The Inside Report

Advising Tips for Cogs Students: Finding Breadth Courses

2010-09-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered, "Isn't there a list somewhere of all the possible "B" courses at SFU so I can find courses to fill my Breadth requirements easily?" Here's one!

Notice that some of these courses are designated B in two areas (and COGS 100 is unique in being designated B in all three). This means that you can count the course toward whichever of the B categories you decide you need to apply it to. When checking if you are meeting your B requirements you might notice that the default calculation in the system is to apply the course to the first of the two or three designations listed. If you need a B-Hum/-Sci course to count as B-Sci for instance but it shows on your transcript as counting toward B-Hum, talk to your advisor to have the system count it as B-Sci.

Post Zero: Faris

2010-08-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm Faris Chebib, a Cognitive Science student at Simon Fraser
University (SFU). I transfered to SFU's cognitive science
program from the University of Utah in the fall of 2008, and have been an active
member of the program ever since. This is my last year in the program, and is
also my honours year — for the next two semesters, I intend on appyling the
various principles of cognitive psychology, philosphy, and linguistics in order
to better the learning environment of post-secondary environments.

Education is just one of the many disicplines which cognitive science can be
readily applied to. When considering the many things which one can study in
university, I like to think that principles of philosophy and cognitive science
can supplement any of them. I've held this view long before SFU. I remember
how a professor at the University of Utah described the value of these studies
to us, he said that student should consider their philosophy degrees as
"frosting" and their other course of study as the "cake". Taking this to heart,
I personally declared a double-major in Philosophy and Biology. As a result, I
can safely say that I learned more about both subjects than if I had taken
either of them on their own.

In the course of my biology studies, I stumbled upon the stunning simplicity of
neurons. Even as the facts were written out before me in lecture notes and
textbooks, I still kept getting more and more questions — how can a cluster of
such seemingly simple cells be responsible for every thought, word, and action
rendered by the beings who possess them? I started reading more and more into
the philosophies of language, but was left further stupified and in continuous
amazement.

If philosophy is the frosting, then I had found my cake (I always like to go
meta when I can). Cognitive Science, this inter-disciplinary study of the mind,
had captured the thoughts of yet another student. It is with this curiousity that I make my journey from Vancouver to Portland. As I write this, I am on a train bearing south to Portland. Each bumpy rattle is another mark of experience colouring my perception. Each uncertain step the passengers around me make is another second closer to a convention of the mind and of the Minds. A day which started before the sun made its presence known, foggy with the haze of sleepiness and Vancouver storm-clouds, now explodes unto the beautiful Oregon scenery.

My future posts will document my Portland adventures; stay tuned!

CogSci 2010: Post 0

2010-08-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

Faris Chebib and Angelina Fabbro are two of our undergraduate students in Cognitive Science who decided to take the drive from Vancouver down to Portland, Oregon for the Cognitive Science Society annual meeting and conference, August 11th to August 14th. And they offered to tell us about their experience of CogSci2010.

Closing Comments: Day Two at NOWCAM (Post 7)

2009-05-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

We're in the final paper session of the conference which focuses on attention. This is the session that features a talk by a member of our very own lab, the inimitable Bill Chen. His talk described some results from an ongoing project called ORIS. Amongst other things ORIS looks at the relationship between working memory and attentional optimization. This was Bill's first conference presentation and it went very smoothly.

After this session we will relocate for second poster session of the conference back at the student union building.

All of us at the cognitive science lab have thoroughly enjoyed sharing our work and learning from other researchers. We would like to thank the organizers of NOWCAM and hope that we will be as good hosts when it is SFU's turn to host in several years.

Poster Sessions (Post 6)

2009-05-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

[ PHOTO: Engaged in discussions at the poster sessions ]
[ PHOTO: Jordan explains fluid learning to a fellow NOWCAMP'er ]

The poster sessions at NOWCAM were a thriving hub of discussions, debates, mini-presentations, and networking. For two hours, attendees were able to meet with students and researchers, and dig deeper into cognition and memory studies. Way to go Jordan!

