Jobs in Cognitive Psychology
Nancy Alvarado, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
What is Cognitive Psychology?
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The study of how people think.
Information processing – uses computer
analogies to describe thinking.
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Cognitive science – human and machine
intelligence (includes neuroscience, linguistics,
philosophy as well as psychology)
Because mental activity cannot be directly
observed, indirect measures are used.
You Can’t Escape It
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Clinical psychology uses cognitive
approaches to identify and treat pathologies:
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Disorders have cognitive symptoms
Therapies address thinking in order to change
behavior and emotion
Developmental psychology includes
cognitive development, language acquisition.
Social cognition is the cutting edge of social
psychology.
My Research Interests
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Psychology
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Emotion, facial expressions, language used to
describe emotional experiences, coping styles.
Color naming, cross-cultural comparisons of color
categorization (Vietnamese vs English).
Cognitive Science/Computer Science
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Artificial intelligence, architectures of mind, the
role of emotion in virtual agents and robots.
Human-computer interaction.
Play With Your Food
by Saxton Freymann & Joost Elffers
My Work at IBM
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Joshua Blue – a computer simulation of
mind, guided by motivation and emotion.
“Everywhere displays” that project computer
images onto objects in the world.
The Glass Engine -- for searching a music
catalog based on subjective qualities of the
pieces.
More Applied Work at IBM
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Museum kiosks that teach people how to
look at art by comparing artists’ styles.
Computer generation and recognition of
affect in a person’s speech – to make speech
sound more natural.
Peer-tutor (with Roz Picard at MIT) –
recognition of user frustration using a camera
mounted on top of the computer.
MIT Learning Companion
Pupil Detection Using the IBM BlueEyes Camera
Kapoor, Mota & Picard (2001). Towards a Learning Companion that Recognizes
Affect, AAAI Fall Symposium 2001, North Falmouth, MA
Relational Agents
Tim Bickmore has
developed a virtual
agent that acts as an
exercise coach to
encourage physical
training. Here he is
shown talking with Rea,
a virtual real estate
agent.
Sensing Driver Affect
Detecting Driver Stress – MIT Media Lab
Healey & Picard (2000). Smart Car: Detecting Driver Stress. Proceedings of the
15th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Barcelona, Spain.
Kismet
Cynthia
Breazeal (MIT)
and her sociable
robot – affect
motivates and
guides social
learning.
Breazeal, C. (2002). Designing Sociable Machines,
MIT Press
CMU’s OZ Project (Bates/Reilly)
Otto & Iris
are animated
characters
that express
their own
feelings in
interactive
games
Zoesis Studios, http://www.ottoandiris.com/
Robot Improv
“Two robots perform a short play
based on an elementary acting
exercise…The actors decide on
their next action and line of
dialog based on their current
goals and emotional state and
the other actor's last actions.
There is no pre-determined
script, only sets of available
actions and dialog for the actors
to choose from. Each play is
improvised at run-time.”
Bruce, Knight & Nourbakhsh. Robot Improv: Using Drama to Create
Believable Agents. The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Navigating Environments
Rodrigo Ventura
and colleagues
have created
soccer-playing
robots that learn
to respond to
environmental
cues
Sadio, Tavares, Ventura & Custodio (2001). An
emotion-based agent architecture application with real
robots. AAAI Fall Symposium, N. Falmouth, MA.
Other Projects
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Social interactions in chat rooms:
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Privacy and trust on the web:
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Placement of a dot representing each participant
in a discussion shows who is central.
What encourages people to use the internet to
make purchases, how safe do they perceive it?
Biometrics – how can computers be used to
identify people in crowds or entry points, for
security purposes?
Training Needed
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M.S. in Experimental or Engineering
Psychology.
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Accessibility and usability studies
Market research
Ph.D. in Cognitive, Social or Experimental
Psychology.
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Research on human-computer interaction
Design of products
Careers in Industry
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IBM Research hires a lot of Ph.D.-level
psychologists in its think tank (so do Xerox,
Microsoft, Oracle, Disney, etc.)
Masters-level psychology jobs are abundant
in usability and accessibility testing.
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Find them through the trade conferences.
Careers in Academia
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People move freely between academia and
private industry and many projects are done
using teams located in both places.
Research and teaching jobs at universities
require a Ph.D.
Academia is more stable than industry and
offers more freedom of choice of projects and
interested students to help.
Good Grad Schools
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Local Ph.D. level:
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National Ph.D. level:
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UC Irvine, UCSD, UCLA
MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Cornell
University of Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, NYU
M.S. Level:
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University of Memphis
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces