Abigail Fergus, Psychology and Cognitive Science Fellow, Princeton University

“Verbatim memory, interference, and emergent generalizations in language”

Abstract: Learning a language requires a combination of item-specific knowledge and generalizations about many particular grammatical constructions and their felicitous contexts of use, which vary across languages. Today, we will explore these two aspects through an investigation of the nature of memory for item-specific knowledge (i.e., verbatim memory) and the emergence of grammatical generalizations (i.e., constructions). Specifically, we hypothesize that interference between related forms in memory leads to an emergent generalization as memory for specifics is impaired and a generalization across similar aspects of the utterances arises. 

Kerem Oktar, Psychology and Cognitive Science Fellow, Princeton University

“Cognitive Mechanisms of Social Controversies”

Abstract: When it comes to controversial issues, people seem to frequently ignore each other's opinions rather than learn from them – both at the societal scale and in intimate interpersonal interactions. For example, people confidently maintain their beliefs on key issues (such as climate change) despite massive societal dissent or disconfirmatory expert testimony. In this talk, I will share an overview of my research program, which examines the cognitive mechanisms that influence whether we learn from or ignore others' opinions on such controversies. This research draws on interdisciplinary insights (including philosophy, psychology, and economics), uses computational modeling to formalize mechanisms of inference, and tests these mechanisms through behavioral experiments across scales and domains.