The psychology department will be gathering to celebrate the research that our exemplary honors undergraduate students have worked hard on all term.

Join us in celebrating the achievements of our undergraduates this Friday, June 1st from 3:30 to 5pm in the 2nd Floor Lewis Atrium.

View this year’s poster abstracts here.

Refreshments will be provided.

The psychology department will gather in celebration of Dr. Helen Neville’s illustrious career and wish her a well-deserved retirement. Details for this celebration are below.

We have a terrific lineup of speakers coming to campus to celebrate Marjorie Taylor on the occasion of her retirement. The main events will take place in Gerlinger Hall from 2 – 6pm followed by a reception. The full schedule is below and in this flyer. Please join us!

2 – 2:15: Introductory remarks by Ulrich Mayr and Mike Posner

2:15 – 3: Paul Harris, Harvard University

“The reality-bound imagination of young children”

Although young children are often credited with a rich imaginative life, I argue that their imagination is generally reality-bound. It is constrained by their grasp of everyday causal constraints on what can actually happen.  Children need to be inspired by external input such as fairy stories – or a religious education – if they are to imagine the impossible.

3 – 3:45: Susan Gelman, University of Michigan

“The non-obvious foundations of human thought”

A hallmark of human cognition is the capacity to consider ideas that are non-obvious, invisible, or abstract. In this talk, I will review evidence that, contrary to classic assumptions, young children readily consider hidden, internal, abstract entities. I will discuss examples from categorization, language, and children’s understanding of everyday objects.  I will also discuss how Marjorie Taylor’s beautiful research on children’s imagination exemplifies the non-obvious foundations of everyday thought.

3:45 – 4: Break

4 – 4:45: Paul Bloom, Yale University

“The problem with stories”

We tend to think of the universal appetite for fiction and the imagination as a good thing, something that enriches our lives and makes us better people. I will explore the dark side of this human capacity, arguing that our drive for narrative often has tragic effects. 

4:45 – 5:30: Stephanie Carlson, University of Minnesota

“What do dreamers and control freaks have in common?”

We often think of “dreamers” and “control freaks” as opposite types of individuals and, perhaps as a result, developmental psychologists have rarely considered how these characteristics could stem from common sources in brain and cognitive development. I will describe my journey beginning as a student of Dr. Marjorie Taylor and her immense influence on my thinking and research about the links between imagination and the development of executive function — that is, conscious control over thoughts, emotional expressions, and decisions.

6pm: Reception