Faculty

Peter Todd

About

The Adaptive Behavior and Cognition Lab–West (ABC-West) is dedicated to exploring the cognitive mechanisms that people (and other animals) use to behave adaptively in their environments. We study the interactions between behavior and environment at multiple scales–including how cognitive mechanisms have evolved in response to particular environmental structures, how behaviors are learned through interactions with the environment, and how behaving and acting in the world can change the environmental structures that agents face in the future. We look at particular adaptively important domains such as mate choice and food choice, and we use tools including agent-based modeling and simulation and laboratory experiments. ABC-West was formed in 2005 through budding from the original ABC Research Group in Berlin, Germany.

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Faculty

Robert Nosofsky

Faculty

Ben Motz

About

In the Change Lab, we ask questions about how people learn, and how to improve it.

Our research focuses broadly on human learning, using experimental methods and the data from digital environments where contemporary learning occurs. Our primary focus is on the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning and knowing, but no person is an island. We also focus on the social and behavioral contexts that moderate cognitive learning processes, and study how change along these dimensions affects learning outcomes. Our lab’s name is short for Contextual beHavior, leArNing, and knowledGE Lab, if you're into acromanteaus.

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Faculty

Michael Jones

About

The Cognitive Computing Lab is currently located in the Center for Computational Cognition and Perception (C3P0 or CCCP, depending on who you ask), on the top floor of the Geological Sciences Building, between the Luddy School of Informatics and Computing, and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

The lab is equipped with 20 individual subject testing booths o run behavioral experiments. We have an SR Research Eyelink 2K remote optics high-speed eye tracker for experiments in reading and visual attention tracking. The system allows both monocular and binocular tracking at up to 2000Hz (a data point every half millisecond). The lab also features a Biological Motion Capture system (Gold), and state-of-the-art conference room and breakout room facilities.

The lab is well-equipped with computational clusters for simulation work, and we do most of our large-scale simulations on Indiana's supercomputers. The laboratory is very well supported with large-scale computational infrastructure to perform particularly complex and data-hungry development of computational cognitive models and artificial intelligence.

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Faculty

Jennifer Trueblood

About

The CDM Lab takes a joint experimental and computational modeling approach to study human judgment, decision-making, and reasoning. We study how people make decisions when faced with multiple, complex alternatives and options involving different risks and rewards.

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Faculty

Jerome Busemeyer

About

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Faculty

Richard Shiffrin

About

I am interested in mathematical and computer simulation models of memory, learning, retrieval, attention, limited capacity, automatism, and perception, and empirical research to test and develop these models.

In recent years I have paid particular interest to memory retrieval, and have contrasted traditional models with parallel, distributed, composite models, and a new model based on Bayesian optimal retrieval. The new model is aimed to explain storage and retrieval not only of recent events, but of general knowledge and the relation between the two. The empirical research explores different ways in which memory is accessed, such as recall, recognition, or implicit tests.

Faculty

Geoffrey Bingham

About

The approach in the Perception/Action Lab is based on a number of principles

(1) Perception and action are synergistic and mutually constraining or determining. There is no perception without action and there is no action without perception.

(2) Perception requires information: in light for vision; in sound for audition, in movement for proprioception. Because perception and action are inexorably linked, information is found in spatial-temporal patterns. Movement is an essential part of the game.

(3) Information is based on natural law and dynamics. Physical dynamics constrain and determine the forms of motions in events including human actions. Those forms project to the forms in information carrying media (e.g. light and sound).

Research in the lab is focused on visual, proprioceptive and haptic perception and then, human actions performed with the upper limbs: reaching-to-grasp, overarm throwing, and rhythmic limb movements, as well as the coordinate looking movements. We study action, but our primary focus and commitment is to the study of perception as the foundation for all actions.

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Faculty

Robert Goldstone

About

Our laboratory is currently exploring interactions between perceptual and conceptual learning, methods for learning concepts using computer simulations, decision making, mathematical cognition, collective behavior, and the application of cognitive science for improving learning outcomes. Our typical modus operandi is to simultaneously conduct psychological experiments on humans and develop computational models of the observed behavior. The results from the experiments help to constrain and inform our computational models, and the computational models serve to organize and explain our empirical results.

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Faculty

David Pisoni

About

The Speech Research Laboratory at Indiana University has extensive hardware and software for presenting complex acoustic signals to subjects and recording their responses in real-time. Three computer-controlled laboratories are used for perceptual experiments with human observers. These labs are equipped with audio-visual capabilities for running multiple observers in real-time experiments. The labs also have several specialized state-of-the-art workstations as well as a series of microcomputers that are used for speech analysis and synthesis and computational studies of linguistic databases.

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Faculty

Jason Gold

About

How are we able to detect, discriminate, identify and classify the incredible number of objects that we continually encounter in our environment? Our research is directed towards understanding some of the basic processes that mediate these remarkable abilities. The approach we take is to treat the human visual system like an elaborate signal processing device. We use a combination of psychophysical techniques, mostly involving externally added noise, to characterize some of the inner workings that mediate visual pattern perception.

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Faculty

Thomas Busey

About

This laboratory uses the tools of cognitive science to understand how humans make decisions in forensic contexts. We use web-based tools, eye tracking, electrophysiology, and mathematical modeling. Our overall goal is to reduce errors and improve decision-making in forensic settings.

Forensic identification tasks are complex perceptual and cognitive skills. How do you know if you have made an error? Is the erroneous identificaiton rate less than 1% or 20-30% for a decision? What are the best ways to train new examiners? Where should your thresholds be placed? These are the kinds of questions we have asked, and continue to ask.

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