Invited Colloquia:

• October 3 - Robert Jacobs, University of Rochester
  
  
  • Host: TBA
  • Title: Evaluating Perceptual Cue Reliabilities
  • Homepage: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/robbie.html
  • abstract
  
  
• October 17 - Ned Block, New York University
  
  
  • Host: TBA
  • Title: The Epistemological Problem of the Neuroscience of Consciousness
  • Homepage: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/
  • abstract
  
  
• October 24 - Jeff Schall * , Vanderbilt University
  
  
  • Host: TBA
  • Title: NEURAL SELECTION AND CONTROL OF VISUALLY GUIDED MOVEMENTS
  • Homepage: http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/schall/
  • abstract
  
  
• November 7
- Nicholas Toth, The Stone Age Institute


• Host: TBA
• Title: The Archeology of Human Origins
• Homepage: http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/
• abstract: TBA


• November 28
- Kathy Schick, The Stone Age Institute


• Host: TBA
• Title: Pan, the Toolmaker: Experiments in Ape Toolmaking Skills
• Homepage: http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/
• abstract: TBA

10/03/05: Rober Jacobs
Evaluating Perceptual Cue Reliabilities

The world often provides many sensory cues to properties of an observed scene. In order to integrate information provided by multiple cues in an efficient manner, observers must assess the degree to which each cue provides reliable versus unreliable information. Two hypotheses are reviewed regarding how observers estimate cue reliabilities, namely that the estimated reliability of a cue is related to the ambiguity of the cue, and that people use correlations among cues in order to estimate cue reliabilities. These ideas are studied in the context of integrating visual and auditory signals for the purpose of locating an event in space, and in the context of integrating multiple visual cues based on correlations between visual and haptic (touch) signals. It is shown that cue reliabilities are important both for cue combination and for aspects of perceptual learning.

We know that the trees in the forest that we don’t see have much the same scientific nature as the trees in the forest that we do see. And we even know that water molecules that are too far in space and time from sentient beings for anyone to investigate them have the same scientific nature as water molecules here at home. But how can we know whether there are any unreportable (and otherwise cognitively inaccessible to the subject) conscious states that have the same phenomenology as the states that we can report? How can we know whether whatever it is that makes them unreportable also makes them unconscious? I argue that this question can be answered and that the answer suggests a serious limitation on the first person point of view.

I will describe our recent work using visual search and stop signal tasks to elucidate the neural mechanisms responsible for deciding where to look, controlling when to look and judging whether looking was really such a great idea in the first place. The marriage of formal cognitive models to explain what neurons do and of neurophysiological data to resolve model mimicry will also be discussed.

Note: Speakers with an asterisk ( * ) next to their name are co-sponsored by the Cognitive Science Colloquium series (Q733) and the Neuroscience Colloquium series (N650).