Prof. I.J.E.I. van Rooij (Iris)

Our brains support many remarkable cognitive abilities. We can understand the unspoken intentions behind people’s utterances and actions; we can learn and teach new concepts and problem solving strategies by using analogies; we can form hypotheses to explain observations that we make, be it in science or in our everyday lives; we can learn about the structure of our physical world, our social world, and even our ‘inner world’; and we can use all these skills and knowledge to fine-tune our actions to the people we interact with and the circumstances that apply.

It’s intriguing that we can do all these things as effectively and efficiently as we do. How can this be? The abilities seem to require astronomical amounts of computational power and at present there are no artificial systems that can emulate these abilities. Yet, somehow, we manage to do these things. Understanding this feat lies at the heart of cognitive science research.

How can we improve our understanding of human cognitive abilities? How can we make artificial systems mimic them? I address these questions using a combination of conceptual, formal, computational, and experimental methods. Given the ever-growing relevance of cognitive science for society – for instance in education and human-robot interaction – it is of vital importance to advance our knowledge in this field.

• Perception, Action and Decision-making

• Computational Cognitive Science