefore invite to consider the role of stereotype threat in group differences otherwise attributed solely to cognitive aging, and to continue the effort to better understand how to combat stereotypes in test situations where memory performances are assessed.

As always, food and drink will be provided.

Thursday, 5/22, at 12:00 pm in Beecher 101: Margaret Gullick – Individual differences in reading-related crossmodal processing and reading outcomes are predicted by arcuate fasciculus coherence.

Hi everyone,

Our next Cognitive Workshop of the quarter will be at 12:00 PM on Thursday, May 22, in Beecher 101. Margaret Gullick (Northwestern University) will be presenting her talk, “Individual differences in reading-related crossmodal processing and reading outcomes are predicted by arcuate fasciculus coherence”

Abstract:

Use of crossmodal information, such as integrated letter-sound (i.e., phoneme-grapheme) representations, is critical for successful reading and is one of the strongest early predictors of future reading achievement. Previous work has shown that white matter coherence and connectivity along the arcuate fasciculus is strongly tied to reading ability, with higher coherence associated with better performance, but the relationships between arcuate coherence and crossmodal versus unimodal reading processing, or longitudinal reading growth and early arcuate strength, have not been examined. We here first investigated the relationship between reading-related crossmodal brain activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and arcuate coherence in a group of 47 children with a range of reading abilities. Coherence along the left arcuate was significantly related to activity for crossmodal word rhyme judgments, but not unimodal task activities. This finding thus specifically links arcuate coherence to reading-related crossmodal processing, supporting the hypothesis that it especially supports the phoneme-grapheme translations needed in reading. Then, we used probabilistic tractography to reconstruct the arcuate and to separate it into anterior (fronto-parietal) and direct (temporo-frontal) component subsections. Regression analyses with longitudinal data collected three years after the initial visit from a subset of children demonstrated that initial connectivity especially along the direct section, was predictive of reading outcome. Further, this early direct arcuate connectivity was the only significant predictor of the change in reading score across the testing interval, even in comparison to the predictive power of behavioral measures. This result indicates that it is especially the direct segment of the arcuate which impacts reading. Together, these studies demonstrate the importance of the arcuate for reading-related processing both initially and longitudinally and help to better define its role in the neural reading network.

Food and drink will be provided.

Thursday, May 15th @ 12:00 PM – Ayanna Thomas – How Remembering Remakes the Past

Hi everyone,

Our next Cognitive Workshop of the quarter will be at 12:00 PM on Thursday, May 15th in Beecher 101. Ayanna Thomas (Tufts University) will be presenting her talk “How Remembering Remakes the Past.”

Abstract:

Our reconstruction of the past is as imperfect as the construction of the new human skull recently found in Kenya. This new human skull was pieced together with recovered and degraded fossils. Some pieces were missing and all found had been altered by time. Missing pieces were constructed by archeologists using their professionally based inferences and expectations. Thus, the new human skull allows us to infer the appearance of our distant ancestor. Our memories represent a similar inference of previous events. Memories are reconstructed, rather than relived (for a similar argument see Neisser, 1967). The reconstruction is influenced by our present perspective, expectations of the future, our emotional state, and by our available cognitive resources. My research has been directed at examining the various factors that systematically influence memory construction. The research presented focuses on one aspect – retrieval – and how that one aspect systematically influences memorial and metamemorial processes. I will present research examines how the retrieval process can shape memory in both positive and negative ways- how retrieval can reduce effects of interference in a verbal-learning paradigm, how retrieval can increase susceptibility to memory distortion in an eyewitness paradigm, and how retrieval systematically potentiates learning by modulating attention. Thus, retrieval pulls together some intact and some degraded memory fossils to reconstruct the past.

Food and drink will be provided.

Spring 2014 Quarter Schedule

Hi everyone,

This quarter, we’re going back to our regular schedule of workshops. All workshops are scheduled to take place in Beecher 101, unless specified otherwise in the e-mail, from 12:00pm-1:30pm of the given Thursday. Our schedule for the quarter is as follows:

Thursday, April 24th Geoff Brookshire
Thursday, May 15th Ayanna Thomas (Tufts University)
Thursday, May 22nd Margaret Gullick (Northwestern University)
Thursday, May 29th Marie Mazerolle

If you’re interested in subscribing to our listserv, you can do so by logging in with your CNet ID and clicking “Subscribe” here:
 

Thanks,

Stephen and Hyesang

 

Monday, March 10th Daniel Casasanto – Origins of Metaphorical Thinking

We’ll be having our last Cognitive Workshop on the quarter on Monday, March 10th at 12:00 PM in Wieboldt 408.

