COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Most of the Cogsci Colloquia are held in Crawford Hall (Map).

Cogsci Colloquium: Coming weeks, soonest first

• Zhengjun Lin. Wednesday, 25 November, 4-5pm, Crawford 618. Meaning Constructions of LIAN (Face) in Chinese. Zhenjun Lin is a postdoctoral lecturer at Northeast Normal University, Changchun Province, China, and currently Visiting Researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University.
• Abstract: This paper studies how nonce senses and conventionalized meanings are constructed from their conventional meaning of Chinese FACE. The Zhengjun Lin argues that meaning construction is an inferential process. The potential range of inferences is constrained by the linguistic expressions that serve as prompts, and cognitive principles, contexts, as well as the language users’ individual factors. In this paper, the meaning constructions of FACE in Chinese are explicated with the Chinese corpora from http://ccl.pku.edu.cn/Yuliao_Contents.Asp and the data from Chinese dictionaries. In this study, we find metonymy-metonymy chains, metonymy-metaphor continua, and metonymy-metaphor combinations in Chinese FACE meaning constructions. Also, the principles of metonymy and metaphor are involved in the conceptual blendings of FACE meaning constructions. Context and individual language users’ factors are the other two variables, without which meaning constructions are impossible.

 

Past Colloquia, most recent first

• Tim Adamson. Wednesday, 14 October 2009, 4-5pm, Crawford 618. Cognitive Approaches to Ritual: Outline of A Research Program. Tim Adamson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iowa Wesleyan College and a member of the editorial board for Cognitive Semiotics.
• Abstract: Given the emphasis in cognitive linguistics on the centrality of embodied, human-scale meanings in cognition, ritual would seem a natural area for cognitive analysis.  Where metaphor and conceptual blends employ imagined scenarios of action and perception in order to work out more abstract meanings, ritual brings these scenes back to life, as it were, playing them out in the flesh at the human scale.  In this sense, ritual would seem to be one more expression, now enacted, of the embodied cognition at the heart of cognitive linguistic theory.  How far can we take this line of thought when dealing with ritual?  To what extent is ritual “metaphor in the flesh” and to what extent does it resist such an analysis?  In this presentation I attempt to outline a cognitive approach to ritual, showing where the categories of cognitive linguistics may apply and where different tools are needed. 
• Some of the issues I will address include:
• To what extent can we see ritual as a metaphor or blend?  In what sense does ritual merge different conceptual spaces, and in what sense does it involve other kinds of spaces, e.g., performance, perceptual, kinetic, etc?  Ritual is conceptual—but what does a conceptual approach miss?
• What are the implications of the fact that ritual is lived, enacted, and not merely imagined? 

• Given the clear conceptual links between many myths (i.e., blends) and rituals, what does the performance of a ritual add or change to its meaning? 
• What is the status of body and perception in ritual, since they are at once enacted and imagined?

• How does the audience, human or superhuman, shape ritual meaning?

• What is the significance of the repetition and formality characteristic of many rituals?  How might we view these features from a cognitive (i.e., embodied, human-scale) perspective?  I will emphasize the aesthetic dimension of such repetition.

• Many rituals are performed to achieve something, not merely to retell or reenact a story.  How does this pragmatic context affect the ritual’s meaning? 

