Date: 2023-08-01 14:00-15:30
Location: CSIE R104
Speaker: Prof. Judith Fan,Stanford University
Host: Prof. Chu-Song Chen and Dr. Edward Duh (AINTU)
Abstract:
In the 17th century, the Cartesian coordinate system was groundbreaking. It exposed the unity between algebra and geometry, accelerating the development of the math that took humans to the moon. It was not just another concept, but a cognitive tool that people could wield to express abstract ideas in visual form, thereby expanding their capacity to think and generate new insights about a variety of other problems. Research in my lab aims to uncover the psychological mechanisms that explain how people have come to deploy these technologies in such innovative ways to learn, share knowledge, and create new things. In the first part of this talk, I will provide an overview of our recent work investigating drawing - one of our most enduring and versatile tools. Across several empirical and computational studies, I’ll argue that drawing not only provides a window into how we perceive and understand the visual world, but also accelerates our ability to learn and communicate useful abstractions. In the second part, I will describe an emerging line of work investigating how we discover new abstractions when building physical structures, and externalize these abstractions to support planning and collaboration. I will close by noting the broader implications of embracing such complex, naturalistic behaviors for advancing psychological theory and enhancing real-world impact, including in AI and education.
Bio:
Judy Fan is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Research in her lab aims to reverse engineer the human cognitive toolkit, especially how people use physical representations of thought to learn, communicate, and solve problems. Towards this end, her lab employs converging approaches from cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. She previously held a faculty appointment at the University of California, San Diego, received her PhD in Psychology from Princeton University and her AB in Neurobiology and Statistics from Harvard College.
**本場演講由台大人工智慧研究中心(AINTU)、清華大學智慧製造與循環經濟研究中心、台大金融科技研究中心、與台大資訊工程系共同主辦**