"I have no memory of that": Perpetrators' Memory for Their Own Crimes (Post 5)

2009-05-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Eyewitness memory has been an immensely fruitful research area in cognitive psychology - but eyewitnesses are not the only ones present during a crime. In fact, perpetrators' memory for their own crimes has been a largely ignored subject of research, even though the veracity of confessions is a rather contentious topic in many court situations.

There are many factors that may affect the accuracy of recall for the details of a crime - arousal, centrality of particular details to the crime (e.g. the box that money was taken from versus a jacket that was hanging nearby), gender of the perpetrator or witness, and consistency versus inconsistency of the crime with existing schemata.

Participants were instructed to carry out a mock theft of an exam from a professor's office. Arousal was manipulated rather excitingly by telling half of the participants that they would have to dodge security on the way! A week after the theft, memory for the crime was tested through free recall, a present/absent recognition task for objects in the professor's office, and a forced-choice recognition test for pictures of the office and the route the participants took.

Females recognized more objects than males at low arousal, but not at high arousal; males tended to make more hits than correct rejections in the recognition task; schema-consistent or central objects were remembered better; and recognition memory was generally better in the high-arousal condition.

False Memory and False Source Memory (Post 4)

2009-05-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

The phenomenon of memory conformity is a well-established one - when one person reports some aspect of a shared event that another did not experience, the second person will later report personal recall of what the first person described. However, it is not yet known whether the false recall is really false recall, or simply a report of what that person "knows" to be true about the subject at hand.

This study examined the phenomenon by showing pairs of participants videos from slightly different angles, such that each saw two details that the other could not. Each pair was then asked about a number of details in the video in a cooperative task, and were then split up and asked the same questions individually, along with a source memory question - where did their knowledge of the scene come from? Was it a memory, information from their partner, both, or just a guess?

Items seen by one's partner were recalled at a very high rate, and participants most often attributed their memory of those items to both their partner and their own viewing of the video, even though they never saw those details themselves - a clear case of false memory. Interestingly, details not seen by one's partner were often attributed to the partner as well. It seems that both false memory and false modesty are at work here!

[PHOTO: Mike blogs live at NOWCAM 2009 ]

Tunnel Vision and Blame Attribution (Post 3)

2009-05-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Confirmation bias. Tunnel vision. Whatever you call it, the phenomenon of collecting information to support or investigate a particular hypothesis regarding a to-be-investigated event can compromise objectivity and lead to erroneous conclusions. Although Popper solved the problem of confirmation bias for science, the problem is far from solved in the minds of the general population. One domain in which this effect is especially apparent is industrial accidents - one must shift from a worker role into an investigator role, and any number of cognitive biases enter into play, such as the Fundamental Attribution Error.

How, then, can we remedy tunnel vision and prevent undue bias in investigations? Education is one idea - if people are encouraged to consider alternatives and adopt a pseudo-Popperian mindset, by which they attempt to falsify their preconceptions rather than confirm them, a reduction in bias may result.

In this experiment, participants read about an industrial accident after being assigned to one of two bias conditions - they were given an initial description that blamed an accident either on an incompetent worker or on a piece of faulty equipment - and were educated or not educated on the phenomenon of tunnel vision, hypothesis testing, and the consideration of alternatives. They were then asked to allocate blame. Unsurprisingly, people tended to blame whoever they were intially biased against, but education played a very small role - it failed to interact with bias.

Additional evidence was then provided supporting either the worker or the equipment as the responsible party, and participants were asked how supportive the evidence was of their initial blame allocation. Education had no effect on blame allocation, interestingly, and people tended to consider additional evidence as slightly supportive of their original hypothesis - no matter what the original hypothesis was!

Finally, more blame allocation was asked for. This revealed a large effect, whereby people initially biased against the worker who were educated in the FAE and tunnel vision revised their initial attribution of responsibility such that the worker and the equipment were equally at fault. Conversely, people with an initial anti-equipment bias tended to shift blame onto the worker if they were educated.

Initial biases are clearly resilient - though education has some effect, people who are aware of the fundamental attribution error are still all too likely to commit it.

