Plenary Presentation

 

Dr. David E. Meyer

(University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

 

Mind, Mathematics, and Machines: 
Symbolic Computational Modeling of Human Cognition and Action Based on Executive-Process Interactive Control

 

Prof. David E. Meyer received his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan and subsequently worked for several years in the Human Information Processing Research Department at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan. He is a fellow in the Society of Experimental Psychologists, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. The APA has recently honored Prof. Meyer with its Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. His empirical and theoretical research -- sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and Office of Naval Research -- have dealt with fundamental aspects of human perception, attention, learning, memory, language, movement control, reaction time, personality and cognitive style, cognitive aging, cognitive neuroscience, human-computer interaction, executive mental control, multitasking, mathematical models, and computational models. Reports of these works have appeared in various books and journals such as Science, the Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, Memory & Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Memory and Language, etc., and volumes of the Attention and Performance symposium series. Prof. Meyer recently advanced a cognitive computational architecture called EPIC (Executive-Process Interactive Control) to explain and predict reaction times (RTs), response accuracy, and other measurable aspects of people's overt behavior across various domains where multiple tasks must be performed concurrently. Under the EPIC model, not only procedural cognition but also motor control and perceptual-motor interactions are able to be treated explicitly and parsimoniously in conjunction with formal hypotheses about supervisory executive cognitive processes and task-scheduling strategies.