• Peter Hanenberg. Monday, 12 October 2009, 4-5pm, Crawford 618. The Power of Tacit Knowledge. Peter Hanenberg is a member of Faculdade de Ciências Humanas Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Co-Director of the Center for Cognition and Culture in Lisbon, Portugal.
• Abstract: The most famous definition of tacit knowledge is not exactly a definition but just a paradoxal sentence by Michael Polanyi: "We know more than we can tell". What is tacit knowledge? Is it something that is not tellable, something that is not at hand or explicit? Tacit knowledge appears in consciousness, but we do not fully understand why. Tacit knowledge is something that we know without notion of this knowledge. Nevertheless we are prepared to act on it. We will try to develop a clearer definition of tacit knowledge and its importance for cognitive culture studies in three steps: First we will observe some examples of "gut feelings" that lead us to the power of 'problem solving before or beyond knowing'. Then we will deal briefly with the idea of a geography of thought and with cognitive aspects of tacit knowledge for cultural diversity. We will try to relate Polanyi´s ideas on tacit knowledge with Leonard Talmy´s "Cognitive Culture System" in order to prepare three conclusions: tacit knowledge is based on experience, it is shared (and not just individual) and, thus, imparted through education. These conclusions may allow us finally to discuss challenges for tacit knowledge in media society.
• Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas. Thursday, 8 October 2009, 3:30-5pm. The Cogsci Forum (612C Crawford). Title: The Cultural Genesis of the Arrows of Love: Blending, Schemata, and Erotic Emissions in Greek Poetry, Rituals, and Art. Dr. Cánovas is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. He will be in residence in the Department of Cognitive Science at CWRU for the 2010-2011 year. This small colloquium will be provided by one-way Skype transmission to the Cogsci Forum from the Conceptual Integration Research Group at UC San Diego.
• Abstract: The arrows of love are one of the most frequently used symbols from ancient Greek mythology. Some classical philologists have proposed that they were invented by a specific literary author, Euripides or Anacreon. In cognitive linguistics, image-metaphor has been employed to link this particular cultural model to metaphor systems in everyday language. I argue that neither of the methodologies employed so far are sufficient for two reasons: their diachronic scope is not wide enough and their conceptual analysis lacks detail. The sheer intertextuality of the traditional approach is scientifically problematic and does not address the conceptual intricacies of the symbol. On the other hand, conceptual metaphor theorists often claim universality for metaphoric patterns without engaging in a detailed cultural study. I use Conceptual Blending Theory (the Grim Reaper blend) and image-schemata (the EMISSION schema) to link Love the archer to pre-existing imaginative products: Apollo the Archer as a personification of deadly disease, a group of conceptual blends for erotic emissions, the conceptual link between love and illness, and possibly also the arrows of glance metaphor. The conceptual structure of the arrows of love and their diachronic development offer some keys for the symbol’s long success in posterity. Beyond its hypothesis about the genesis of the arrows of love and its claims about the relevant literary texts, the major interest of this research is methodological. I intend to find a common ground in which classical studies and cognitive linguistics can benefit from each other. I also make suggestions about the generalization of conceptual patterns and their study in literature and culture, and I try to achieve relevant theoretical conclusions on the framing of mental spaces through schemata.
• Emergence of Mathematics Workshop. Monday and Tuesday, 11-12 May 2009. 618 Crawford. Sponsored by the Institute for the Science of Origins. Participants include James Alexander, Per Aage Brandt, Marcel Danesi, Gilles Fauconnier, Brendan Foreman, Reuben Hersh, Doug Hofstadter, Greg Huber, Ed Hubbard, Anthony Jack, Rafael Núñez, Todd Oakley, Arnaud Viarouge, Glenn Starkman, Lee Thompson, and Mark Turner. A gallery of photographs from the workshop:
• The Cogsci Colloquium is pleased to publicize the Spring 2009 Allen and Constance Ford Distinguished Lecture, in partnership with the Department of Biomedical Engineering: Jeff Hawkins, Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 4:30-5:30pm. Wolstein Auditorium. Title: Hierarchical Temporal Memory: How a theory of the neocortex may lead to truly intelligent machines. Jeff Hawkins is a co-founder of Palm, Handspring, and Numenta and the author of On Intelligence. Seating is limited. Register by clicking on the link above.
• Roland Posner. Wednesday, 25 March 2009, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford. Title: Polysemy in Gestures. Roland Posner is Director of the Research Center for Semiotics, Technische Universität Berlin.
• Abstract: Emblematic gestures are body movements that carry conventional meanings. These meanings are semantically based either on a body reflex or on the utilization of an artifact. The artifact is presented either by direct embodiment (such as the hand shape imitating a mobile phone in the gesture 'Phone me!') or/and by operating on it (e.g., by holding the hand in this shape at the cheek, as in real phoning). The lecture shows that in normal gestures these sources of meaning can be applied to convey a multiplicity of meanings that are connected by metaphors and metonymies just like in the meanings of verbal expressions.
• Kristina Woolsey. Saturday, 14 March 2009, 12-12:45pm. Cleveland Museum of Art. Title: Learning and Teaching From Objects. Kristina Woolsey is adjunct professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University. Her talk is hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Arts and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. For details, see http://cma.org/events/conference.aspx and the flyer. Admission is free but registration is required. Click here to register.
• Jessica Gerard. Wednesday, 25 February 2009, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: The Reading of Multiword Items in L1 and L2: A Corpus Informed Eye-Movement Analysis. Jessica Gerard is Lecturer in the English Department and Coordinator of ESL for SAGES at Case Western Reserve University. Her Ph.D research is in the psycholinguistics of idiom processing in non-native speakers of English.
• Abstract: This study contributes to the growing body of formulaic language research indicating that formulaic sequences (e.g., idioms, collocations, metaphors, and other conventionalized multi-word items) facilitate comprehension by reducing processing load (Wray, 2002). Expanding on Underwood et. al. (2004), this study combines corpus analysis and eye-movement data to assess the contribution of formulaicity to the comprehension of a whole, authentic text. Information regarding grammatical, lexical, and contextual conventions for each formulaic item in the text was obtained via the Collins COBUILD Online Corpus and the British National Corpus. Additionally, using an Applied Science Laboratories Eye Tracker, the eye movements of two native speakers and one non-native speaker of English were recorded and the fixations for formulaic sequences were compared. All eye movement data was interpreted in light of Goodman's Transactional model of reading (2003). Specifically, eye movements for each participant were compared across two conditions: 1) a condition comprised of the formulaic sequences in the text and 2) a baseline segment from the text which was free of formulaic items. Paired t-tests were performed for each participant to determine whether or not the eye movement behavior differed significantly in the two conditions. Data analysis indicates that both native and non-native readers of English showed significant differences in the eye movement patterns for the two conditions. However, these significant differences were reversed for the two participant groups. In the case of the native readers, the predictable nature of formulaic sequences facilitated the processing of written text, as evidenced by a significantly lower percentage of words fixated in the formulaic sequences in comparison with the percent of words fixated in the baseline condition. However, for the non-native readers, 1) lack of experience with the formulaic items and 2) their opaque nature appeared to hinder comprehension, resulting in a significantly higher percentage of words fixated in the formulaic condition than in the baseline, non-formulaic condition. This dissertation has implications for the fields of first and second language acquisition, particularly literacy theory and instruction.
• David Pincus. Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: The Social Brain: the Neurohormones of Attachment and Intersubjectivity. David Pincus, D.M.H., is Director of the MindBrain Consortium at Summa Hospitals in Akron, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has been inducted as an Honorary Lifetime Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) because of his contributions bridging neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Pincus is a member of the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Contemporary Psychology and Science and Consciousness Review. He is the founder and director of the Cleveland MindBrain Group which convenes on a monthly basis at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. He is also a psychotherapist in private practice in Cleveland Heights and Akron.
• Abstract: The neurohormones of the opiod system and oxytocin/vasopresin largely underwrite bonding, attachment, personality development and later adaptation or psychopathology. David Pincus will discuss theoretical and empirical literature connecting early bonding with personality development, ongoing relationship patterns, and tendencies for psychiatric difficulties. The speaker will discuss research he is involved in, including:
  • (1) an fMRI study of depressed individuals administered oxytocin (looking at depression as a social and phenomenological disconnection syndrome)
  • (2) a study looking at social responses to friends or romantic partners after intranasal oxytocin administration
  • (3) a newly approved study of the effect of a synthetic opioid on treatment refractory depression
• D. Fox Harrell. Wednesday, 21 January 2009, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Imagination, Computation, and Expression: A Cognitive Approach to Digital Media Arts. Fox Harrell is Director of the ICE (Imagination, Computation, and Expression) Laboratory/Studio and Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. is in Computer Science and Cognitive Science, from the University of California, San Diego. Website.
• Abstract: Fantastic blends of ideas, rich metaphors, social hierarchies, and cultural identities all exemplify the diverse power of imaginative cognition. Harrell's work constructs creative computational systems with bases in imaginative cognition. Such systems include interactive and generative narratives and poetry, games, social identity/networking sites, and, most important, new hybrid forms unanticipated by any of the above. The foundations for his approach are based in cognitive semantics theories of how concepts are generated and mapped to each other (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff & Turner, 1989), formal approaches to semiotics and cognition from computer science that acknowledge critical perspectives on artificial intelligence and do not attempt to reduce human cognition to computation (Goguen, 1998; Harrell 2005), and cross-cultural and media-theoretic approaches to expressive multimedia narrative, poetry, and other imaginative discourse forms (Gates Jr., 1988; Harrell, 2006, 2007b, 2007c; Murray, 1997). An original key method arising from this framework is that formal representations can be leveraged with understanding a system designer/author’s expressive intent and the affordances provided by the system for user interpretation. Core to Harrell's work is the development of theoretical tools that allow authors, programmers, and artists to (1) enable digital media authors/artists to “add meaning to media,” i.e. construct ontologies (formal descriptions of knowledge structures) as metadata for their media elements (graphics, animation, text, etc.), (2) generate meaningful text and multimedia discourse compositions dynamically, and (3) blend multimedia structures to generate new content dynamically for use in interactive narratives and related works. This approach enables the creation of digital media technologies within which meaning can be reconfigured and generated on the fly. Examples of recent systems will be discussed.
• Capstone Presenters. Wednesday, 10 December, 4-6 pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Ryan Kulp: Do Interviewer Gestures Influence Recall? Amanda Dewitt: Gesture Comprehension in Individuals With and Without Asperger's Syndrome. Rahul Sharma: Effects of Glioma and Similar Deep-Seated Brain Tumors on Cognitive Functioning. Viyan Udawatta: Perceptions of Mindedness and Moral status: A Cross-Cultural Study.
• William Deal. Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Framing the Bodhisattva: Cognitive Semantic Perspectives on Japanese Buddhism. William Deal is the Severance Professor of the History of Religion at Case Western Reserve University. Website.