Face recognition and the N400 Wave (Post 2)

2009-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Research byJustin Kantner, Iris Gordon, Krista Friesen, Andreas Breuer, Christopher Warren, & James Tanaka.

The second session presented research looking at what happens in our brain when we constantly see faces that are insignificant to us and are quickly forgotten.

With repeated exposure to a face, a mental representation builds. Upon recognizing a face, the stored representation is activated and an N250 wave occurs 250ms after stimulus onset in the posterior channels of the brain

The researchers constructed a “Joe /No Joe” task to capture face recognition in the lab.
In the experiment, participants compare three “types” of faces, of which Joe’s is one type. Their prediction was that the N250 wave will be more emphasized for the Joe-type faces.

They found that the N250 wave indexes existing and acquired faces, and subsequently indexes Joe in experimental conditions, which lead them to ask the question: “would a non-individuated non-task-relevant but highly salient face elicit the same N250? What are the conditions necessary to elicit N250?” In this case, the enhanced N250 is not a result of Joe being distinctive, rather it comes from repeated experience of seeing Joe.

Morning Sunshine: Day One at NOWCAM (Post 1)

2009-05-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

[ PHOTO: NOWCAMP'ers fuel up on day one ]

University of Victoria is beautiful in the spring. Sunshine reflects off contemporary faculty buildings, and groups of bunnies mingle in the dew-soaked grass. There are lots, and lots of bunnies.

For those of you who aren't aware, NOWCAM stands for North West Cognition and Memory. The conference is designed to give undergraduate students the opportunity to present their research to peers in the form of posters or presentation.

Our group from the SFU Cognitive Science Lab consists of Calen Walshe, Mike Wood, Bill Chen, Jordan Barnes, Michael Fry, and myself. On the morning of day one we arise at a brain-tingling 7:30am among a sea of network cables, laptops, and last night's pizza boxes, and make our way to registration.

As students finish up munching on fresh muffins washed down with juice and coffee, the conference hall begins to fill up in anticipation of the opening welcome from Steve Lindsay followed by Dr James Tanaka introducing the first session on Perception.

By: Harry White

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 6

2008-06-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

A full day of talks and its time to go home. Everything here has been great. The UW campus is a very picturesque place to have a conference, the food served was a treat and above all the talks left us all with something to think about. Next year NOWCAM will be held at the University of Victoria and there was already talk of who was going to be taking the ferry to make the trip. See you next year at UVIC!

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 5

2008-06-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today is going to be quite a busy day. We have talks in the morning, poster sessions at lunch and then more talks in the afternoon. None of us are presenting today, so we'll be able to fully absorb all the talks.

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 4

2008-06-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

The rest of the day went very well. Marcus and I both presented in the second last session of the day. Lots of good questions came up, some even made comments about aspects of the experiment design we hadn't even thought of. Following the final session of the day, Deirdre Gentner gave a talk about analogies and problem solving that was very interesting. Dinner was served in what used to be the faculty club. It was a gourmet seafood feast and was made possible due to the generosity of a private donor.

The plan for the rest of the evening is to repose and possible play some pool in the residence lobby. Without a doubt, today was a success. All of us were satisfied with how our presentations went, and were glad to have seen so many interesting talks.

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 3

2008-06-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Mike's presentation went smashingly. His paper was titled: Space aliens and eye-trackers: A study of selective attention and memory for category exemplars. To be sure, he had the most exotic name of any paper that was presented. His talk lasted about 12 minutes and there was about 5 minutes of questions. Nothing too challenging came up, but judging by the questions there was lots of interest in what was being presented. It was great to hear some questions that were directly related to the talks that Marcus and I are giving later in the day.

Lunch is just about to be served, and my understanding is that the poster session will occur at the same time. Marcus and I will give our talks in the afternoon, and I'll let you know how those go later this evening.

Cheers!

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 2

2008-06-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the reception. We met lots of interesting people, had a few pints and were able talk to other conference attendees about our papers in a pretty informal atmosphere. The reception was held in a local pub that had some charm. The only downside was that American laws are pretty strict and one of our group who wasn't quite 21 couldn't join in. No bother though, he told us that he brought an ethernet cable which meant he was able to rock out and have some virtual pints. There was even some talk of setting up a webcam if it happens again.

