Recent Papers
Middlebrooks, P.G., Zandbelt, B.B., Logan, G.D., Palmeri, T.J., Schall, J.D. (in press). Unification of countermanding and perceptual decision-making. iScience.
Mack, M.L., & Palmeri, T.J. (in press). Discrimination, recognition, and classification. To appear in M.J. Kahana & A. Wagner (Eds.), Handbook on Human Memory, Oxford University Press.
Benear, S., Sunday, M.A., Palmeri, T.J., & Gauthier, I. (in press). Can art change the way we see? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
Palmeri, T.J. (2019). On developing and testing cognitive models. Computational Brain & Behavioral.
Data Science Institute Welcomes DSI-SRP 2020 Fellows
The Vanderbilt Data Science Institute welcomed its second cohort of summer research fellows on June 1. The DSI Summer Research Program engages students who are interested in carrying out data science-related research with a Vanderbilt faculty member and integrates them into the institute’s community of data science scholars. This year the program is expanding its mission, as students will be required to dedicate at least 30 percent of their time working on COVID-19 related projects.
As Director of Undergraduate Research for the Data Science Institute, Thomas Palmeri oversees the DSI-SRP program.
National Endowment for the Arts Grant funded
Palmeri and Gauthier are collaborating with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, on a two-year project that recently earned a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research: Art Works program award. The project is a scientific study testing whether visual art training can enhance visual perception and visual cognition skills. The Albright-Knox’s Innovation Lab has played a key role in bringing together leading experts in visual arts education, visual perception and visual cognition, and vision, and other collaborators include the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. The team of interdisciplinary partners seeks to combine an art-historical approach to understanding images with a scientific understanding of high-level vision. An arts training program, developed in consultation with OCAD U, will draw from existing museum programs and workshops, as well as basic principles taught in introductory visual studies and visual arts courses, in a series of lessons featuring artworks from the collection of the Albright-Knox. In collaboration with the museum, Vanderbilt will test the impact of the training program on visual perception and visual cognition. The team hopes to use the results of these tests to help shape a curriculum for enhancing high-level visual skills for people from all walks of life, establishing an even more vital role for the visual arts and arts organizations.
Vanderbilt neuroscientists, art museum collaborate on NEA-funded visual cognition research
Recent Papers
Servant, M., Tillman, G., Logan, G.D., Schall, J.D., & Palmeri, T.J. (in press). Neurally-constrained modeling of speed-accuracy tradeoff during visual search: Gated accumulation of modulated evidence. Journal of Neurophysiology.
Annis, J., Evans, N.J., Miller, B.J., & Palmeri, T.J. (in press). Thermodynamic integration and steppingstone sampling methods for estimating Bayes factors: A tutorial for psychologists. Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
Boehm, U., Annis, J., Frank, M.J., Hawkins, G.E., Heathcote, A., Kellen, D., Krypotos, A.-M., Lerche, V., Logan, G.D., Palmeri, T.J., Servant, M., Singmann, H., van Ravenzwaaij, D., Starns, J.J., Wiecki, T.V., Voss, A., Matzke, D., Wagenmakers, E.-J. (in press). Estimating between-trial variability parameters of the drift diffusion model: Expert advice and recommendations. Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
Annis, J., & Palmeri, T.J. (2018). Modeling memory dynamics in visual expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Ross, D.A., Tamber-Rosenau, B.J., Palmeri, T.J., Zhang, J.D., Xu, Y. & Gauthier, I. (2018). High resolution fMRI reveals configural processing of cars in right anterior Fusiform Face Area of car experts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Welcome New Members to the CatLab
We welcome three new members to the CatLab this summer:
Greg Cox received his PhD from Indiana University in Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science, where he worked with Rich Shiffrin. Greg completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Syracuse University and will be joining our lab as a postdoctoral fellow in July. He will be working with Palmeri, Logan, and Schall on model-based cognitive neuroscience. Greg is interested in the development of experimental techniques and mathematical/computational models that help us understand how neural and cognitive processes jointly unfold across time.
