Seminars will be held on Thursdays at 4pm. The seminar co-ordinator is Dr Paul Stevens
| Date | Speaker Name Affiliation | Seminar title | Location |
| Autumn Term 2011 | |||
| 10th November | Dr Michael Banissy Goldsmiths College |
Mirror-touch synaesthesia and the role of sensorimotor cortex activity in social perception | PG19 |
| 17th November | Dr David Hevey Trinity College Dublin |
Comparative optimism for severity of illness | PG19 |
| 15th December | Seminar cancelled | ||
| Spring Term 2012 | |||
| 19th January | Dr Martin Corley University of Edinburgh |
To ‘er’ is human | K101 |
| 16th February | Dr Erik Reichle University of Southampton |
E-Z Reader: A Model of Eye-Movement Control During Reading
N.B. Now Starts at 4:30pm |
K101 |
| 15th March | Dr Falko Sniehotta Newcastle University |
Promoting physical activity in older and younger adults | K101 |
Last updated: 5th Mar 2012 |
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Synaesthesia is a condition in which one property of a stimulus triggers a secondary experience that is not associated with the first. For example, in grapheme-colour synaesthesia a seen or heard grapheme triggers a synaesthetic experience of colour. Over the past decade numerous studies have demonstrated the authenticity of the condition and there is now growing interest in using synaesthesia to inform us about basic cognitive and perceptual processes. In this talk, I will firstly discuss data on a newly documented variant of synaesthesia in which the synaesthete experiences tactile sensations on their own body simply when observing touch to another person (mirror-touch synaesthesia). I will then discuss studies in which we have attempted to use mirror-touch synaesthesia to inform us about mechanisms of social perception. Moreover, functional brain imaging indicates that mirror-touch synaesthesia is linked to heightened neural activity in the same network of brain regions activated by us all when observing touch to others (shared-touch network). This network of brain regions has been suggested to play an important role in our social perception abilities by enabling us to map the experiences of others onto the same sensorimotor representations that are active when we experience the same state. I will describe behavioural studies in mirror-touch synaesthetes and human brain stimulation studies in non-synaesthetes which examine what role facilitation or suppression of sensorimotor cortex activity has on our social perception abilities.
People tend to be comparatively optimistic (i.e., believe that negative outcomes are less likely for themselves than for typical others) regarding their susceptibility to negative health outcomes. The talk describes three studies which investigated the extent to which perceptions of the severity of these health outcomes show similar comparative optimism. Two cross-sectional studies (Study 1; N = 200 students; Study 2; N = 257 healthy adults) are presented. Participants in both studies demonstrated significant (p < .001) levels of comparative optimism for both perceived likelihood and severity of health outcomes. Comparative optimism concerning severity was very strongly associated (r = .85 to .89) with comparative optimism concerning susceptibility. In addition to being comparatively optimistic over their chances of experiencing negative health outcomes, people are also comparatively optimistic regarding how severe the health outcome will be. A think-aloud study (N = 40) on comparative optimism for skin cancer will be presented and people’s reasons for believing why the impact of skin cancer will not be as bad for them as for other people are outlined. Implications for people’s adoption of precautionary health behaviours are considered.
Brennan & Schober (2001) estimate that about 10% of words spoken are affected by false starts, repetitions, hesitations, filler terms (er, um) and other disfluencies. This poses an interesting question for researchers studying speech comprehension: If so much of the signal is ‘imperfect’, what effect does it have on listeners? In this talk, we introduce evidence from ERP, eyetracking, and corpus studies, focusing on fillers, pauses, and repairs. We show that disfluencies such as ‘er’ have immediate effects on linguistic processing, and consequences for what is later recalled; that listeners update their predictions of what will be said when speakers self-repair; and that, in naturalistic dialogue, listeners are sensitive enough to disfluency to become more disfluent in line with their interlocutors. Taken together, our findings suggest that listeners are highly sensitive to the occurrence of disfluencies and repairs, but that they are not detrimental to comprehension (and may even be beneficial). To ‘er’ may be human, but forgiveness doesn't appear to be necessary.
The E-Z Reader model describes how visual processing and oculomotor constraints interface with the cognitive systems that are responsible for attention, word identification, and language processing to determine when and where the eyes move during reading (Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher & Rayner, 1998; Reichle, Warren & McConnell, 2009). The model has been used to simulate various ‘benchmark’ findings in the eye-movement literature (see Reichle, 2011) and has generated new predictions that have been confirmed through experiments (e.g., Reingold & Rayner, 2006). In this talk, I will introduce the model, review several of the findings that the model explains, and discuss a few of the models predictions that have recently been confirmed via experiments (e.g., Reichle, Tokowicz, Liu & Perfetti, 2011).
The seminar reviews current evidence from predictive studies, N-of-1 RCTs, between-subject RCTs and systematic reviews about determinants of physical activity in older and younger adults and effective intervention strategies to promote activity. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as methodological challenges will be discussed.
Key references