Time to shut the lights off and get some rest. Mike is going to be our first presenter. He'll be presenting at 10:00 right after the keynote speaker. G'nite from UW.

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 1

2008-06-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

We just arrived at the University of Washington campus in early evening. I haven't seen much of it yet, but from what I have seen it seems very picturesque. Most of buildings have a very antique European style although many of them have clearly been built in the last half century.

We drove straight to our residence which during the regular academic year houses students but in the summer is host to conference attendees. The room that I have been assigned has an amazing view of Union Bay. What's even better is the whole asthestic of the room is giving me a taste of the first year dorm experience that I never had.

Momentarily, our troop will depart for the reception at a local pub. Should be fun!

Cognitive Science Students: NOWCAM Post 0

2008-06-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Members of the Cognitive Science lab are leaving for the NOWCAM 2008 conference today (NorthWest Cognition and Memory). Attendees from the lab include, Dr. Mark Blair, Cognitive Science Undergraduate students Kim Meier (Minor) and Calen Walshe (Honours), and grad students Mike Wood and Marcus Watson.

Out of this group three will be giving talks and the other three will be providing support for their fellow lab members. Marcus, Mike and Calen's presentations will focus on experimental research that used an eye-tracker to measure human performance on categorization tasks.

The Inside Report asked the team to be our insiders at this event. First stop in town? "We will be attending a no-host reception this evening and then getting rested up for the talks in the morning." Thanks Calen and Kim. More to come soon from Seattle.

Language Industry Showcase Post 1

2007-12-03T07:17:00.000-08:00

The language industry showcase attracted a wide range of companies involved in language training, language translation and language technology. Given my background in technology, I was particularly interested in one of the more technical sessions, that was focused on Speech processing technology and its applications (which draws on issues from computing science, linguistics and engineering). While most people know that speech recognition technology is used by many companies over the phone for customer service applications, I was surprised to find out that it is even being used to produce the closed-captions that we see on Canadian hockey broadcasts. Each of the speakers also gave the audience some insight into what we might expect to see in the not too distant future in terms of "emotion detection" (is this an angry customer or a happy customer), or "voice transformation" (can a phone modify your voice to sound like someone else's voice), or even "identity verification" (can your bank use your "voiceprint" to help confirm your identity over the phone, over the internet or in person).

Fred Popowich: Language Industry Showcase Post 0

2007-11-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

Fred Popowich will be attending the Language Industry Showcase in Gatineau Quebec on November 30th. The language industry is made up of companies and organizations involved in Language Training, Translation and Technology.

As stated on the website, "the showcase objective is to bring together members and non-members, buyers (governments and private companies) and suppliers (language industry companies) from all parts of the country with leading international experts, to share information and focus on latest trends, best practices, current and future issues and solutions in the language industry."

If you are interested in language related issues in Cognitive Science, the Showcase could provide some insight into applications of cognitive science research, and careers in this related field.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 9

2007-10-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

Oct. 14.: Back to the grind tomorrow. Me and a classmate are meeting with a cog sci professor tomorrow morning to plan a seminar on a particular topic we're interested in next term. That's one thing I can't emphasize enough – I really like the freedom and flexibility I've been given here to pursue the kind of things I want to pursue.

That's what my first 5 weeks in the sandbox have been like. I would encourage who wants to go to graduate school to contact me if you have any questions or want advice. Graduate school is not for everyone, but if you are interested in a career in research, I think it is worth the time and effort. Choose a good school and make sure you're doing what you really enjoy doing.

That's all for now.

Cheers,
Doug Yovanovich
dyovanov@cogsci.ucsd.edu

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 8

2007-10-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

Oct. 12: What else is there to do on a Friday or Saturday night except drive somewhere? Southern California is so spread out, you have to get out of your immediate neighborhood to do something interesting in your spare time. UCSD is in a nice borough of San Diego and everything, but once you've seen it for a few weekends in a row, you want to do something else. Actually, I had this weekend planned a long time ago... me and some friends drove up to L.A. to watch the Kings play the Boston Bruins. On my way in to the Staples Center arena, the staff told me I could not bring my airhorn, because airhorns are too loud. Who ever heard of banning airhorns at hockey games?!?

