Aim and Scope:
The CDS Task Force on Developmental Psychology is primarily concerned with processes of psychological development in humans and other biological agents, including perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, motivational, language, and social aspects. Members of this task force collect psychological data, perform computational and mathematical modeling, and build or collaborate on robotic systems that explore how innate mechanisms develop, learn, and interact in various environments.
TF Chair:
Gert Westermann
Fylde College
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster
United Kingdom
g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/gert-westermann
TF Vice-Chair:
Denis Mareschal
Department of Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck, University of London
London, England, UK
d.mareschal@bbk.ac.uk
http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/people/scientificstaff/denis
TF Members:
Gedeon O. Deák
Department of Cognitive Science
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, CA, USA
deak@cogsci.ucsd.edu
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~deak/cdlab/
Kim Plunkett
Department of Experimental Psychology
University of Oxford
Oxford, England, UK
kim.plunkett@psy.ox.ac.uk
http://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/team/principal-investigators/kim-plunkett
Brian Scassellati
Computer Science
Yale University
New Haven, CT
scaz@cs.yale.edu
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/scaz/
Matthew Schlesinger - confirmed
Department of Psychology
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL, USA
matthews@siu.edu
http://visionlab.siu.edu/meet-the-director/
Sylvain Sirois
Département de Psychologie
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières (QC) Canada
sylvain.sirois@uqtr.ca
http://www.uqtr.ca/~siroiss/index_e.htm
Linda B. Smith
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN, USA
smith4@indiana.edu
http://psych.indiana.edu/faculty/smith4.php
John P. Spencer
Department of Psychology
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA, USA
john-spencer@uiowa.edu
http://www2.psychology.uiowa.edu/labs/spamlab/
Michael Thomas
Department of Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck, University of London
London, England, UK
m.thomas@bbk.ac.uk
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/michael-thomas
Jochen Triesch - confirmed
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
triesch@fias.uni-frankfurt.de
http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/~triesch/
Gert Westermann
Department of Psychology
Lancaster University
Lancaster, England, UK
g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/gert-westermann
Katie Twomey
Department of Psychology
Lancaster University
Lancaster, England, UK
ktwomey@lancaster.ac.uk
Recent activities:
- Matt Schlesinger co-authored with Angelo Cangelosi the milestone book: “Developmental Robotics: from Babies to Robots”, MIT Press.
- Gert Westermann co-authored a new textbook on Developmental Psychology that highlights computational and dynamical systems approaches: Harris, M. and Westermann, G. (2015). The Student’s Guide to Developmental Psychology. Psychology Press.
- Jochen Triesch, Matthew Schlesinger, Matthias Rolf, and Minoru Asada organized a pre-conference workshop "Computational Models of Infant Development“ at the International Congress on Infant Studies (ICIS) in Berlin.
- Gert Westermann co-organized the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW14) in Lancaster, UK
- Matt Schlesinger and Anne Warlaumont have posed the Babybot Challenge at ICDL-Epirob 2015 to strengthen the link between scientists studying development in humans and in artificial systems. The challenge is to select from a list of three infant studies and design a model that captures infants’ performance on the chosen task.
- Jochen Triesch gave an invited talk at ICIS 2014: Learning where to look: infants, models, robots.
- Gedeon Deák will speak at a workshop for ICDL-Epirob 2015 entitled "Mechanisms of Learning in Social Contexts.”
- Katherine Twomey will present a paper at ICDL-Epirob: A neural network model of curiosity-driven infant categorization.
- John Spencer will be hosting a DFT Summer School at the University of East Anglia next summer.
- John Spencer, together with Mark Blumberg and David Shenk, is preparing a special issue of the WIRES journal (Wiley) dedicated to explaining developmental sciences to a wide scientific audience.
- A special issue in Topics in Cognitive Science, is about to be published: Origins of complex communication and language: Epigenetic modeling and ethological observation. It will include contributions from Gert Westermann, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Linda Smith, and Anne Warlaumont.
Highlight past activities:
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Jochen Triesch organized a winter school on intrinsic motivation in Frankfurt, December 2012.
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Chen Yu co-organized a symposium at CogSci2013 in Berlin on embodied cognition.
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John Spencer has a new book, with Gregor Schoner and the DFT Research Group, titled Dynamic Thinking: A Primer on Dynamic Field Theory, Oxford University Press. With Gregor Schoner and Yulia Sandamirskaya, John also hosted a tutorial at CogSci2013, with lectures and software available online.
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Gedeon Deák organized and chaired a symposium at the Society for Research on Child Development 2013 Biennial Meeting: "Getting more out of EEG: New Inroads to the Developing Brain“. He is also Co-editor with Katharina Rohlfing of a special issue of IEEE Transations on Autonomous Mental Development: 'Microdynamics of interaction: Capturing and modeling early social learning‘.
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With Rachel Wu, Dick Aslin, and Rebecca Nako, Gedeon Deák co-organized a conference, “Learning to Attend; Attending to Learn” at UCSD November 2013 with NSF and UCSD support.
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Brian Scassellati is a Co-chair of the Cognitive Science annual meeting in 2014. It will be co-located in Quebec City with AAAI, and there are plans for some joint sessions and demonstrations. This should be a good place to promote AMD research as the combined attendance is likely to be over 2500. Cognitive Science averages around 1800 attendees and AAAI around 900, with little overlap.