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Faculty of the Department |
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Mind/Brain/Behavior (MBB) Postdoctoral Fellow
Eric Mandelbaum |
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| Emerson 206 |
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| mandelbaum@fas.harvard.edu |
| http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~mandelbaum/ |
Eric Mandelbaum's research focuses on foundational issues in cognitive science, particularly on cognitive architecture, broadly construed. The overarching goal of his work is to understand the extent of interaction among the mind's faculties. Recent projects on this front include modeling central cognition as a fragmented and disconnected functional space. Toward this end, Eric researches belief acquisition, storage, and change, meshing empirical data with theoretical considerations in order to create the foundations of a psychofunctional theory of belief. Part of this project examines the structure of mental representations and mental transitions, particularly comparing theories of propositional and inferential transitions, on the one hand, and associative structures and transitions, on the other. He's recently been developing a framework for understanding associative transitions between propositionally structured states and applying it to such problems as understanding the underlying structure of implicit bias. Other recent projects include investigations of ambiguities in the 'mandatoriness' of perceptual processes, empirical work on causal perception and the automatic activation of causal concepts, and research on the connections between norm violations and anthropomorphization. His dissertation, which focused on models of belief acquisition, received both the Cognitive Science Society's Glushko Dissertation Prize and the Roger Shepard Award for best dissertation in cognitive science. Both are interdisciplinary awards for the best dissertation in cognitive science written in the last five years. Eric has also received the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Award, the UNC Society of Fellows Dissertation Fellowship, the ACLS New Faculty Fellowship, and Harvard University's Mind/Brain/Behavior Fellowship.
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