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Speaker
Gregor Schöner

Summary
 
This module will approach decision making from the perspective of embodied cognition that emphasizes the close llink between cognitive and sensor-motor processes as well as the dependence of cognition on behavioral history and environmental context. Moreover, I will take the specific stance that an understanding of embodied cognition must be based on principles of neural function.
I will, therefore, approach decision making by looking first at how sensori-motor deci-sions emerge from the simplest behavioral systems that consist only of sensors, motors, a body, a simple nervous system, and that are embedded in a structured environment. To lift these ideas to higher levels, making decisions more invariant, less dependent on sensory details, I will use Dynamic Field Theory, a neurally inspired theoretical framework which accounts for how decision events emerge from continuous time processes, how cognitive functions emerge from neuronal interaction, and how experience structures behavior.
The ideas will be illustrated in two ways. I will refer to behavioral and neural experi-ments to point to signatures of the underlying mechanism of decision making, giving special emphasis to development, that is, how infants and toddlers learn to make deci-sions. On the other hand, I will illustrate the postulated mechanism by presenting simple agents and robotic implementations that embody these ideas.
I will briefly touch upon how these ideas relate to other theoretical approaches including decision field theory and Bayesian thinking, but will not teach extensively on classical concepts such as utility theory.

Disciplines

Embodied cognition, Sensori-motor decisions, Developmental science, Dynamical Systems Models, Dynamic Field Theory, Neural Dynamics, Autonomous robots/agents

References

• Gregor Schöner: Dynamical Systems Approaches to Cognition.  In: The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology,  Ron Sun, (ed.), Cambridge University Press (2008), pages 101-126
• Jeff S Johnson,  John P  Spencer and Gregor Schöner: Moving to higher ground: The dynamic field theory and the dynamics of visual cognition. New Ideas in Psychology  26:227-251 (2008)
• Rafal Bogacza, Eric Brownb, Jeff Moehlisb, Philip Holmes and Jonathan D. Cohen: The Physics of Optimal Decision Making: A Formal Analysis of Models of Performance in Two-Alternative Forced-Choice Tasks. Psychological Review 113: 700-765 (2006)

CV

Gregor Schöner is the Director of the Institut für Neuroinformatik at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany and holds the chair for Theory of Cognitive Systems there. With a background in theoretical physics has worked in psychology, kinesiology, neuroscience, robotics, and computer vision, primarily as a theoretician, but working closely with experimentalists. He has held academic positions in the US, France, and Germany.