Psychological Science and Society Plenary Session
Saturday, May 24, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Collective Cognition
Chair: APS President Randi C. Martin, Rice University
This panel brings together speakers carrying out novel research to address how group interaction influences cognitive processing, going beyond the typical approach of studying cognition through observing individuals acting alone.
Learning, memory, and decision-making often involve individuals working together such as in group projects in classroom environments or in workplace teams, and other everyday settings such as family, community, and social media where people influence one another. However, much research on these topics has focused on individuals working alone. This panel will present recent findings on the effects of group interaction including collaborative remembering, allocation of roles among team members, and the impact of artificial intelligence on teamwork. The speakers will address whether the findings can be derived from principles uncovered by individuals and how group members arrive at collective representations and joint action.
The Psychological Science and Society plenary session is made possible by generous support from the Alan Kraut-Jane Steinberg Family Fund (KSFF). This plenary session is held annually during the APS Annual Convention to showcase the use of psychological science in the public sphere.
Speaker: Nancy J. Cooke, Arizona State University
Dr. Nancy Cooke, Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, is a leader in the human factors field in examining individual and team cognition and its application to a variety of applied domains such as threat detection and emergency response systems. Her work includes investigation of the effects of teaming humans with AI agents, with ongoing projects on the coordination of human-AI teams in the face of unexpected events.
Speaker: Robert L. Goldstone, Indiana University Bloomington
Dr. Robert Goldstone, Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, has carried out innovative research using behavioral results and computational modeling which documents a self-organizing system for the division of cognitive labor in groups. The results assist in the understanding of how cognitive processes influence group dynamics with potential applications for improving cooperation in groups.
Speaker: Suparna Rajaram, Stony Brook University, The State University of New York
Dr. Suparna Rajaram, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University and past president of APS has been a leader in the development of research on collective remembering, in which individuals learn information and recall it together in groups. The research addresses the extent to which the principles of memory established from the study of individuals apply to group recall and the extent to which social influences affect memory, leading potentially to bias or cultural effects in group recollection.
Moderator: Angela Gutchess, Brandeis University
Dr. Angela Gutchess, Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University, has been a leader in initiating the examination of social and cultural influences on cognition.
