Event details
Nov
17
The Cinderella of Cognitive Science: Why the Body Matters for Decisions, Models, and AI
Markus Raab
Institute of Psychology, GSU, Cologne, Germany
Date: Tuesday, November 17
Time: 11AM
Location: PNI A30
How do we decide what to do when the decision itself is a movement, and there is barely time to think? The body remains a Cinderella of cognitive science: central to how people act in the world, yet often peripheral to our explanations of cognition. I argue that understanding naturalistic decisions requires understanding the moving body and its interaction with the environment.
Drawing on experimental and modelling research, I examine how people use fast-and-frugal heuristics to coordinate choices and actions under uncertainty. Examples range from rapid decisions in basketball and table tennis to route planning and selecting the next move in climbing. I also discuss work supporting Olympic athletes, where integrating genetic, blood, microbiome, motor, and psychosocial assessments is a demanding challenge: how can heterogeneous data inform individualized performance assessments or recommend interventions?
These settings offer fertile ground for researchers in cognitive modelling and artificial intelligence. How can models account for decisions that unfold through movement? Which information can be ignored without sacrificing performance? And how can we move from predicting behavior to identifying interventions that improve it? By connecting laboratory experiments with the complexity of skilled action, this talk invites collaboration on models that explain how people choose, move, and adapt, and on what embodied expertise can contribute to AI.
Institute of Psychology, GSU, Cologne, Germany
Date: Tuesday, November 17
Time: 11AM
Location: PNI A30
How do we decide what to do when the decision itself is a movement, and there is barely time to think? The body remains a Cinderella of cognitive science: central to how people act in the world, yet often peripheral to our explanations of cognition. I argue that understanding naturalistic decisions requires understanding the moving body and its interaction with the environment.
Drawing on experimental and modelling research, I examine how people use fast-and-frugal heuristics to coordinate choices and actions under uncertainty. Examples range from rapid decisions in basketball and table tennis to route planning and selecting the next move in climbing. I also discuss work supporting Olympic athletes, where integrating genetic, blood, microbiome, motor, and psychosocial assessments is a demanding challenge: how can heterogeneous data inform individualized performance assessments or recommend interventions?
These settings offer fertile ground for researchers in cognitive modelling and artificial intelligence. How can models account for decisions that unfold through movement? Which information can be ignored without sacrificing performance? And how can we move from predicting behavior to identifying interventions that improve it? By connecting laboratory experiments with the complexity of skilled action, this talk invites collaboration on models that explain how people choose, move, and adapt, and on what embodied expertise can contribute to AI.
Speakers
Markus Raab
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