Visiting speaker: Karenleigh A. Overmann, University of
Oxford
Date and time: Thursday, Mar 19, 4:00pm, Committee Room 3.
Title: “Numerosity, materiality, and numerical
cognition"
Abstract:
Why is increasing cultural complexity associated with
counting to higher numbers? It’s not just things to count and reasons to count
them; materiality helps us think numerically, just as numbers change our
behavior. This presentation reviews what numbers are as concepts and how they
are acquired through the interaction of brains, bodies, and materiality
(Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory). The brain contributes the perceptual
experience of quantity (numerosity), while the body interfaces brain and world
through functions like finger gnosia, haptic perception, and neural reactions
to tools. Material artifacts used for counting shape number concepts through
their affordances, influence numerical system outcomes over various time spans,
and act as the intermediate level between what a society knows and what any
individual learns. Various counting technologies—Neolithic clay tokens, Upper
Paleolithic tallies and hand stencils, and Middle Stone Age beads—are
reinterpreted through Material Engagement Theory.
Bio:
Karenleigh A. Overmann is a Clarendon scholar at the
University of Oxford, where she is working toward a DPhil in Archaeology. She
lectures for the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of
Colorado, Colorado Springs. She has an MA in psychology and a BA in
anthropology, philosophy, and English from the University of Colorado. Her work
has appeared in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Cambridge Archaeological
Journal, Current Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Rock Art
Research, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, Behavioral Sciences
and the Law, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, and several edited volumes.
Website:
Visiting speaker:
Prof. Frederick L. Coolidge, University of Colorado - Colorado Springs
Date and time: Thursday, Mar 19, 5:00pm, Committee Room 3.
Title: “Evolutionary neuropsychology"
Abstract:
The present talk addresses the evolution of structures
and functions of the human brain. Since the earliest origins of life, cellular
evolution has been both a series of adaptations to the environment and
subsequent exaptations. The latter involves the reuse, recycling, or redeployment
of neurons for more complex higher cognitive functions, often in addition to
their original purposes. The present lecture will address just some of the
major exaptations of the human brain including the frontal, parietal, and
temporal lobes (including the hippocampus), the cerebellum, sleep and its
stages, and the extension of the brain into its external environment (embodied
cognition). The talk is based upon a forthcoming book, Evolutionary
Neuropsychology, to be published by Elsevier in early 2016.
Bio:
Frederick L. Coolidge is a Professor of Psychology and
Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of
Colorado, Colorado Springs. He received his PhD from the University of Florida
and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Neuropsychology at
Shands Teaching Hospital, Gainesville, Florida. He has received three USA
Fulbright Fellowships to teach and conduct research in India. He has published
six books, over 120 journal articles, and numerous book chapters on such
wide-ranging topics as statistics, sleep and dreams, personality disorders,
cognitive archaeology, and the evolution of modern cognition. He is currently a
Senior Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, Keble College.
Websites:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There will be an intermission between the talks. You may attend one or both talks.
All are welcome. No need to register. Just show up. If
you have questions, please e-mail: Y.Russell@mdx.ac.uk.
No comments:
Post a Comment