• Abstract: Religious studies scholars have shown increasing interest in the cognitive science of religion, an assemblage of new approaches to the academic study of religion spearheaded by scholars such as Pascal Boyer and Thomas Lawson. Evidence of this interest appeared in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which featured an article by Edward Slingerland on the significance of cognitive science to the study of religion. Within the cognitive science of religion, however, there have been few attempts to theorize and apply cognitive semantics to an analysis of religion and religious texts (Slingerland’s own research is a prominent exception). My attraction to cognitive semantics derives from my work on issues of interpretation, rhetoric, and ideology in the study of Japanese Buddhist texts. My work to date has primarily applied postmodern methodologies to these Buddhist texts, with little attention given to the cognitive constructs that are in operation in this literature. For reasons I will make clear in my presentation, I no longer find postmodern approaches sufficient. Within cognitive semantics I find the possibility of concepts and theories that can provide a far richer and more robust account of what is occurring in these Japanese Buddhist texts. In short, I seek a way to reconcile issues of embodied cognition with the cultural contexts in which religious discourse is produced, and to do so in a way that takes into consideration the cognitive limitations on what counts as a plausible interpretation. In this colloquium, I apply frame semantics and mental space theory to the Hokke genki (“Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra”), an eleventh century Japanese collection of brief stories extolling the spiritual benefits of the Lotus Sutra, historically one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures in East Asia. I explore how the interpretation of these stories is both cognitively and contextually constrained, and consider how cognitive activity negotiates language and context to produce the Buddhist meanings found in these narratives.
• Tarcisio de Arantes Leite and Leland McCleary. Wednesday, 5 November 2008, 4pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Prosody, attentional gesture and segmentation in Brazilian sign language conversation. Tarcisio de Arantes Leite has been admitted as professor of Libras at the Federal University of Santa Catarina and Leland McCleary is professor of modern languages at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Website.
• Abstract: An enduring issue in sign language linguistics based on
  naturalistic discourse is knowing how to segment the stream of speech without imposing grammatical categories and relations which may be more appropriate to the oral-language gloss than to the language on its own terms (Baker & Padden 1978). One way to< investigate how the language is segmented "on its own terms" is to tap into the intuitions of native speakers as they project possible turn-completion points in the course of a conversation. Having established that Brazilian sign language (Libras) speakers follow the one-speaker-at-a-time heuristic common for oral languages (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1978), this presentation will focus on the analysis of how sign language prosody and orientational and indexical gestures (especially eye gaze, body and head orientation, pointing and sign spatialization) contribute to the production of attentional framings (Langacker 2001) toward which conversationalists orient in performing complex turns such as lists and contrasts.
• Dimitria Gatzia. Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Color Subjectivity: The Individual Variability problem. Dimitria Gatzia is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Akron. Individual website.
• Abstract: Studies show that there are widespread intrasubjective and intersubjective color variations among subjects who do not suffer from color deficiencies, i.e., normal subjects. I argue that these variations present difficulties, albeit not the same kind, for both realists and subjectivists about color. This suggests that we ought to rethink the debate about the nature of color. I offer some alternative ways of thinking about the problem of color.
• Ana Eliza Barbosa de Oliveira and Bento Carlos Dias da Silva. Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 3-3:30pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Metaphors and WordNets." Ana Eliza Barbosa de Oliveira is Ph.D Student and Bento Carlos Dias da Silva is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Antônio S. Abreu and Sarah Barbieri Vieira. Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 3:30-4pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Projections, culture, and image schemas as metacognitive resources for learning English as a second language."
• Abstract 1: "Metaphors and Wordnets."Research in Human Language Technology has proven the need for extensive and complete machine tractable lexical resources for natural language processing (Saint-Dizier & Viegas, 1995; Dale et al., 2000). While the lexical-bottleneck problem seems to be softened to English, Brazilian Portuguese wide range lexicons are not available. To bridge such a gap, our research group in Brazil has been working on the development of a particular sort of lexicon (Dias-da-Silva et al., 2002, 2003, 2006): the Brazilian Portuguese WordNet, based on both Princeton WordNet (Fellbaum, 1998) and EuroWordNet (Vossen, 1998). These lexicon-building projects have consolidated as methodological standards for encoding both (i) robust conceptual atoms and domains that are lexicalized by natural language words and phrases (Levin & Pinker, 1991) and (ii) cross-linguistic lexical and conceptual relations (Miller&Fellbaum, 1991; Vossen, 1998). These two features motivated the study we present at this colloquium: metaphors in wordnets. Metaphor is defined as a cognitive process that co-relates and transposes cognitive structures between Cognitive Domains (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). By examining conceptual metaphors that guide production and understanding of metaphorical sentences, words, and phrases, the task has been to identify distinct kinds of metaphor (Kövecses, 2002; Croft & Cruse, 2004) and the grammatical types of metaphor instantiation (Sullivan, 2007; Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2006). The mining, analysis, and encoding of conceptual metaphors and their linguistic instantiations are supported by the following cognitive-linguistic and computational-linguistic constructs: Image Schemas (Johnson, 1987), Cognitive Domains (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987, 1993), Semantic Fields (Leher, 1974; Kittay, 1987), and Frames (Minsky, 1972; Fillmore, 1981). In a nutshell, we follow Alonge&Lönneker (2004), and claim that metaphorical meaning can be represented into wordnets by means of pairs of hierarchically-structured Inter-Lingual-Indexes (CILI) that encode conceptual metaphors. Each CILI in turn clusters pairs of individual language synsets (i.e. individual language synonym sets that represent lexicalized concepts) that manifest the appropriate conceptual metaphors linguistically.
• Vito Evola. Wednesday, 30 April 2008, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Multimodal Semiotics of Spiritual Experiences: Representing Beliefs, Metaphors, and Actions. Vito Evola is a doctoral student at the University of Palermo, Italy.
• Abstract: Traditionally, spiritual experiences have been considered "ineffable," but metaphors pervade the representations of certain concepts of the transcendental in an attempt to talk about such abstract ideas. Whether it be during the description of a vision or simply talking about morality, people use conceptual metaphors to reason and talk about these concepts. Many representations of God, spirits, or the afterlife are culturally based, but whereas some may differ based on individual experiences, others seem to have a more universal character. From a phenomenological point of view, it seems that the descriptions are contingent and not necessary, that is, the language a believer is exposed to may influence, but not condition a priori, his or her own spiritual experience as Constructivists have thought. People's views about themselves and the world around them are deeply rooted in their conceptual systems, which are created by their experiences and their bodily interactions with the world, whether it's having to do with gravity in the case of UP and DOWN, or what our individual and social concepts are. When people talk about religious and spiritual concepts, they are revealing a great deal about their world and themselves and the way they interact with it. Concepts dealing with people's system of beliefs are very "meaningful" for the individual, and the more entrenched a frame of mind is, the less plastic it is, a fact confirmed by the neurosciences, which claim that it is difficult to break down and reconstruct certain synaptic structures of the brain. How do today's common "faithful" relate to certain metaphors about spiritual concepts transmitted by their faiths? What do these metaphors say about the individuals' concepts of themselves and their world? I will explore some of my own conclusions concerning conceptual metaphors and figurative language collected in various sacred texts and during a series of interviews of religious people with different backgrounds of religious systems. The data include linguistic expressions as well as gesture. Moreover, the interviewees were asked to draw on paper certain experiences of religious nature and then to describe their pictures. My investigation will try to shed new light on the phenomenology of religious experiences and personhood, using cognitive linguistics as a prime tool of analysis.
• Savin SAGES Lecture. Michael Schoop. Monday, 7 April 2008, 4pm. Amasa Stone Chapel. Title: Teaching Imagination in the Age of Digital Experience.
• Eve Sweetser. Case TV Recording. Wednesday, 26 March 2008. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall (Inamori Center). ACES Distinguished Lecturer. Reception to follow at 5:15pm in 111 Crawford, the SAGES Seminar Room. Title: Viewpoint and perspective in language and gesture. Website. Eve Sweetser is Professor of Linguistics and former director of the Cognitive Science program at UC Berkeley.
• Abstract: Viewpoint permeates human cognition and communication —predictably, since we never have experience of the world except as a viewpoint-equipped embodied self among other viewpointed embodied selves. Examination of some of the areas where perspective is known to be central—such as linguistic deixis (Hanks 1990), or gestural pointing (Kita 2003)—has helped motivate researchers to examine the much broader presence of perspectival phenomena in language and bimodal communication. Signed language data—necessarily embodying portrayed viewpoints in ways which spoken language does not (Dudis 2003, 2008)—has also helped spoken language researchers to notice parallel phenomena in their data. In this presentation, I will examine multimodal viewpoint in linguistic and gestural data, and will go on to suggest that we should in general be thinking of viewpoint as an intersubjective phenomenon rather than a unitary first-person phenomenon. Data from all the relevant sources come together to push us towards a theory which includes mutual awareness of viewpoints between participants—and incorporation of addressees’ and spectators’ (and readers’ [see Verhagen 2005, Tobin 2008]) perceived viewpoints into the cognitive perspectives of speakers, narrators and writers. Intersubjective viewpoint contruction is important at every level, from construal of local physical spatial affordances to literary narrative.
• Mark Johnson. Tuesday, 18 March 2008. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall (Inamori Center). Title: Natural Sources of Morality. Website. Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon.
• Abstract: Our moral values are shaped by the nature of our interactions with our physical, social, and cultural environments. They are born in our flesh, not handed down from some transcendent source. Moral reasoning is a form of ongoing problem solving that is tied to the bodily origins of our values. Our reason is both emotional and imaginative. Consequently, moral deliberation is akin to the creation of art. To appreciate this analogy, we have to understand the bodily and neural bases of aesthetics. The result is a moral pluralism, not a relativism or subjectivism.
• Symposium on Morality and Mind: Ethics at the Crossroads of Culture and Science. Friday, 29 February 2008. 8:30am-6pm. George S. Dively Building, Room 214. See the Case News Center Story. Speakers: Pascal Boyer (Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis), John Doris (Department of Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis), Jesse Prinz (Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Stephen Stich (Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University), Chris Meyers (Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Southern Mississippi). Abstract: Recent research in cognitive science challenges ethical perspectives founded on the assumption that rationality is key to moral knowledge or that morality is the product of divine revelation. Bedrock moral concepts like free will, rights, and moral agency also have been questioned. In light of such critiques, is the study of ethics best understood as a humanities discipline or as the science of morality? Is ethics an issues of moral philosophy and religious reflection or is it an issue in cognitive science and evolutionary biology? Is ethics primarily informed by nature or by culture? Or is ethics informed by both?
• The Project on Ethics and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, in conjunction with the Departments of Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, will explore junctions and disjunctions between ethics, culture, and cognitive science in a daylong symposium titled “Morality and Mind: Ethics ad the Crossroads of Culture and Science.”
• Organizers: William Deal (Religious Studies), Anthony Jack (Cognitive Science), and Sara Waller (Philosophy).
• The symposium is free and open to all faculty, staff, and students, but reservations are required. Reservations can be made at http://morality-and-mind.eventbrite.com.
  
