The Center for Language Science presents

"Event Cognition in Language, Perception, and Memory"
with Jeffrey M. Zacks, Department of Psychology, Washington University

Tuesday, February 5, 2013
3:00-4:00 p.m.
Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Room 1517

When you read a story, watch a movie, or participate in a live activity, one of the things you do is segment the ongoing stream of information into events. In this talk, Zacks  will present a theory of how you do this, along with supporting data from behavioral studies of healthy young adults, group comparisons including aging and Alzheimer’s disease, and neuroimaging studies. The theory proposes that (a) comprehenders try to predict what is coming in the information stream, (b) they do this guided by working memory representations of what is happening now, and (c) they update those models when prediction errors spike. He'll discuss the implications of this account for discourse comprehension and for episodic memory.

For further information, please contact Sandy Cushman, scushman@uci.edu or 949-824-3344.