The Fall 2017 issue of the IBACS Brain, Cognition and Language Digest, on the topic of Bilingualism, has just been published.

Feel free to review it online here, or stop by the Institute on th 3rd Floor of Arjona to pick up a hard copy.

 

Boston College

Lab Manager Position

Language Learning Lab 

The Language Learning Laboratory at Boston College, directed by Dr. Joshua
Hartshorne, invites applications for full-time research assistants. Our
research sits at the intersection between linguistics, neuroscience,
artificial intelligence, and psychology. Our strategy is to leverage new
and emerging technologies to address previously unanswerable scientific
questions. This includes massive crowdsourcing efforts (our website,
gameswithwords.org, has been visited by over 2,000,000 volunteer
researchers).

The only requirements for this position are a bachelor’s degree or
equivalent (in hand by start date), diligence, and the ability to work in
teams. However, valuable skills and experiences include: prior research
experience, training in linguistics, knowledge of non-English languages,
computer programming or statistical skills, and experience with science
outreach and public engagement. Lab managers will be engaged primarily in
research or in administration and project management, depending on
interests and abilities.

You can learn more about this position at http://l3atbc.org/PostBac.html

Review will begin on 11/15/2017 and continue until the position is filled.

All questions can be directed to info@l3atbc.org.

Boston University is accepting applications for an immediate opening in their T32 fellowship program. Please contact Professor Tager-Flusberg (below) for information and application procedures.

Helen Tager-Flusberg, PhD
Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Director, Center for Autism Research Excellence
htagerf@bu.edu
www.bu.edu/autism

Dear all, please see below the call for abstracts for an upcoming ECOM workshop here at UConn. We encourage submissions from interested UConn community members as well as external researchers.

The Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group is pleased to announce that it will be hosting its fifth interdisciplinary workshop this April, entitled “Emotions and Expressions”, to be held April 20-21, 2018 at the University of Connecticut.

This workshop brings together researchers who are currently working on the nature of emotions and their development, as well as their social and moral significance, and the varieties of emotion expressions – linguistic and nonlinguistic, in both humans and nonhuman animals.These topics lie at the intersection of several fields: philosophy, psychology, linguistics, communication studies, ethology, and neuroscience. Discussing these issues could benefit from productive interdisciplinary exchange – to which we hope to contribute with this workshop.

 

Invited Speakers:

• Maria Botero (Philosophy, Sam Houston State)
• Ross Buck (Communications/Psychology, UConn)
• Marie Coppola (Linguistics/Psychology, UConn)
• Jennifer Fugate (Psychology, UMass Dartmouth)
• Maria Gendron (Psychology, Northeastern)
• Mitch Green (Philosophy, UConn)
• Andrea Scarantino (Philosophy, Georgia State)
• James Sias (Philosophy, Dickinson)

We invite substantive abstracts (approx. 1 page) of short papers by junior researchers (25-30mins) on the topics of the conference. For the purposes of this event, “junior researchers” includes untenured faculty, postdocs and graduate students.

Please submit abstracts or papers in PDF format to Nathan Kellen by January 15, 2018.  (Authors of accepted papers will be notified within a few weeks.)

The Psychological Sciences Colloquium Series presents:

 

Gary Lupyan, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

3:30pm in BOUS A106

 

Talk: From perception to symbolic thought: how language augments human cognition

It is a common refrain that language is one of the defining traits of our species. Yet for all its claimed importance, most cognitive scientists work under the assumption that language, while important for communicating pre-existing thoughts, plays a minor if any role in their construction. I will argue that this view is mistaken and that words play a much more central role in creating meaning than is generally acknowledged. Using a wide range of empirical evidence, I will show that even in linguistically savvy adults, the use of language actively modulates “nonverbal” mental processing from low-level perception to higher-level reasoning. On the presented view, some of the unique aspects of human cognition stem from the power of words to flexibly transform mental representations into more categorical states. This view has immediate consequences for understanding the cognitive consequences of learning and using language and for questions concerning linguistic relativity.