  • Friday, February 29, 2008
    8:30-9:00. Continental Breakfast provided in the Dively Building
    9:00-10:15. Dr. Jesse Prinz (introduced by William Deal)
    "How Do Emotions Relate to Morality? A Review of Competing Models." There is a growing body of evidence that emotions occur when people make moral judgments. This fact alone, however, is consistent with a variety of processing models. Emotions might be the effects of moral judgment, or the causes of moral judgments, or components. Emotions might be involved in all moral judgments, or just some (a dual process theory). I argue that emotions are components of moral judgments and against dual processing theory. I also consider competing "philosophical models", i.e., metaethcial theories of the role that emotions play in morality. I present empirical evidence of a "response-dependent" view as opposed to an "error theory" or "emotivism."
    10:30-11:45. Dr. John Doris (introduced by Anthony Jack).
    "On Reflection ( . . . more or less)." In philosophy, persons are often distinguished by a propensity for reflection -- a conscious and concerted mentation effecting control of behavior. In psychology, research on unconscious processing suggests that this philosophical conception of persons is unrealistic; ethically significant human behavior is very often beyond reflective control. A psychologically lifelike conception of persons will therefore de-emphasize reflective control; instead, the human ethical distinctiveness marked with such philosophical honorifics as “person,” “agency,” “practical rationality,” and “the self” is found in the collaboratively developed rationalizing explanations of behavior by which humans living in groups regulate their lives.
    12:00-1:00. Lunch provided in the Dively Building.
    1:00-2:15. Dr. Pascal Boyer (introduced by Anthony Jack)
    "Imagination as constraint: Mental Time-Travel & Moral Psychology." What is the function of our capacity for episodic memory, or ‘mental time-travel’? Evolutionary considerations suggest that vivid memory but also imaginative foresight may be crucial cognitive devices for human agents, otherwise drawn towards impulsive, myopic opportunism. This model of evolved self-restraint casts doubt on the psychological reality and unity of a moral psychology.
    2:30-3:45. Dr. Stephen Stich (introduced by Sara Waller).
    "The Definition of Morality." Debates about the definition of ‘moral judgment’ and ‘moral rule’ have a venerable history in philosophy. In addition to debating the merits of various proposed definitions, philosophers have also disagreed about what the definition is supposed to do: What counts as getting the definition right? One proposal is that moral rules or moral judgments are a psychological natural kind, and that the correct definition should specify the essential features of this kind. Recently, a number of philosophers and psychologists have suggested that research using the moral / conventional task, first introduced by Elliot Turiel, has uncovered some of the essential properties of this natural kind. If the empirical generalizations drawn from this work were correct, it would be reasonable to conclude that we have indeed discovered the essence of morality. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that those generalizations are not correct, and thus that the moral / conventional task tells us nothing of interest about the definition of morality. So, I will argue, we still do not have good answer to the question “How should ‘morality’ be defined?” But with the explosion of interest in empirically informed moral psychology in recent years, the issue has taken on added importance. Indeed, some of the most heated debates in empirical moral psychology are actually debates over the definition of morality.
    4:00-5:00. Discussion: Dr. Chris Meyers (introduced by Sara Waller).
    5:00-6:00. Symposium Reception in the Dively Building.