Daniel Casasanto, a professor here at the University of Chicago, will present a talk: “Origins of Metaphorical Thinking” 


Abstract: People not only talk metaphorically, we also think metaphorically. Where do our mental metaphors come from? Metaphor theorists posit that hundreds of metaphors in language and thought have their basis in bodily interactions with the physical world. Yet, the origins of most mental metaphors are difficult to discern, because the patterns of linguistic, cultural, and bodily experience that could give rise to them appear mutually inextricable. In this talk, I’ll discuss three mental metaphors for which the contributions of language, culture, and the body can be distinguished unambiguously. By analyzing the distinct ways in which politics, time, and emotional valence come to be metaphorized in terms of left-right space, it is possible to illustrate distinct linguistic, cultural, and bodily contributions to the mental metaphors that scaffold our thoughts, feelings, and choices.


Suggested reading:

Casasanto, D. (2013). Experiential Origins of Mental Metaphors: Language, Culture, and the Body. In The Power of Metaphor: Examining Its Influence on Social Life. M. Landau, M.D. Robinson, & B. Meier (Eds.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books.

PDF

Casasanto, D. (2014). Development of Metaphorical Thinking: The Role of Language. In Language and the Creative Mind. M. Borkent, J. Hinnell, & B. Dancygier (Eds.). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 

PDF

Food and drinks will be provided.

 

On Monday, 3/3/14 at 12:00 PM in Wiedbolt 408, Shoham Choshen-Hillel will present her talk “How do people resolve the equality-efficiency trade off? Depends on who decides and who is affected.” The abstract is listed below:

The term “social preference” refers to decision makers’ satisfaction with their own outcomes and those attained by comparable others. The present research was inspired by what appears to be a discrepancy in the literature on social preferences – specifically, between a class of studies demonstrating people’s concern with inequality (e.g., Loewenstein, Thompson, & Bazerman, 1989) and other studies documenting their motivation to increase social welfare (e.g., Charness & Rabin, 2002).

We propose a theoretical framework to account for these puzzling differences. In particular, we argue that a characteristic of the decision setting – an individual’s role in creating the outcomes, referred to as agency – critically affects decision makers’ social preferences.

 

Namely, in settings where people merely judge outcomes (they are “non-agentic”), their concern with inequality figures prominently, whereas in settings where they determine the outcomes (they are “agentic”), their concern with the welfare of others is prominent. A series of studies employing realistic scenarios as well as a novel behavioral paradigm document a robust effect of agency on social preferences.
Food and drinks will be provided.

Monday, 2/10 at 12:00 PM in Wieboldt 408 – Steven Franconeri – Visual attention creates structure over space and time

On Monday, 2/10 at 12:00 PM in Wiedbolt 408, Steven Franconeri (Northwestern University) will present his talk “Visual attention creates structure over space and time.” The abstract is listed below:

Selective attention allows us to filter visual information, amplifying what is relevant and suppressing what competes. But recent work in our lab suggests another role – extracting and manipulating visual structure. I will describe four such lines of research, showing a role for selective attention in grouping objects with similar features, extracting spatial relationships between objects, imagining manipulations of objects, and maintaining object identity over time. I will also describe interactions of these processes with spatial language and highlight potential applications for improving pedagogy and displays related to math and science education.

Food and drinks will be provided.

Winter 2014 Quarter Schedule

Hi everyone,

This quarter, we’re going to be doing a joint workshop session with the developmental workshop. As such, we will be meeting every Monday of the quarter, with the exception of Martin Luther King Day. Here is the schedule of speakers:

Monday, January 6th cancelled
Monday, January 13th Student discussion of job candidates
Monday, January 27th Denes Szucs
Monday, February 3rd cancelled
Monday, February 10th Steven Franconeri
Monday, February 17th Visiting Students Day
Monday, February 24th cancelled
Monday, March 3rd Shoham Choshen-Hillel
Monday, March 10th Daniel Casasanto

More details for each talk, such as the title and abstract, will be sent out as its respective date approaches.