Science and Story

The Role of Narrative in Modern Research

Tim Miller

Digital Media & Design, University of Connecticut

Wednesday, 6 December, 2017, 3:30pm

Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center

Reception to follow

Sponsored by the CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS)

and the training program in Science of Learning & the Art of Communication (SLAC)

 

In today’s crowded and increasingly competitive research environment, it is more important than ever for scientists to take an active role in communicating the importance of their work to as broad an audience as possible. The ability to recruit collaborators, attract funding, and effectively report results requires clear, concise communication. As emerging research challenges focus on fundamentally transdisciplinary questions, the ability to communicate among a diverse cohort is becoming an integral component of the conduct of research within laboratories, not just a supplementary activity that occurs outside of them. This talk addresses some of the fundamental principles that can guide effective communication, and introduces a conceptual framework that can serve as a scaffold for communication strategies of any scope.

Dr. Ruth Grossman, Emerson College

Friday (10/27) from 12:20-1:10 in Bous 162

Title: First Impressions Matter: Social judgments, gaze patterns, and facial movements of adolescents with and without ASD

Abstract: We quickly form first impressions during social interactions. In the case of encounters with individuals on the autism spectrum (ASD), those first impressions are often negative. In this talk I will present data and research questions regarding the formation of those first impressions, the gaze patterns to individuals with and without ASD, and the facial expression movements that may underly that first impression formation.

 

See below for resources towards STEM opportunities,  presented by The Institute for Broadening Participation (IBP)

www.PathwaysToScience.org

The mission of the Institute for Broadening Participation is to increase diversity in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. We design and implement strategies to increase access to STEM education, funding, and careers, with special emphasis on reaching and supporting individuals from underserved communities and underrepresented groups, including underrepresented minorities, women, persons with disabilities, first-generation college students, and students from underserved communities. The Institute for Broadening Participation is a 501(c)(3) organization, tax ID #20-1891162.

30+ undergraduate scholarships

30+ graduate fellowships

170+ postdoc positions

Follow IBP on Facebook

 

 

The Marcus Autism Center, in conjunction with the Emory University School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, is offering three fellowships. Students who will receive a bachelor’s degree by June 2018 will be eligible for the positions. The fellowships will commence in July 2018, and they are 2 years in duration.

 

Students can find further details at: www.cohenfellowship.org and www.simonsfellowship.org.

 

The Cohen Fellowship in Developmental Social Neuroscience will involve cutting-edge social neuroscience research in infants, toddlers and adolescents. Fellows will work to further the understanding of autism through eye-tracking research, guiding a project from the point of data collection to publication of results.

The Marcus Fellowship in Speech Science and Engineering will involve researching early vocal development, including speech production and speech perception, as part of a program to map out both typical and atypical development of spoken communication in early childhood.

The Simons Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience will involve integrating computational strategies with clinical research goals. Fellows will develop methods for the analysis of visual scanning and eye-tracking data, computational models of visual salience, and data visualization techniques, all with the aim of advancing the understanding of autism and efforts at early diagnosis.

Dr. Stephanie Durrleman, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Date: November 6, 2017
Location/Time of talk: BOUS 160, 5pm
Title of talk: Thinking about thoughts: The role of language

Dr. Durrleman is a linguist who currently co-directs a Swiss National Scientific Project entitled ‘The Acquisition of Jamaican Creole: A corpus-based study of early parameter-setting’ (with Professors Ur Shlonsky and Luigi Rizzi). Her monograph: ‘The Syntax of Jamaican Creole: A Cartographic Perspective’ (Benjamins 2008) is the first cartographic analysis of a Creole language. She is also more generally interested in contact languages and was co-editor of the book ‘Structure and Variation in Language Contact’ (Benjamins 2006). She has recently turned her attention to language pathology and more specifically to syntactic development in individuals with autism. This theme, on which she has collaboratively presented and published, is now the focus of her investigations, thanks to a 3-year Swiss National Scientific Research award for her project ‘Syntax in Autism’.