MARCS Monday Meeting (MMM) - Professor Susan Hespos

Special guest Professor Susan Hespos from Northwestern University talks about cognition and learning from infancy and beyond. Join us for the talk followed by lunch.

Topic: Some things don’t change: emphasizing continuity through development
Speaker: Professor Susan Hespos

Abstract: In this talk, I will present two recent findings from my lab. One is about the nature of our representations for substances like liquid and sand. Our results show that infants, like adults, have principled expectations about how substances behave and interact.  The second is about the process behind our ability to learn abstract relations like same and different. These experiments show that the factors that facilitate and hinder learning in children and adults are evident in young infants. The patterns revealed in this research shed light on the basic principles of cognition and learning, not only in infants, but throughout life.

Biography: Susan Hespos is a Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the earliest evidence of our cognitive capacities in infancy and describes what changes over development. According to Professor Hespos, through this process we gain information critical to understanding cognition in general. Some current lines of research include: 1) investigating the origin and development of analogical processing; 2) the intersection of language and thought in infancy; 3) physical reasoning about number, space, objects, and substances.

MARCS staff and students are reminded that all meetings and workshops have an important role in building and maintaining the sense of community which is central to the success of MARCS as a cooperative and energetic research institute.  Your attendance is both welcomed and expected.

The zoom ID is: 627 146 998. Link to zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/627146998