Fall 2003

Tuesdays 12:15  Goldwater 604

Seminar Schedule:<http://math.la.asu.edu/~tom/cognition/math+cogsched.html>

On Tuesday, October 21, at 12:15 PM in GWC 604,
the Mathematics and Cognition Seminar will present
a lecture by Dr. Roger Cooper of the Department of Mathematics.
The topic will be:

"A New Channel of Communication to Human Mental Processes"

Abstract.

When people are simultaneously presented with spoken language and a visual field containing objects semantically related to the informative items of speech, they have an automatic, reflex-like tendency to look at the object most closely related to the meaning of the currently heard word; for example, looking at a person when you hear that person's name pronounced; and then looking back at the same person upon hearing he, she, him, or her.   Such behavior may be viewed as an active on-line anticipative process, whereby the contemporary visual field of an observer is subjected to his continual interpretation in terms of the language heard; and, conversely, as a process in which continuous speech is interpreted from moment to moment in the context of the contemporary visual field.       In the original study, approximately 55% of all appropriately directed fixation responses elicited by words of a spoken prose passage that named objects in a simultaneously viewed visual display were initiated while those words were being pronounced; and nearly 40% of post-word responses began within the first fifth of a second following word termination.  In a subsequent, more precise study involving lists of isolated spoken words, even more striking results were obtained.       The high degree of linguistic sensitivity of this response system together with its remarkably short reaction times suggests its use as a powerful new psychological tool and new way to communicate having important advantages over traditionally employed response measures