correction on Cog Sci Seminar, April 14th
Crystal Williams
From: lin...@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Linda E. Daetwyler)
Message-Id: <950402201...@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU>
To: cogsci-...@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: CORRECTION: Cognitive Science Seminar, April 14, James Townsend
Status: R
BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
Spring 1995
Cognitive Science Seminar - IDS 237
-- Friday, April 14, 1995, 11:00-12:30 p.m. --
306 Soda Hall
`How to Test for the Perceptual Independence of Cognitive Attributes
of Objects'
James T. Townsend
Rudy Professor of Psychology
Co-Director of Cognitive Modeling Training Program
Indiana University
The nature of perceptual attributes has occupied the attention of
philosophers and natural scientists for hundreds of years. In the
19th century, the emerging science of psychology began to perform
experiments that opened new doors on such questions. In particular
one major topic was the relationship of different attributes (or
dimensions, etc.) to one another perceptually. That is, although many
attributes can be physically manipulated in a manner that is indepen-
dent of one another, it by no means follows that their perception is
independent. In fact, the opposite often appears to be the case.
Such matters were also of interest to the Gestalt psychologists. In
the mid-twentieth century, the theory of signal detection was
developed by electrical engineers and psychologists and it revolution-
ized the science of near-threshold perception. Two severe limitations
with regard to the problem of perceptual independence have been the
lack of an embedded theory of multidimensional and multi-signal--
multi-response perception. In a totally separate line of investiga-
tion, Wendall Garner and his associates invented several ingenious
methods to investigate these issues. However, it has only been
recently that a new theory, the General Recognition Theory, was
developed partly as a remedy to the lacuna in the realm of signal
detection theory. General Recognition Theory has permitted a theoret-
ically rigorous investigation of Garner's techniques and the develop-
ment of new ones.
This talk describes the branch of General Recognition Theory that
pertains to perceptual independence, in non-technical terms, and
presents an experimental application. It can be applied to many dif-
ferent cognitive objects and situations and links up with classical
work in psychological scaling.
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ELSEWHERE ON CAMPUS
Cognitive Psychology Seminar, Friday, 4:00-6:00 p.m., Beach Room, Tol-
man:
April 7: Mike Webster, University of Nevada, on "Light Adap-
tation, Contrast Adaptation, Color Constancy."
April 14: Alan Gilcrest, Rutgers University, on "How Relative
Area and Relative Luminance Combine to Anchor the
Perception of Surface Lightness."
April 21: Beth Wenzel, NASA, Ames, on "Development and Percep-
tual Validation of Virtual Acoustic Environments."
April 28: Duncan Luce, University of California at Irvine, on
"How Does One Sum Several Things of Value?"
Linguistics Colloquium, 4:00-6:00 p.m., 182 Dwinelle:
April 5: Cleo Condoravdi and Mark Gawron, TBA.
April 11: Keren Rice, University of Toronto, on "The Represen-
tation of Place of Articulation in Vowels." (Please
note change: Time - 7:30 p.m.)
Philosophy Department Seminar, Wednesday, 4:10-6:00 p.m., Howison
Library, Moses Hall:
April 19: Susan Hurley, Oxford University, TBA.
SESAME Colloquium, Monday, 4:00-6:00 p.m., 2515 Tolman:
April 17: Mark Guzdial, Georgia Tech, TBA.
Speech Communication Systems Colloquia, Wednesday, 12 noon,
46 Dwinelle:
April 17: John Ohala, Linguistics, University of
California at Berkeley, on "The Lower Larynx
in Humans is not an Adaptation for Speech."
April 24: Ji-Hye Shin, University of California at
Berkeley, on "Acoustic Features Differentia-
ting Korean Medial Lax and Tense Stops."
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