Cognitive Science Seminar, Spring 2009
Minds, and 2 or more

Instructors
Rick Dale, Roger Kreuz, Andrew Olney, Deborah Tollefsen

Day, time, place
FIT 405, Wednesdays, 4-5:30pm

This spring's seminar will focus on the cognitive science of human groups of size 2 or more. Much of cognitive science in the past 5 decades has focused on cognitive processes inside a single individual, and less on how these processes interact in groups. A core characteristic of virtually all human behavior is that it occurs in groups. For example, 2 or 3 people engage in conversation. That many or more can form a family unit, itself spreading into a broader network of social relations. Subcultures, cultures, and entire societies extend to higher levels. We will focus on how the fields of psychology, computer science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and other areas of cognitive science tackle the problems of understanding group structure and behavior.

Schedule (subject to change/update)

January 21st
Rick Dale
Department of Psychology
Emergence of patterns and principles
in social and other systems

January 28th
Deborah Tollefsen
Department of Philosophy
Shared intentions:
Who needs 'em?

February 4th
Roger Kreuz
Department of Psychology
Making conversation

February 11th
Stan Franklin
Department of Computer Science
Dynamical Systems 101

February 18th
Santosh Kumar
Department of Computer Science
AutoSense: A Wireless Sensor System to
Quantify Psychosocial Stress and Alcohol in
Natural Environments

February 25th
Ross Haenfler
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Ole Miss
Subcultures and Social Change

March 4rd
Norbert Ross
Psychological Sciences at Vanderbilt
Asking the Right Questions: Outline for a study program in culture, language and cognition

March 11th
Spring break...

March 18th
Eugene Buder
School of Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology

Interpersonal Synchronizing

March 25th
Andrew Olney
Dept. of Psychology / Institute for Intelligent Systems

Social Networks

April 1st
Deborah Tollefsen & Rick Dale
Philosophy / Psychology
Extended Mind, Collective Mind

April 8th
Max Louwerse
Dept. of Psychology / Institute for Intelligent Systems
Multimodal Communication is in Synchronization

April 15th
Betsy Williams
Computer Science at Rhodes

April 22nd
NO SEMINAR THIS WEEK

April 29th
Gilbert Parra
Department of Psychology