Departmental Seminar: Attempting to unravel surprisingly complex behaviour
The growth of comparative cognition has led to the discovery of surprisingly complex behaviour in taxa as different as social insects (e.g. bumblebees), birds (e.g. corvids and parrots), and non-human primates. Accounts based on mental representations, consciousness, or insight are always tempting, but are frequently empirical dead-ends. An alternative research program is to follow experimentally accessible paths combining prior predispositions, reinforcement and concept learning, procedural and episodic memory, and other psychological constructs with the rapidly growing field of synthetic intelligence. I will present findings on complex problem-solving by crows and parrots and our attempts to understand and emulate their performance using virtual and physical synthetic systems.
Date:
17 October 2019, 12:00 (Thursday, 1st week, Michaelmas 2019)
Venue:
New Radcliffe House, Walton Street OX2 6NW
Venue Details:
Seminar Room
Speaker:
Prof Alex Kacelnik (Univerisity of Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Experimental Psychology
Organiser:
Professor Matthew Rushworth (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
matthew.rushworth@psy.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Matthew Rushworth (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Departmental Seminar Series (Experimental Psychology)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
George Goss
