Joe Austerweil, Graduate Student, Psychology

Joe is a graduate student in psychology working in cognitive psychology. One of his research interests is creating computational accounts of explanation. In particular, he is interested in formally pinning down the notion of ''generality'' in explanation using statistical concepts like Bayesian inference (Tenenbaum & Griffiths, 2001) and simplicity (Chater, 2003). He also works with Prof. Tom Griffiths on other types of inductive inference in the Computational Cognitive Science Lab.

Graduate Students

James Genone, Philosophy

James works mainly in the areas of philosophy of mind and epistemology, and is especially interested in perceptual experience and the theory of concepts. In his dissertation, supervised by John Campbell, Alva Noe, and Alison Gopnik (Psychology), James defends a direct realist theory of perceptual experience and develops an approach to accounting for perceptual error based on the idea that appearances are relational properties of objects. James is very interested in the empirical study of the mind, and is engaged in collaborative research with Prof. Tania Lombrozo (Dept. of Psychology, UC Berkeley) concerning causal theories of reference and conceptual structure. His other philosophical interests include metaphysics, philosophy of language, ancient philosophy, Kant, and the Phenomenological tradition.

Nicholas Gwynne, Graduate Student, Psychology

Nick is a graduate student in Psychology, though he is also keenly interested in Philosophy. His research interests are tied to both Philosophical and Psychological issues, and cover a wide range of territory. Knowledge of how people explain things is of both theoretical and practical interest to him. Trying to understand the psychology of moral reasoning has always been of interest as well, as he has often puzzled over the trouble people have giving explanations for their own feelings. In other words, he's not even sure if people really engage in moral reasoning. He is also interested in a great many other topics which are usually tied to the intersection of education, psychology, and philosophy. His non-cerebral activities mostly consist of games of various sorts (board, computer, video).

Kevin Uttich, Graduate Student, Psychology

Kevin is a graduate student in Psychology interested in social cognition and moral reasoning. Of particular interest is how people understand and explain intentional action. He's also very interested in cognitive development and our understanding of conventions. His outside interests include baseball and lazing around with his dog.

Joseph Williams, Graduate Student, Psychology

Joseph is a graduate student in psychology, interested in understanding the role that explanation plays in learning.  For both children and adults, generating and receiving explanations results in the acquisition of knowledge in a way that results in long term retention, and the transfer and generalization of this knowledge to novel situations and problems. Why does explaining have this effect? The research Joseph does explores a number of factors that underlie explanation’s role in learning and generalization.

Research Assistants

Elizabeth Seiver, Graduate Student, Psychology

Elizabeth is a graduate student in Psychology interested in social cognition and causal reasoning. Her studies with adults involve illusory correlation and how pre-existing theories can shape our perception and interpretation of raw data. She also studies how children view the underlying causes of others people's actions. Do they tend to think traits or situations are responsible for behavior, and can their views on this change based on supporting or disconfirming evidence? How do these views change over time with age, and how do they vary across cultures?

George Tsai, Graduate Student, Philosophy

George is a graduate student in Philosophy. In his work, he is engaged with issues in ethics, political philosophy, and moral psychology. He is interested in both the reflective and empirical study of evaluative thought. Currently, he is working on a project that examines people’s intuitions about the morality of social practice and of personal character

across historical distance. His dissertation investigates how our moral judgments relate to our social/historical understanding.

Emily Wei, Undergraduate Research Assistant (2007-2009)

Emily is currently a senior at Berkeley trying to decide what she is going to do for the rest of her life. She is interested in interdisciplinary studies with a focus in science. She likes swimming and taekwondo. She also likes watching her favorite movies over and over again.

Ania Jaroszewicz. Undergraduate Research Assistant (2008-2009)

Ania is primarily interested in learning and memory from an educational perspective. In the lab, she works with Joseph Williams on his experiment on how explanation facilitates learning.

Paul Rogerson, Undergraduate Research Assistant (2009)

Paul is a senior majoring in philosophy and minoring in math.  His interests are pretty broadly in the philosophy of mind, language, and metaphysics.  He is currently working on a project that tests people's intuitions about reference and concept attribution.

Preeti Talwai, Undergraduate Research Assistant (2009)

Preeti is an entering freshman in the class of 2013, and is planning to pursue a double major in cognitive science and architecture. In the lab, she works with Joseph Williams on his projects about explanation. She is interested in how cognitive research can be applied to better education. In her free time, she likes to paint, read, and spend time with family.

Director

Dr. Tania Lombrozo, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Tania Lombrozo received her PhD in Psychology from Harvard in 2006. Her research addresses a variety of areas in cognitive psychology, including how people evaluate explanations, the role of explanations in reasoning, judgments about causation, and categorization. In a second line of work, she studies moral reasoning.