On August 28, SfN.sg kicked off the Cognitive Science, Psychology and AI seminar series with two talks from NUS Psychology Assistant Professors.

DongWon Oh spoke on implicit encoding of social trait perceptions, that is, the rapid interpretation of a face as friendly, hostile, trustworthy etc, which is consistent between and within individuals. He shared his work on dissecting the facial features that drive these rapid impressions and the brain and physiological responses underlying those impressions.

DongWon was followed by Colin Palmer who is similarly interested in social vision –  especially how we identify intentions from facial processing or biological motion. Colin discussed an interesting phenomenon of sensory adaptation of gaze direction which may have an impact on the perception of intent in social interactions.

The seminar room was filled, and both talks were followed by a lively discussion.