Monthly Archives: December 2017

Call for Nominations: The Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes in Cognitive Science

Call for Nominations

The Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes in Cognitive Science

Nomination Deadline: January 15, 2018

The Cognitive Science Society and the Glushko-Samuelson Foundation seek nominations for up to five outstanding dissertation prizes in cognitive science. The goals of these prizes are to increase the prominence of cognitive science, and encourage students to engage in interdisciplinary efforts to understand minds and intelligent systems. The hope is that the prizes will recognize and honor young researchers conducting ground-breaking research in cognitive science. The eventual goal is to aid in efforts to bridge between the areas of cognitive science and create theories of general interest to the multiple fields concerned with scientifically understanding the nature of minds and intelligent systems. Promoting a unified cognitive science is consistent with the belief that understanding how minds work will require the synthesis of many different empirical methods, formal tools, and analytic theories. The prize was first begun in 2011, and 2018 will occasion the induction of the eighth group of prize winners. Up-to-date information on the prizes can be found here.

See the full announcement here.

Nithyanand in CSSI seminar Fri. Dec. 8 12:30-2

The UMass Computational Social Science Institute invites you to an engaging (and timely) talk from a visiting postdoc, collaborating with two CSSI affiliates:

Rishab Nithyanand
Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow, Data & Society, New York
Friday, December 8, 2017 • 12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m. (lunch served at 12:15)
Computer Science Building, Room 150/151
Collaboration with CSSI Affiliates Brian Schaffner (Political Science) and Philippa Gill (Computer Science)

Title: Online Political Discourse in the Trump Era

Abstract: We identify general trends in the (in)civility and complexity of political discussions occurring on Reddit between January 2007 and May 2017 – a period spanning both terms of Barack Obama’s presidency and the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. We then investigate four factors that are frequently hypothesized as having contributed to the declining quality of American political discourse – (1) the rising popularity of Donald Trump, (2) increasing polarization and negative partisanship, (3) the democratization of news media and the rise of fake news, and (4) merging of fringe groups into mainstream political discussions.

Bio: Rishab is currently a Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow at Data & Society in New York. His research interests are in the areas of security, privacy, and Internet measurement. More specifically, he likes research geared towards defending anonymity, understanding Internet censorship, measuring aspects of the advertising and tracking ecosystem, and generally understanding the impact of the Internet on the sociopolitical realities of today.

Valentine Hacquard colloquium Friday Dec. 8th at 3:30

Valentine Hacquard of the University of Maryland will be presenting “Learning what ‘must’ and ‘can’ must and can mean”, Friday December 8th at 3:30 in ILC N400. All are welcome – a reception will follow.

Abstract. The way languages across the world express modality shows both variation and convergence. In some languages, like English, the same modal words (e.g., must) can express different flavors of modality: “Jo must eat fish”, for instance, can express a likelihood that Jo is a fish eater (‘epistemic’ necessity) or an obligation Jo has to eat fish (‘deontic’ necessity). In other languages, modals are strictly monosemous. How do children figure out the modals of their language? What expectations, if any, do they bring to this learning problem? This talk focuses on English-learning children, and asks how they figure out that their modals can be used to express different flavors, what in their linguistic experience might give away modal polysemy, and what linguistic biases might guide this acquisition process.