Larry Barsalou is brilliant. In my view, he made one of the most important scientific discoveries in the modern era of psychological science: ad hoc concepts. It is not hyperbole to say that my own scientific efforts, in part, owe their existence to Larry’s discovery of ad hoc concepts. Before Larry’s seminal work, a category […]
In the mid-1990’s, I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to explore how conceptual/semantic information was represented in the human brain. One of these studies, published in Science in 1995, focused on the neural systems underpinning retrieval of information about the object-associated color and action, the other, published in Nature in 1996, focused on […]
This Digital Event focuses on the scientific contributions of Lawrence Barsalou (pictured below). Articles in this Digital Event: Digital Event honoring Larry Barsalou — Still grounded after all these years Larry Barsalou – enthusiasm, flexibility, and depth Formidable, flexible, friendly, and fun Grounding concepts in the brain Ad hoc concepts as a fundamental operating principle […]
We have known Larry for a long time. At first it was a one-way affair, when we were in graduate school and read his work. After we studied Larry’s paper on ad-hoc categories our view on semantic memory was never the same again. We had been working on the boundary between episodic and semantic memory, […]
Larry Barsalou is definitively the person who has influenced my scientific activity most deeply. Everything started when I was a graduate student in Psychology at the University of Bologna and went to the University of Chicago as a visiting scholar. I had read all of Larry’s papers, had the chance to go abroad during the […]
Every scientific field has its stars, and one of the joys—or, for the more competitive among us, frustrations—of academic life is frequently being gobsmacked by how brilliant they are as they advance through their amazing careers. For many decades now, one of the brightest luminaries in cognitive psychology has been Larry Barsalou, and I’m delighted […]
Have you ever been inside an MRI scanner? I recently got in one and it was quite the experience. After a short introduction to the process, including a question about whether I was claustrophobic, they gave me earplugs – because it’s NOISY inside the machine, yes, in capitals – and then they proceeded to slide […]
Have you ever visited a foreign country or region and found your own speech being influenced by the accent of the native people? Or perhaps you live far from home, and when you go back, your speech shifts back to the local accent? This happens to me every time I visit my family in Baltimore, […]
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths people will go to “outsmart” a system – whether it is homework, a test, an insurance claim, a speeding ticket, a secure file, or a survey. Because humans engage in “sub-optimal” behavior (aka careless, insufficient effort, or deception), survey research is especially vulnerable and must guard against […]
As a cognitive psychologist who leads a higher educational institution, I contemplate the effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on equity and justice every day. This technological era highlights the importance of bridging our knowledge of human cognition and behaviors with the design and execution of codes through machine learning. By understanding cognitive processes such as […]