University of California, San Diego
The Department of Psychology is Honored
to Present a Talk by
Evan Heit
University of California, Merced
"ROC and Reasoning"
Presented on November 2, 2006
Location: The Crick Conference Room
Mandler Hall, room 3545
- Abstract:
- Reasoning can be conceived of as a signal detection task, in which the goal is to distinguish good arguments from bad arguments. With this conception, analytical tools from other areas of research, such as memory research, can be applied to reasoning, including signal detection theory (SDT) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. These tools are applied to reasoning experiments with the aim of addressing a central issue in reasoning research, namely are there two kinds of reasoning. Researchers have debated whether a single model should apply to all of reasoning or if there are different reasoning systems roughly corresponding to deduction and induction. The applications of SDT and ROC help to settle this debate and pave the way for improved models of reasoning.
- About the Speaker:
-
Dr. Evan Heit is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, and a
founding
faculty member at the University of California, Merced. He has
undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Computer Science from the
University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford
University. Dr. Heit was previously (1995-2005) a faculty member at
the
University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom, and he has been a visiting
scholar at New York University, the University of Colorado, and the
University of New South Wales, Australia. Dr. Heit has also
taught at the
Cognitive Science Summer School at New Bulgarian University.
Dr. Heit's research addresses how people reason, remember, and form concepts. This research involves psychological experimentation with adults and children, as well as computational modeling. Some recent projects have addressed relations between scientific reasoning and everyday reasoning, effects of prior knowledge on learning categories of consumer products, methods for preventing false memory errors, and computer modeling of semantic memory in patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Heit's research has so far led to more than 50 published papers. He is currently preparing an edited book on reasoning for Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Heit has been active in editorial work within the field of cognitive psychology. He is currently associate editor of Journal of Memory and Language and is on the editorial boards of Memory & Cognition and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
