Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series
Mind in Motion
Barbara Tversky, Teachers College
Register here - https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtc-uoqDIuEtI2jkhnYBRVjb-szIIW4GzK
ABSTRACT:
All creatures must move and act in space to survive. Moving in space creates representations of place in the hippocampus and of spatial relations among places in the entorhinal cortex. In people, the same brain structures that represent a place in spatial relations also represent ideas in conceptual relations. This supports the conclusion that spatial thinking is the foundation of abstract thought, not the entire edifice, but the foundation. This view is supported by evidence from language, from gesture, and from diagrams. Gesture and diagrams express meaning more directly than language, which bears arbitrary connections to meaning. Like language, gestures and diagrams are structured, with a syntax and semantics, using marks in space and place in space. Gestures are actions on ideas rather than on objects. Those actions design our world, which reflects our minds.
BIO:
Barbara Tversky studied cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan and has held positions at the Hebrew University, at Stanford University, where she is emerita professor of psychology, and now at Teachers College. Her work has spanned memory, categorization, mental models, spatial thinking and language, event perception and cognition, diagrammatic reasoning, information visualization, gesture, and creativity. She has enjoyed collaborations with linguists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, domain scientists, designers, and artists. She has been on the editorial boards of many journals, on the organizing committees of many international and interdisciplinary meetings, on the governing boards of many professional societies, and the President of the Association for Psychological Science, She was elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society for Experimental Psychology and is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Russell Sage Foundation. She was recently awarded the Kampé de Fériet Prize. Her book, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, was published in 2019.