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 7

2007-09-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Sept. 30.: Spent the last few days deciding what I'm going to do course-wise and research-wise this term. One interesting consequence of the egalitarian climate is no one hands you a list of courses you have to take and things you have to do before you graduate. You have to be independent and make your own plan. I've lined up two lab positions for myself, one with my advisor and one with a professor who I met at the boot camp. I'm sitting in on two seminars outside of my department, but considering dropping one of them because the professor is too 'linear' for me (thanks to Steve Pearce for introducing me to the term). I've never thought it was useful to suppose there there is only one right answer when doing science, and this class seems to be going that way. It's a great class for someone who wants to learn rigorous methods for solving a very specific subset of questions in linguistics, but that's not me – I like to be more creative (i.e. nonlinear) in my approach to cognitive science. To each his own, I guess.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 6

2007-09-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

Sept. 24-25: The Cognitive Science Department held its orientation for new (and old) graduate students. One thing that really impresses me here is the academic climate. It is very egalitarian. Professors treat graduate students like peers as opposed to underlings. The faculty want us to explore their interests and pursue the things we want to pursue. It's quite unlike graduate schools at small state universities, where you are basically admitted by a particular professor and then you become their indentured servant, doing the kind of research they want you to do. Here, it's the opposite: they accept a group of bright, talented people and let us do what interests us. I'm lucky that I already have an advisor whose research interests match my own, so there's a lot I can learn from her already.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 5

2007-09-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

Sept. 18: I miss that drink cooler from boot camp! Must be caffeine withdrawal.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 4

2007-09-17T15:57:00.001-07:00

Sept. 17.: Woke up on this Monday morning and realized I have nothing to do all week... The fall quarter doesn't start until late September. So far, it has been like being on vacation (except for all the working... but if you enjoy what you do, it doesn't seem like work). The boot camp was catered, and there was enough food and drink to keep us all plump n' giggly for 2 weeks, but now it's time to unpack the cookware and become self-sufficient again. Have I mentioned my apartment is completely bare? It's because the graduate students' salaries for teaching and research don't start until October when the fall term officially starts, and I've been avoiding furnishing this place until then.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 4

2007-09-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 3

2007-09-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

Sept. 15: All the Boot Camp participants presented their week-long projects today, and there was some nifty work. My group didn't quite master the multi-voxel pattern analysis method, but then again, Rome wasn't built in a day. Me, my groupmates, and one of the senior graduate students in the CogSci department are going to continue to look at it. I did master the fMRI data analysis software though, and produced some nifty reconstructions of my brain on the computer. Here is a representative picture of my own brain activity during a basic visual recognition task.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 2

2007-09-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Sept. 8: Got my brain scanned at the fMRI center today. Everything is still there. Next week we process the data. Going to spend this weekend at the beach riding out the rest of this San Diego heat wave.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 1

2007-09-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

Sept 7: My first week of graduate school at UCSD has been intense, and the fall term hasn't even started yet. I am participating in a program called Boot Camp – two weeks of intensive research mentorship and training funded by the National Science Foundation. The topic of the boot camp is Computer Vision and Learning. I am focusing on the human-learning part, and gaining valuable experience at computer modeling and neuroscience methods along the way. For our group project we are going to apply a machine learning algorithm to data from functional MRI brain scans. It's a technique called multi-voxel pattern analysis, which basically applies a linear classifier to data from brain images to see if we can predict (actually 'postdict') what the brain was doing at some point in time. The basic idea is to look for distributed networks (as opposed to loci) of brain activity that work together during basic memory/attention/perception processes.

Doug Yovanovich: UCSD Post 0

2007-09-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Doug Yovanovich is a graduate of the Cognitive Science Program at Simon Fraser University. He recently started working towards his PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. This is his report of the first few weeks at UCSD, including the "Boot Camp" he attended.

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