• David Quinto-Pozos. Friday, 8 February 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Depicting animacy in American Sign Language: Examining gestural and linguistic strategies. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Abstract: Perhaps one of the most obvious facets of signed languages to the non-signer is the manner in which signers use their bodies in mimetic ways to depict the actions of characters while also producing signs and other linguistic structures that are not understandable to a naïve language user. So, a signer of American Sign Language (ASL) may commonly utilize her head and face, upper torso, and hands/arms to depict corresponding parts of animate objects and certain actions of those animate beings. I refer to this method for communicating the actions of an animate referent as constructed action (following Metzger 1995), although it has also been labeled—throughout various literatures—using other terms such as character-viewpoint, demonstrations, and reported action. Some authors (e.g., Liddell & Metzger, 1998) claim that constructed action is gestural in nature, whereas other writers have described such meaningful articulations within ASL as linguistic devices at the lexical and the sentential levels of structure (e.g., Supalla 1982, 1990, 2003; Lillo-Martin, 1995; Kegl, 1985, Padden 1990). In this presentation, I will discuss data from several studies of constructed action in signed language. In particular, I will use examples of constructed action production, judgments of such productions, and investigations of constructed action across different ASL registers and different sign languages to provide a picture of how and why signers depict animacy by using this strategy. In the presentation I will also present data that speak to the following points: 1) constructed action does not seem to pattern in some traditional linguistic ways, 2) for many signers, constructed action can be considered to be an obligatory mechanism for the description of animate objects, and 3) constructed action can alternate and co-occur with linguistic strategies for depicting or describing animate objects. The points discussed in this presentation raise various questions about this communicative device. For instance, why might this strategy for meaning communication be a necessary part of a signed utterance even though it lacks some traditional linguistic properties? Are there other ways that signers can communicate similar information about animate objects without utilizing constructed action? Might there be constraints that govern the production of constructed action? Finally, how can work on co-speech gesture inform studies of constructed action within the signed modality (and vice-versa)?
• Peter Whitehouse. Monday, 4 February 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: The Myth of Alzheimer’s: lessons in applied cognitive science. Website. Peter J. Whitehouse, MD, PhD is Professor of Neurology and founding member of the Department of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, staff at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, and Director of Adult Learning at The Intergenerational School Professor of Cognitive Science.
• Abstract: “Discovering a disease, taking a history, and making a diagnosis” are all cognitive processes undertaken by physicians. Put differently these process become “inventing a disease, sharing an illness experience, and applying a social label.” In this talk I will relate the story of an idea which became a book, The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis, coauthored with Danny George. Alzheimer’s is a label constructed 100 years ago which provokes fear and dread in individuals and health policy makers alike. Whereas the phenomenology of age associated cognitive decline is real, of course, and does potentially create suffering, Alzheimer’s is not one single condition but rather a variety of biological processes that start early in life. Alzheimerization of the brain is probably another name for aging processes. Hence the dominant story that Alzheimer’s is one disease, different from aging, which can ultimately fixed with sufficient investment in reductionistic scientific approaches is wrong. Exploring the myth should lead to different and more hopeful ways of conceptionalizing cognitive aging and of meeting its challenges. For example, a sense of purpose, community engagement and legacy is critical to cognitive well-being as we age. The Intergenerational School, founded with my wife, Catherine, another cognitive scientist, will be used to illustrate these ideas. In the broad sense of cognitive science developed here at Case, we will explore the historical, cultural and ethical, as well as scientific and clinical, aspects of the myth of Alzheimer’s.
• Gaurav Patel. Wednesday, 23 January 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Attention networks in the macaque monkey. Gaurav Patel has just defended his Neuroscience PhD as part of the MD/PhD program at Washington University in St Louis. His research, conducted in collaboration with the laboratories of Maurizio Corbetta and Larry Snyder, uses fMRI of awake behaving monkeys to look at the relationships between human and monkey functional brain anatomy.
• Abstract: We have performed a series of experiments using fMRI in awake behaving macaques to characterize the cortical networks underlying visual processing and attention. These experiments have revealed several previously unknown topographic and functional properties of the visual attention system in macaques, and also indicate that there may be substantial differences with humans.
• Daniel Casasanto. Thursday, 17 January 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Meaning & Motor Action: The role of motor experience in concept formation. Website. Daniel Casasanto is an NRSA postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology at Stanford University and Ph.D. in Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT, 2005.
• Abstract: How do people transform experience into knowledge? This talk reviews a series of studies testing the hypothesis that our physical experiences in perception and motor action contribute to the construction of even our most abstract thoughts (e.g., thoughts about value, time, happiness, etc.) These studies begin to distinguish the contributions of linguistic experience, cultural experience, and perceptuo-motor experience to the formation of concepts and word meanings. Some experiments show that people who talk differently think differently; others show influences of non-linguistic cultural practices on conceptual structure; others show that people with different bodies, who interact with their environments in systematically different ways, form dramatically different abstract concepts. These demonstrations of linguistic relativity, cultural relativity, and what I will call ‘bodily relativity’ highlight the diversity of the human conceptual repertoire, but also point to universals in the processes of concept formation.
• Suzy Scherf. Monday, 14 January 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Faces on the Brain: Developing the Neural Basis of Category-Specific Representations. Website. Suzy Scherf is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 2003.
• Abstract: In adults, the ventral visual cortex is organized in a category-selective map with particular stimulus categories (e.g., faces, places, objects) eliciting distinct patterns of cortical activation. This functional organization supports fast and efficient recognition of visual objects, and particularly faces, and represents an ideal system in which to study developmental changes in brain-behavior correspondences. I will describe several behavioral, functional and structural neuroimaging studies that demonstrate how the location and selectivity of face-related cortex is uniquely developmentally delayed into adolescence, while place- and object-related cortex matures in childhood. Furthermore, the nature of the computations performed within face-related cortex do not mature until early adulthood. This delay in the functional specialization of face-related regions co-occurs with the maturation of face and emotion recognition skills and late developing structural changes in white matter tracts that connect regions in the broader face-processing network. I have used this same approach to understand atypical brain development in developmental disorders in which visuoperceptual processes appear to be disrupted. For example, face-processing deficits are some of the most widely cited symptoms in autism. I will also describe a series of parallel studies in children with autism, which demonstrate that there is a selective abnormality in the development of face-related cortex. This abnormal pattern of brain development may reflect atypical development of very basic visuoperceptual processing skills in autism that are especially disruptive for face processing. This research reveals important mechanisms by which brain-behavior correspondences change developmentally and may identify vulnerable developmental periods in which targeted intervention programs could have more success for individuals with developmental disorders.
• Rick Grush. Thursday, 10 January 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Is it now? Some explorations of the metaphysics of the mind and the semantics of indexicals. Website. Rick Grush is Professor of Philosophy and of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. He specializes in theoretical cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.
• Abstract: Cognitive semanticists seek to explain linguistic meaning in terms of relations between linguistic items and cognitive representations, as opposed to relations between linguistic items and states and objects in the world. On this approach, indexicals such as 'I', 'here', and 'now' can seem to be straight forward, but in fact the opposite is the case. Exactly what a language user is representing, and how she is representing it, when using or interpreting such expressions is subtle and surprising. I will approach this issue from an oblique angle, by exploring the nature of the subjective agent (the putative referent of 'I'), and its relation to time and space, the 'here' and 'now'. In particular, I will ask the simple question: Where (and when) is the speaker?
• Edward Hubbard. Friday, 4 January 2008. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Mappings between Number and Space. Website. Edward Hubbard is NUMBRA Post-Doctoral Fellow at the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging unit and Ph.D. Psychology and Cognitive Science, UC San Diego.
• Abstract: Various studies have suggested that spatial metaphors are often used to structure cognitive representations. One such metaphor is the "mental number line," in which small numbers are mapped to the left side of space, and large to the right. We have previously suggested that this mapping arises through a process of "neuronal recycling" of pre-existing mechanisms involved in numerical and spatial abilities (Hubbard et al., 2005; in press). In our first test of this hypothesis, we used fMRI to measure BOLD signal change while subjects judged the parity status of a number. We found that parietal regions involved in shifts of attention and eye movements were differentially activated depending on the magnitude of the number; the left hemisphere region was more active for large numbers compared to small numbers, while the corresponding right hemisphere region was more active for small numbers compared to large numbers (Hubbard et al., submitted). In a second set of fMRI studies, we used three tasks—mental arithmetic, a multisensory localizer, and saccades—to further explore homologies between human and macaque parietal regions, and test their roles in mental arithmetic. Our results demonstrate a partial overlap between calculation and multisensory regions bilaterally, with overlap between calculation and saccade related regions in parietal cortex and frontal eye fields. Correlation analyses within these regions demonstrate that this overlap extends to the pattern of activations across voxels (Hubbard et al., in prep). In a third experiment, we used event-related potentials to demonstrate that processing of non-informative numerical cues lead to attention-related ERP components similar to those elicited by arrow cues (Ranzini et al., in prep). Taken together, these results support the hypothesis that similar brain circuits are involved in processing of numerical and spatial processing in numerate adult human subjects. Building on these results, I will discuss future studies exploring the role of space in the acquisition of basic mathematics, the role of these same neural circuits in number-space synesthesia, and in structuring higher-order mathematical representations, such as in algebra or calculus. Finally, I will discuss how these methods can be applied to elucidate the role of space in structuring other, non-numerical, cognitive representations.
• Charles Burroughs. Wednesday, 28 November 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Constructions of Knowledge and the Organization of Consciousness: Architecture and Cognition in a Time of Transition." Website. Charles Burroughs is the Elsie B. Smith Professor of Liberal Arts and Professor of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University.
• Abstract: Cognition occurs in an environment. In certain cultural milieus, cognition occurs through the environment, sometimes through an environment expressly shaped or enhanced to cue recollection and to structure perception. What happens when humans are confronted with a milieu in which familiar cues and signs are missing, or undergo change? That is, when a means and medium for cognition suddenly becomes the object of the effort to understand the physical milieu, to organize perception and response? In the early Italian Renaissance, the ordering of the environment in a radically new way was closely bound up with the ordering of vision itself, and with the appeal to various strategies for making sense of the phenomenal world. At the same time, the separation of the observer from the observed and experienced scene was implicit in many cultural productions, and at times given more or less explicit articulation. "Cognition of," perhaps, rather than "cognition in." I will present an extreme case of architectural/environmental transformation, suggesting what may have been at stake for contemporaries, and inviting the members of the colloquium—who all have very different disciplinary perspectives from mine—to reflect on the implications in terms of models or theories of cognition.
• Roy Ritzmann. Wednesday, 14 November 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: How do Insects and Insect Inspired Robots Deal with Barriers? Website. Roy Ritzmann is Professor of Biology and Professor of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University.
• Abstract: The ability of animals to negotiate unpredicted barriers in natural terrain makes them attractive models for robotic design. Animals evaluate objects in their path using sensors on their head then use that information to formulate commands that alter movement. In order to understand this process in insects, we employ a range of behavioral and neurobiological studies directed at both thoracic local control circuits and brain centers. Behavioral studies indicate that cockroaches use antennae to investigate objects in their path. For example, if the antennae contact a shelf from the top, the insect will climb over, while contact from the bottom will cause it to tunnel under the barrier. Turning movements can be evoked in cockroaches tethered over a lightly oiled glass plate. Pushing on one antenna generates turning movements that switch from symmetrical left-right leg movements to asymmetrical actions. In particular, the leg on the inside of the turn changes from rearward extension during stance to lateral extension during swing. Associated with this alteration is an increase in distal motor activity, reduction of proximal activity and changes in relative timing of joint extension. Lesion studies suggest that a region of the insect brain called the Central Complex (CC) uses antennal and other sensory information to generate appropriate descending commands. We, therefore, investigated responses of CC units to mechanical stimulation of antennae. Using multi-channel recording techniques, we described a large population of multi-sensory antennal sensitive neurons in the CC. Velocity is encoded in most of these units and about one third of them are biased to one antenna. Most of these units are also sensitive to visual stimulation.
• Leland McCleary (Department of Modern Languages) &
  Evani Viotti (Department of Linguistics) at the University of São Paolo. Wednesday, 7 November 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: Verbal and gestural contributions to narrative structure in a Brazilian Sign Language narrative.
• Abstract: Building on the concepts of real-space blends (Liddell 2003) and body partitioning (Dudis 2004) in American Sign Language, we have been looking at how verbal and gestural elements in Brazilian Sign Language combine to produce narrative discourse, with its overlays of narrative, metanarrative and paranarrative blends (McNeill 1992; Oakley 1998). In sign language linguistics, maintaining the distinction between the verbal and the gestural has traditionally been an issue of theoretical import in the effort to establish sign languages as natural languages. Liddell first showed how the rich use of the body-in-space in sign languages can solve linguistic problems using a different mix of verbal and gestural elements than has traditionally been thought of as falling within language proper. This study uses these insights to analyze an area of language use in sign language which has already been the site for attempts at rapprochement between the verbal and the expressive verbal and gestural envelope of performance in oral languages: narrative structure. In narrative, a matrix of multiple voices, thematic sources and points of view is built up and maintained through not only verbal but also performatic shifts which mark off distinct frames of time, setting and interpretation. Our analysis of a pear story told in Brazilian Sign Language investigates how the narrator manages these shifts in a seamless stream of sign and gesture.
• Richard Boyatzis. Monday, 29 October 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Resonant Leadership: Creating Sustainable Leaders Through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion." Website. Richard Boyatzis is professor of organizational behavior and psychology at Case Western Reserve University.
• Abstract: Great leaders move us. They move us through a basic human process—our emotions. Although they talk of strategy and competition, the great leaders establish a deep emotional connection with others called resonance. They are literally, in tune with others around them. Their own levels of emotional intelligence allow them to create and nurture these resonant relationships. They use their EI as a path to resonant leadership through mindfulness, hope and compassion. But these are also the experiences essential to renewal of the human organism at the neurological, hormonal, emotional, and behavioral levels. Based on decades of research into emotional intelligence competencies and longitudinal studies in their development, Professor Richard Boyatzis will lead the audience through examples of what resonance looks and feels like, as well as ideas as to develop someone's "resonant leadership" capability, their emotional intelligence, and the experiences of mindfulness, hope, and compassion. This session will address the following:
  (1) The experience of "resonant leadership" in an organization, the role of emotional intelligence, mindfulness, hope and compassion. (2) Understanding the cycle of stress/sacrifice and renewal at the neural and behavioral levels. (3) A process for developing sustainable improvement on EI and resonant leadership. (4) How to coach others to develop EI, resonant leadership, mindfulness, hope and compassion. (Some readings of possible interest:
  Boyatzis and McKee, Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion, Harvard Business School Press, 2005; the August 2006 special issue of the Journal of Management Development on Intentional Change Theory from a Complexity Perspective.)
• Alberto Vazquez. Wednesday, 24 October 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Experimental Considerations for Cognitive-based fMRI Studies."
• Abstract: Functional MRI (fMRI) has had a tremendous impact in studies of brain function. As fMRI continues to mature, its use is quickly moving beyond the mapping of brain function. For example, fMRI could be used (and has been used) to compare brain functions between different populations, and to determine temporal connections between brain areas, to name a few. However, making these inferences from fMRI signals requires experimental designs that consider its physiological contributions in order to avoid confounding factors. This talk will discuss the physiological basis of the fMRI signal as well as contributions to its variability. Experimental designs that exploit the information embedded in the fMRI signal will also be discussed.
• Francis Steen. Wednesday, 17 October 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Incorporating Consciousness: A Cognitive Model of the Mind's Display Layer." Website. Francis Steen is assistant professor of communication studies at UCLA.
• Abstract: Cognitive science has largely avoided the topic of consciousness, or attempted to explain it away, arguing we can understand core mental functions without taking it into account. It is not obvious that this is a plausible assumption. Consciousness has the hallmarks of a complex adaptive structure, and it is not likely that it serves no significant biological function. In this talk, I'll go over some of the historical reasons the computational model of mind had no use for consciousness, argue we have been led astray, and propose that consciousness may in fact be playing a vital computational role. The project of integrating consciousness into the causal chains of sensory and conceptual inferences—the so-called "easy problem"—has a series of interesting consequences, theoretical as well as practical. Our understanding of bodily self-regulation, sensory perception and object recognition, imagination, language, and communication technologies are all affected. I'll try to show that even a flawed theory of consciousness is an improvement on the current situation, and develop some strands of what promises to be a rich field for research.
• Daniela Calvetti. Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Food For Thought: Sweet or Sour?" Daniela Calvetti is Professor of Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University. Website
• Abstract: The discussion about what fuels neuronal activity has been vibrant for a few decades. The prevailing hypothesis of the primacy of glucose as the preferred substrate for neurons started being questioned a little over a decade ago after a discrepancy found via quantitative imaging techniques, eventually leading to the formulation of the hypothesis that hungry neurons indeed prefer lactate. The difficulty in obtaining direct measurements of metabolites and intermediate concentrations during neuronal activity has kept the debate of whether neurons have a sweet or sour taste alive. In the search for an answer, the role of astrocytes during neuronal activity has been upgraded, and the interactions between neurons and glia cells have been studied in more depth. In this talk we introduce a multicompartment mathematical model of the astroglia-neuron cellular complex and a methodology which allows its utilization to study brain energy metabolism. We will present the results of preliminary investigations with our model in the light of the existing hypotheses, and discuss extensions of this methodological approach to quantitative imaging of brain activity.
• Wolfgang Wildgen. Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Evolution and Discourse ." Guest Professor, Linguist, University of Bremen, Germany.Website 1. Website 2.
• Abstract: The evolution of language has two sides corresponding to different semiotic aspects of linguistic signs: the social / referential meaning and the organization of signs in words/sentences/discourse. The first aspect is linked to the evolution of significance (“prégnance”) and René Thom has linked it to basic features of light (visual perception) and to evolutionary significance (survival values). The second aspect is of a pragmatic nature. Out of behavioral patterns, cultural techniques, rituals etc., discourse features emerge and open the way for complex linguistic competences. The theoretical preconditions for these two major evolutionary forces are discussed and their relevance for the explanation of modern linguistic competences is exemplified. The consequences for an evolutionary theory of language and grammar are drawn.
• Ethics & Cognition. Wednesday, 12 September 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Presenters include Sara Waller, Anthony Jack, William Deal, and Per Aage Brandt. Abstracts
• Jay Alexander. Wednesday, 5 September 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Blending and Mathematics." Alexander's Website. The Blending Webiste is at http://blending.stanford.edu. Jay Alexander is Levi Kerr Professor of Mathematics and Cognitive Science and Chair of Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University.
• Abstract: A number of cognitive scientists—Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, and others—have emphasized the role that cognitive blending plays in human cognition. George Lakoff and Raphael Núñez have stated, "Many of the most important ideas in
  mathematics are ... conceptual blends." Mathematics is rigorously deductive, formally based on a few axioms and constructions. As such, it could easily become sterile, but in fact it is an incredibly rich and fecund discipline. I posit that one reason is that it rather explicitly incorporates cognitive constructions in its formal structure. I would like to support this thesis, both by explaining how blending has been incorporated into the methodology of mathematics and presenting some case studies.
• Michele Feist. Thursday, 30 August 2007. 3-4pm. 618 Crawford. Title: "Inside in and on." Website. Michele Feist is Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Pdf of background reading.
• Abstract: What do we pay attention to when we talk about space? At first blush, spatial relational terms appear simple, clear, and obvious. Research into their use and meanings, however, suggests that they are semantically quite complex, encoding geometric, functional, and qualitative physical aspects of the scenes they describe. In this talk, I will consider two kinds of evidence for these three aspects of spatial relational meaning with respect to topological spatial terms: psycholinguistic evidence (within English), and cross-linguistic evidence. I will conclude that the use of these terms is in fact influenced by geometric, functional, and qualitative physical aspects of spatial scenes, suggesting that our representations of topological spatial meaning must be similarly complex.
  
