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Ansgar Endress (University of Essen, Germany, 1998; Ecole Polytechnique, France, 2000; MSc, Ecole Polytechnique, France, 2001; PhD, EHESS, France, 2005) My research focuses on the psychological mechanisms involved in aspects of language acquisition and use. I am particularly interested in basic perceptual mechanisms as the basis of diverse computations in both artificial and natural grammar learning, and the role of perceptual cues in word learning. I normally employ behavioral experiments with humans, and computational modeling when I am bored. Now I will add research with non-human primates to investigate the same mechanisms in a non-human species. Ideally, this research will reveal some computational tools used by the language faculty, and indicate which of these are specific to humans and language.
Brian Russ (BS, Virginia Tech, 2001; PhD, Dartmouth College, 2008) I am interested in the neural and behavioral mechanisms involved in higher-order cognitive processes, particularly those related to social cognition. A large body of literature has begun to investigate how we understand and process the actions of others. However, this literature has left a number of questions unanswered. For example, how do the intentions and motivations of an actor influence our interpretation of his/her actions? Additionally, which regions of the cortex are involved in processing the various components of another's actions? My current research will begin to investigate these questions using a variety of methodologies. Currently, I am working on projects looking at action representations across a number of species, which will allow us to compare how human action representations have evolved.
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