Craig Sanders is receiving his PhD from Indiana University in Psychological and Brain Sciences this summer, where he has been working with Rob Nosofsky. Craig will be joining our lab as a postdoctoral fellow next month. He will be working with Palmeri and Gauthier on project using cognitive and deep learning models to understand individual differences in visual cognition. Craig is broadly interested in combining machine learning (especially deep learning) with classic cognitive models to understand how people perceive, categorize, and mentally represent objects.
Jason Chow completed his undergraduate degree in May 2018 at the University of Toronto, he worked with CatLab alumnus, and now University of Toronto faculty member, Michael Mack on the development and validation of a printable 3D stimulus set for categorization experiments in visual and tactile modalities. As a PhD student at Vanderbilt, Jason will be working with Palmeri and Gauthier on combining computational modeling and neuroimaging to gain insights on perceptual expertise.
Mathieu Servant wins Bob Fox Award of Excellence in Postdoctoral Research
Congratulations to Mathieu for being the 2018 winner of the Bob Fox Award of Excellence in Postdoctoral Research.
This award is granted to a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in research. It is named in honor of Robert “Bob” Fox for his essential role in guiding the evolution of of the department over a five-decade period starting in the mid-60’s. Bob enjoyed a highly productive research career, with publications in major journals and continuous grant funding for decades, and he trained a number of students and postdocs who went on to successful careers themselves. Bob has served as an inspiration to generations of subsequent faculty members. This award not only serves as a humble note of appreciation for Bob’s numerous accomplishments, it also acknowledges the critical role that postdoctoral fellows play in the scientific vibrancy of our department. Postdocs are not only highly skilled, accomplished and dedicated young scientists, they also are reference models for our graduate students and are the first to represent Vanderbilt at the next academic level.
Data Science Working Group Report Released
A data science institute, new faculty and technical staff, and expanded educational offerings are the key investments recommended by the Data Science Visions Working Group to leverage Vanderbilt’s collaborative culture and advance foundational research and data science skills across campus.
Click here for the Vanderbilt News story.
Click here for the Working Group report.
Palmeri becomes Associate Editor at Cognitive Psychology
In December 2017, I became an Associate Editor at Cognitive Psychology: Cognitive Psychology is concerned with advances in the study of attention, memory, language processing, perception, problem solving, and thinking. Cognitive Psychology specializes in extensive articles that have a major impact on cognitive theory and provide new theoretical advances.
Cognitive Psychology is one of the premier theoretical journals in the field, with an impact factor of 4.945.
New papers
Annis, J., & Palmeri, T.J. (in press). Bayesian statistical approaches to evaluating cognitive models. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews in Cognitive Science.
Dutilh, G., Annis, J., Brown, S.D., Cassey, P., Evans, N.J., Grasman, R.P.P.P., Hawkins, G.E., Heathcote, A., Holmes, W.R., Krypotos, A.-M., Kupitz, C.-N., Leite, F.P. Lerche, V., Lin, Y.S., Logan, G.D., Palmeri, T.J., Starns, J.J., Trueblood, J.S., van Maanen, L., van Ravenzwaaij, D., Vandekerckhove, J., Visser, I., Voss, A., White, C.N., Wiecki, T.V., Rieskamp, J., & Donkin, C. (in press). The quality of response time data inference: A blinded, collaborative approach to the validity of cognitive models. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
New papers
New papers from the CatLab:
Cheng, X.J., McCarthy, C., Wang, T.S.L., Palmeri, T.J., & Little, D.R. (in press). Composite faces are not (necessarily) processed coactively: A test using Systems Factorial Technology and logical-rule models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Vogelsang, M.D., Palmeri, T.J., Busey, T.A. (2017). Holistic processing of fingerprints by expert forensic examiners. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2: 15.