• Lev Gonick. Wednesday, 9 May 2007. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall (on the floor below SAGES café). Title: "Considerations of Learning Experiences and Cognition in the 3D Virtual World—or where Cog Sci meets the Next Big Platform from the Tech World." Lev Gonick is Vice-President for Information Technology and Adjunct Professor of Information Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. In addition to numerous national titles and appointments, he holds a Ph.D. in International Political Economy from York University in Ontario, Canada. Bio. Bytes from Lev.
  
• Mathew McCubbins. Thursday, 26 April 2007. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall (on the floor below SAGES café). Title: "The Possibility of Deliberation." McCubbins is Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Associates Chair in the Department of Political Science at UC San Diego, Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Website.
  
  Abstract: Is deliberation possible? This talk will survey experiments on reason, social cognition, communicaton, persuasion, and agreement to propose a model of decision and a theory of the possibility of deliberation.
• Edward Slingerland, Wednesday, 11 April 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Thinking with the Body: Somatic Marking and Blending Jujitsu in Early China." Edward Slingerland is Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia. He received a B.A. from Stanford in Asian Languages (Chinese), an M.A. from UC Berkeley in East Asian Languages (classical Chinese), and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University. His research specialties and teaching interests include Warring States Chinese thought, cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor theory, cognitive science and behavioral neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, methodologies for comparative religion and philosophy, virtue ethics, and the classical Chinese language. pdf of slideshow to accompany the talk. Website. Background Reading: "Conceptual Blending, Somatic Marking, and Normativity: A Case Example from Ancient China."
• 
  Abstract: This talk will draw upon blending theory and Antonio Damasio's concept of "somatic marking" to analyze samples of philosophical argumentation in 4th B.C.E. China. Themes will include how blends are used to recruit somatic markers and thereby influence normative judgments, how extremely complex multiple-scope blends can be built up in the course of verbal exchanges, and how the normative implications of multiple-scope blends can be quickly and skillfully altered by the introduction of novel spaces.
  
