Date : Wednesday, March 2 2022 – 3:00pm-4:30pm
Title: An instance model of associative inference
Location: Online
Speaker: : Dr. Randall K. Jamieson
Abstract:
People make intuitive inferences all the time. For example, after observing that people who take drugs A and B are cured of a headache, people tend to infer that both drugs are beneficial. However, if that is followed by an observation that people who take drug A alone are cured, people re-value the benefits of B (i.e., “Now that I know A works, I have doubts about B…”). We present experimental data to document the patterns of conclusions that people reach in a structured associative inference task. We present a computational model of learning and memory to explain people’s performance in that task. Based on the theory’s match to data, we argue that patterns in people’s intuitive inferences are consistent with an instance-based approach to learning and memory. We argue that the approach can serve as a productive framework for bridging theory and data across the domains of learning, memory, and decision and propose our demonstration can be added to an already long list of demonstrations outlined in our recent Nature Reviews Psychology paper that instance theory can serve as a productive domain-general framework for cognitive psychology.
Bio:
I am a cognitive scientist who conducts computational and experimental examinations of how people and other animals learn, remember, think, and know. I am particularly interested in the problems of implicit learning, associative learning, memory, and knowledge representation. My theoretical goal is to develop a coherent and general account of learning and memory. My applied goal is to leverage those theoretical discoveries to develop applied cognitive technologies.
I am a Professor in the Department of Psychology and an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Manitoba. I am also Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. I have previously served as Department Head in Psychology, President for the Canadian Society of Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, President for the Society for Computation in Psychology, and Section Chair for the Canadian Psychological Association’s Brain and Cognitive Science Section.