Cognitive Science

People routinely encounter familiar components from everyday life in new combinations, such as when a co-worker takes on a new role or a sentence uses a word in a new way.

We typically excel at interpreting these new experiences, but researchers do not yet understand the neurological basis of this phenomenon. How does the brain assemble new ideas from familiar parts?

Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced will be the top program represented this summer at the discipline’s premiere conference, Cognitive Science.

Graduate student Stephanie Huette knew she would face challenges at UC Merced.

The squeals, vowel-like sounds and growls made by infants are critical to the development of human language, according a recent paper coauthored by a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Merced.

When UC Merced first announced it would be sending students to the national political conventions through The Washington Center program, senior Chelsea Coe never expected she'd be one of the lucky two.

In an election year, as people are being machine-gunned with millions of dollars’ worth of political messages from all sorts of sources, it might be re-assuring (or distressing) to discover that even the more subtle aspects of language use can actually make a make a powerful and priceless difference on Election Day.

From burps to babbling, cognitive science Professor Anne S. Warlaumont studies how children develop their ability to verbally communicate in the first year of their lives.

From the caves of Belize to laboratories in Japan, UC Merced faculty members and students are abroad conducting research this summer across the globe.

Cognitive science Professor Teenie Matlock has been named the McClatchy Chair in Communications at the University of California, Merced. Matlock’s appointment marks the first time the UC’s newest campus has filled the McClatchy Chair.

http://youtu.be/AVZS22SFLVgGraduate student Alexandra Paxton finds opinionated students, puts them in a room together and tells them to argue about a hot-button issue.

Then she records what happens.

Paxton, who is earning her doctoral degree in cognitive science, studies interpersonal synchrony — the phenomenon of how people in a conversation subconsciously synchronize their movements, such as nodding or gesturing. Specifically, she is seeking to understand what happens to that synchrony when people are at odds.