• Thinking Animals: Animal Cognition and Consciousness? A colloquium and discussion. Wednesday, 28 March 2007. 4-5:15pm. 618 Crawford Hall.
• Richard Boland. Wednesday, 21 March 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Designing Visual Thinking Environments for Situated Action." Richard J. Boland, Jr., is Professor of Information Systems in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Website: http://weatherhead.case.edu/faculty/boland. Vita. Background paper: "The Tyranny of Space in Organizational Analysis." Background paper: "An Ecology of Distributed Mediated Cognition."
• 
  Abstract: Our research is on the design of visual thinking environments for acting responsibly in organizational settings. I will discuss two examples of visual thinking environments we are developing, and will demonstrate a software system we have created for one of them. In the first example, the actor is understood as being located in a situation and experiencing forces that shape her possibilities for action. Representations in this environment depict the experience of being embodied and confronting the problem of self and other. In the second example, the actor is understood as intervening in a situation and encountering a social structure that is stretched across time and space. Representations in this environment depict her perceptions of the elements and relationships causing the social structure to be produced and reproduced. The software I will demonstrate is based on the second example and is named Theory Garden.
• Ciarán Benson. Wednesday, 7 March 2007. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall (on the floor below SAGES café). Title: “Emotions in the Maintenance & Reproduction of Identities: From Cultural to Personal Memory.” Ciarán Benson is Professor of Psychology at University College, Dublin. Website: http://www.ucd.ie/psychology/academicstaff/benson/research.html. This presentation was part of a minisymposium on "Time and Memory."
  
• Lawrence Zbikowski. Wednesday, 7 February 2007. 4-5pm. 9 Crawford Hall. Title: "Music, Gesture, and Musical Grammar." Lawrence Zbikowski is Associate Professor of Music, University of Chicago. Website: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/zbikowski/.
  
  Abstract: Musicians have long made recourse to the notion of gesture when they want to evoke the kinesthetic and expressive part of musical experience. In my presentation I explore this notion in a slightly more systematic fashion by drawing on recent work by David McNeill and Susan Goldin-Meadow on the gesture that accompanies language. In brief, this work shows that the gestures that accompany our speech reflect a mode of thought that is independent from but coordinated with language. Through an analysis of Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight” I show that musical gestures can play a role analogous to the gestures that accompany speech. This finding in turn suggests how a construction grammar for music might be developed, something I sketch in the concluding portion of my presentation.
• Benjamin Bergen. Wednesday, 24 January 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Mental Simulation and Grammar." Benjamin Bergen is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/.
  
  Abstract: Converging evidence from text analysis, behavioral experimentation and brain imaging suggests that in understanding language, comprehenders construct mental simulations - mental imagery - of motor and perceptual components of described scenes. For instance, processing a sentence like 'Jenny hurled the water balloon at her little brother' might drive understanders to mentally simulate the motor action of throwing a water balloon, including the required handshape, amount of pressure applied by the hand, and trajectory of the arm. Or they might simulate visual components of the scene - a water balloon being thrown, flying through the air, or making contact with a face; this visual imagery can take place from any of a number of perspectives - that of the thrower, of the throwee, or an outside viewpoint. In this presentation, I will present evidence that grammar plays a role in configuring how mental simulations enacted by understanders take place. First, we'll investigate how grammatical aspect ('Jenny has hurled the water balloon' versus 'Jenny is hurling the water balloon') affects the degree of detail with which a motor image is constructed. Second, we'll look at how grammatical person ('you' versus 'Jenny') affects the perspective adopted in visual simulation. And finally, we'll look at how word order (Subject-Verb-Object as in English versus Subject-Object-Verb as in Japanese) affects the timecourse of mental simulation of described components of a scene.
• Sarah Shomstein. Tuesday, 23 January 2007. 4:15-5:15pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Mechanisms of Selective Attention in Human Cortex." Sarah Shomstein is Postdoctoral Research Associate, Carnegie Mellon University, and Ph.D., Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 2003. Website: http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~shomstein/.
• Abstract: Attention is the cognitive process by which behaviorally relevant information is selected in accordance with the current goal of the organism. After several decades of behavioral research, the neural substrate of attentional selection remains elusive. I will present evidence suggesting that attention is a flexible mechanism that selects information from the environment based on different properties—spatial locations and objects that occupy them— that are modality-independent. I will discuss how these types of attentional mechanisms are instantiated in the human cortex by presenting several fMRI experiments demonstrating that (a) independent of what the basis of selection is, attended information benefits perceptually and (b) that posterior parietal cortex is the possible neural substrate of attentional control. In addition, I will present series of experiments, conducted with patients who have sustained damage to parietal cortex, that examine whether specific regions of the cortex are necessary or sufficient for attentional selection. This research uncovers the neural substrate of attentional control, and addresses the importance of employing multiple methodologies, thus further constraining theories of attentional selection.
• Osamu Fujimura. Wednesday, 17 January 2007. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Symbolic representation in language and biology." Dr. Fujimura is Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University. He established and directed the Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics at the University of Tokyo. In 1965, he led the speech section of the Acoustical Society of Japan, receiving its Award for Distinguished Service in 1999. He collaborated for four years with the research laboratory in electronics at MIT and for two years with the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. For was a director at Bell Laboratories (AT&T) for fifteen years, serving in the Departments of of Linguistics and Speech Analysis and Artificial Intelligence Research. He was professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State University for fifteen years. He is currently preparing a new introductory book on speech science.
  
  Extended Abstract
• Robert Morrison. Tuesday, 16 January 2007. 4:15-5:15pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Analogy in Working Memory: Developmental, Neurocognitive and Computational Evidence." Robert Morrison is Executive Director of Xunesis, Chicago and Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles, 2004. Website: http://www.xunesis.org/people_morrison_right.html.
• Abstract: Analogical reasoning is ubiquitous in accounts of human learning and discovery. While cognitive scientists have studied analogy for nearly one hundred years, efforts to understand how the brain performs and constrains analogy are relatively recent. In this presentation, I will outline a program of research using developmental, neurocognitive, and computational methods to explore the importance of the human working memory system as managed by inhibitory control for performing analogical reasoning.
• Rajeev Raizada. Thursday, 11 January 2007. 4-5pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Towards Applying Cognitive Neuroscience to Education." Rajeev Raizada is Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington and Ph.D. Boston University, Cognitive & Neural Systems, 2000. Website: http://ilabs.washington.edu/scientists/raizada/raizada.html.
• Abstract: Can insights from cognitive neuroscience be used to improve children’s education in our schools? The gulf between what we understand about the brain and what might be relevant to schooling can seem too wide to bridge. I will argue that in order to start to build such a bridge, we need not just to observe brain activity, but instead to look for brain activity that is involved in specific cognitively interpretable neural representations. I will present examples from my fMRI studies that try to achieve this, including work looking at the structure of phonetic representations in the brain, experiments distinguishing between neural processing and behavioural performance in children, and ongoing work on the role of neural representations of reward during trial-and-error learning. Finally, I will discuss future directions in which such research could be extended.
• Suzy Scherf. Wednesday, 10 January 2007. 4-5pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "The Development of Face and Object Representations: Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms." Suzy Scherf is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh and Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 2003. Website: http://www.pitt.edu/~scherf/.
• Abstract: Human adults can accurately distinguish between thousands of different faces and can recognize an individual face across many transformations, including changes in lighting, hairstyle, expressions, angle of view, and jewelry. Despite the social significance of this ability, it is unclear when, in the course of development, face recognition skills become adult-like. At issue is when configural processing strategies, which involve recognizing objects on the basis of subtle metric variations between constituent features, are available to and can be used efficiently by children. The acquisition of face expertise over many years of experience has been suggested as one of the reasons for late-developing configural processing strategies in children. I will present evidence that 1) experience and configural processing abilities can be dissociated in children and 2) limited experience is not the only constraint on developing object recognition skills. I will also show that, relative to the development of place- and object-selective ventral visual cortex, which is adult-like even in late childhood, there is a delay that extends into early adolescence in the development of face-selective cortex. The conclusion is that by age 12 there is a convergence in the maturation of configural processing abilities and functional organization in the ventral temporal lobe for face recognition. Finally, I will show how this convergence fails to occur in children with autism. This research reveals important mechanisms supporting the formation of stable visual representations and may help identify vulnerable developmental periods in which targeted intervention programs could have more success for individuals with developmental disorders.
• Christopher Chabris. Monday, 8 January 2007. 4-5pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Individual Differences in Cognition: General Intelligence and Beyond." Christopher Chabris is Research Associate, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, and Ph.D., Psychology, Harvard University, 1999. Website: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/.
• Abstract: Cognitive scientists typically study the species-universal architecture of the human mind. In any given study, however, a large fraction of the total measured variance is accounted for by differences among the participants, rather than among the experimental conditions. For over a century, research has consistently shown that individuals who perform well on one cognitive task tend to perform well on other tasks. Positive correlation among cognitive test scores is observed so ubiquitously that it can be regarded as a behavioral law—the "Law of General Intelligence." In the first part of this talk, I will present evidence that general intelligence is found in animal species as well as in humans, and that it is a biological trait grounded in neural mechanisms of information processing efficiency and cognitive control. In the second part, I will argue that a full understanding of individual differences in human cognition must go beyond general intelligence to incorporate both special cognitive abilities and "cognitive traits," or characteristics of cognition that do not reflect "ability" per se. I will present data suggesting that (1) the ability to recognize faces may be a special ability, relatively unconnected to general intelligence; and (2) individuals’ preferences for spatial- and object-based visualization strategies are separate dimensions of cognitive style that predict the performance of collaborative teams. The talk will conclude with a brief discussion of how cognitive neuroscience approaches can further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying individual differences.
• Anthony Jack. Wednesday, 20 December 2006. 4-5pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Can fMRI Shed Light on Cognitive Control?" Anthony Jack is Post-doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine and Ph.D. in Psychology, University College London, 1998. Website: http://tony.jack.googlepages.com/home .
• Abstract: Humans have a remarkable ability to flexibly adapt to changing circumstances and novel situations. We reconfigure our cognitive processes on the fly, allowing us to process information in a way that serves our current goals. Can fMRI shed light on how we accomplish this remarkable feat? This talk will consist of two parts. In the first part, I will outline two series of experiments which demonstrate how state-of-the-art fMRI research can shed light on the mechanisms underlying one specific type of cognitive control: spatial attention. The second part will involve a much broader discussion of issues involved in cognitive control. I will point to some links between consciousness and cognitive control, and suggest that we can learn more by investigating the relationship between brain areas involved in "visual" and "social" processes.
• Vera Tobin. Wednesday, 29 November 2006. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Literary Joint Attention." Website: http://stuttercut.org/
  
  Abstract: Language has a variety of resources for assigning different degrees of salience to different aspects of an utterance, its expressed content, and the context in which the utterance appears. These resources serve as tools for language users to direct one another's attention with respect to these domains and to coordinate understanding in discourse. Furthermore, in natural language, sentences and conversational turns are constructed not in isolation, but as the products of an interactive process between speaker and hearer, in which elements such as pauses, repairs, restarts, and linguistic and non-linguistic displays of agreement, confusion, interest, or disinterest all contribute to the construction of coherent streams of talk (see, for example, Charles Goodwin, Sociological Inquiry, 1980).
  
  Joint attention is a fundamental aspect of interpersonal coordination in which, in its most basic form, two people are both focused on an external object and mutually aware of this shared focus. In person, people coordinate their communicative activities in real time and get immediate feedback about whether they have succeeded or failed in their communicative intentions. A host of visual cues helps us to keep track of the immediate attentions of our interlocutors, and this knowledge provides important information about what we can consider part of the common ground underlying a conversation.
  
  Other settings of language use, such as those associated with the production, dissemination, and reception of literary texts, can lack many of these mechanisms for immediate coordination. How, then, and to what extent, do participants in these discourses take one another into account? In this talk, I present the phenomenon of literary joint attention as a subset of joint attention in general, and give a detailed analysis of its mechanisms as they play out over the textual history of one of the most famously revised poems in modern English, Marianne Moore's "Poetry".
  
  This analysis demonstrates the radically material and collaborative process of meaning construction involved in literature, and the grounding of that collaborative process in the joint attention of its participants. It also makes the connections between these literary acts and their counterparts in natural discourse newly clear, pointing the way to an interactionalist and cognitive stylistics of attention.
• Nurit Ben-Zvi. Wednesday, 15 November 2006. 4-5pm. 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "Timing and Creativity in Orally Transmitted Biblical Cantillation." Ben-Zvi holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the Hebrew University and spent a postdoctoral year in the Cognitive Ethnomusicology Lab in OSU, during 2002-2003. Her research focuses on oral transmission of music and speech traditions. She is interested in the human creativity intrinsic to oral cultures and explores the cognitive processes underlying the performance practice of chanting. Interested faculty may join Ben-Zvi for coffee 3-4pm in SAGES café.
  
  Abstract: Cognitive Ethnomusicology is a very young area of research. It aims to integrate culture, music and human cognition to better understand how the brain responds to music and how music making by humans influence brain activity. Because its main key concepts and thoughts – such as: orality, in/out context performance practice, literacy/illiteracy, cultural values, expertise and symbolic communication – are almost parallel with central themes of research in Cognitive Sciences (such as: learning/memory, perception/action, writing/reading, emotions, expertise/creativity, music/language production), music is considered at present time by neuroscientists as the “food of neuroscience” (e.g., Robert Zatore, Nature, 2005) and by psychologists arguing that “this discipline could provide us with a list of musical traits that are common to all known musical cultures and traits that are culture-specific” (e.g., Isabelle Peretz, Cognition, 2006). Im this talk, I will present some main aspects that relate to rhythm perception and production in orally transmitted Biblical Cantillation by old-aged cantors. I will describe the riddle intrinsic to this religious ancient musical practice (Hebrew script is consonantal, i.e., deep orthography, and melody exhibits no periodicity) as well as some methodological aspects. By arguing that Time is not only a crucial factor in ear communication (basing on behavioral studies), but also is related to temporal memory processes (by basing on imaging studies), I would suggest that the temporality of human cognition interpolated with retrieved musical knowledge and on line creativity, give rise to cultural oral pattern to spontaneously emerge. One intriguing open question that arises from the study of rhythm production in Cantillation is whether temporal information presented independently from spatial action (i.e., as an abstract program), as some theories of timing claim, or timing is intimately correlated with spatial events, thus an emergent property of concrete events themselves? It seems that the issue of 'internal clock' will still remain a debatable issue.
  
  
• Jesper Sørensen. Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 4-5pm, 618 Crawford Hall. Title: "The Construction of Agency in Ritual Action." Jesper Sørensen is Associate Professor in Comparative Religion, Institute of Philosophy, Education and the Study of Religion, University of Southern Denmark. He is currently International Scholar, Memory and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis.
  
  Abstract: It is a common understanding that the performance of ritual actions is motivated by beliefs in superhuman agents (gods, spirits, ancestors) and that the only thing distinguishing rituals from ordinary actions is the role played by these agents. In short, people perform ritual actions because they believe in superhuman agents, and ritual actions are special because of the special features of the beings believed in. In this paper, I will argue that it might be the other way around: that it is the performance of ritual actions that makes representations of superhuman agents relevant in the first place. Based on recent cognitive studies of human action representations, I will argue that humans represent the actions of other people by means of two relatively independent neuro-cognitive systems. One is based on representations of specific action gestalts and relates these to proximate intentions of the observed agent. The other, in turn, combines series of such action gestalt into a causally related sequence specified by an ultimate intention. These two systems are thus hierarchically related and in unison they give rise to representations of other peoples’ actions as both meaningful and goal directed. In ritual actions, however, these two systems are disconnected. The actions performed are represented as having proximate intentions, but for a number of reasons they are not automatically combined into causal sequences specified by an ultimate intention. This has a number of cognitive effects, and prominent among these is that it makes representation of unobservable superhuman agents highly relevant. Gods, spirits and ancestor are able to re-establish the connection between proximate and ultimate levels of the action representation thus making the action both meaningful and goal directed. This role of superhuman agents in ritual action will, in turn, make these agents more relevant when understanding or explaining non-ritual events as both meaningful and goal directed.