BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk// X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:ONE DAY MEETING - Emotions in an age of communication - SPEAKERS: Ross Anderson\, Bhismadev Chakrabarti\, Nicky Clayton\, David Good\, Mel S later\, Paul White - ORGANISERS: Peter Robinson and Alan Blackwell DISCUS SION SESSION : Simone Schnall DTSTART:20091207T090000Z DTEND:20091207T173000Z UID:TALK21440@talks.cam.ac.uk CONTACT:Beverley Larner DESCRIPTION:09.30 Introduction by Organisers ALAN BLACKWELL AND PETER ROBI NSON(University of Cambridge)\n\nAbstracts of the speaker sessions:\n\n09: 45 – 10.45 Darwin's emotions and the problem of expression- PAUL WHITE ( University of Cambridge)\n\nDarwin conducted research on emotions for over thirty years before the publication of /Descent of Man/ 1871)\, exploring the central role of sentiments and affections in the origin of human bein gs and the development of moral behaviour. In /The Expression of the Emoti ons in \nMan and Animals /(1872)\, Darwin argued that the outward manifest ations of emotions were vestiges of previously serviceable habits\, acquir ed by our animal ancestors. Yet in the course of making this argument\, Da rwinseems to empty expressions of any meaningful content. It has often bee n claimed that Darwin ignored or denied the communicative function of emot ions\, so that it has been left to Paul Ekman and other modern psychologis ts to rediscover the language of facial movement. In this paper\, I want t o examine this curious feature of Darwin's work by addressing the question \, 'what do emotions express?'\n\n\n11.15 – 12.00 Understanding emotion expressions in other people : Clues from brains\, genes\, and autism\nBHIS MADEV CHAKRABARTI (University of Reading)\n\nDarwin's seminal contribution to the systematic study of expressions of emotion laid the groundwork for the field of affective neuroscience\, which was not to be brought back to life until about a hundred years later. The development of real-time neur oimaging techniques in the last two decades\, adding to an existing body o f psychophysiological measures\, has vastly changed the nature of our inve stigations on how we perceive expressions of emotions in others. My talk s hall focus on some of this research\, in what we know from both neuroimagi ng as well as lesion patients\, about the neural basis of emotion percepti on. I will explore individual variations in the underlying neurobiology - why some of us are very quick to recognise others' emotions\, while others take longer. Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are extremely informative i n this line of investigation\, in that people with ASC often show some deg ree of impairment in processing emotion expressions. Finally\, I shall als o discuss some early results that are parsing the genetic factors that mig ht modulate how we perceive and respond to emotion expressions.\n\n\n12.00 – 12.45 What do jays know about other minds and other times? NICOLA CL AYTON (University of Cambridge)\n\nAs humans\, our thoughts are not 'stuck in time' because we can recall the past\, and plan for our future (Mental Time Travel). We can also reason about what others might be thinking (The ory of Mind). Many psychologists have argued that these two cognitive abil ities are unique to humans. However\, recent studies on food-caching jays challenge these assumptions. Western scrub-jays can remember the 'what-whe re-and-when' of previous caching episodes\, and use past experience when d eciding where to cache for the future. They also remember who was watching when they caches and go to great lengths to prevent these observers from stealing their caches\, by hiding most of them out of sight\, for example. When observed by potential pilferers at the time of caching\, experienced jays that have been thieves themselves\, take further protective action. Once the potential pilferers have left\, they move caches those birds have seen\, re-hiding them in new places. Naïve birds that had no thieving ex perience do not do so. By focusing on the counterstrategies of the cacher when previously observed by a potential pilferer\, these results raise the intriguing possibility that re-caching is based on a form of mental attri bution\, namely the simulation of another bird's viewpoint. Furthermore\, storers also keep track of which observer was watching when and take prote ctive action accordingly\, thus suggesting that they may also be aware of others' knowledge states.\n\n\n14.15 – 15.00 The generation of emotions in immersive virtual environments MEL SLATER (ICREA-University of Barcelon a)\n\nPeople tend to respond realistically to situations and events that t hey experience within immersive virtual reality (IVR). We will present a c onceptual framework that helps to understand the conditions under which th is occurs\, based on the idea that if the participant has the illusion of being in the virtual place\, and the illusion that what is occurring there is real\, then they will tend to respond as if it were real. We will pres ent several examples of interactions between human participants and virtua l characters in IVR that provide evidence of the generation of emotion tha t follows from responding realistically within an IVR.\n\n\n15.00 – 15.4 5 Amplification and attenuation of emotions on-line DAVID GOOD (University of Cambridge)\n\nOur understanding of the emotional state of other people in face to face\ncommunication is supported by very many cues from across most if not all sensory domains. Interacting with other people in any con text other than face to face reduces the range of cues either party has co ncerning the other's emotional state. Technologies as old as writing\, and more recently the telephone\, have varied both the range of cues availabl e and the timing of their presentation. Novel online environments and\ncom munication technologies have added to the variation in the number and type of cues available and their timing\, but unlike the telephone and writing \, have not been with us long enough for a mature culture of use\nto be es tablished. The reduction in the information available can lead to a dimini shed sense of our interlocutor's emotional state\, but in our efforts to c ompensate for this diminution we may well overinterpret it too. If either option forms the basis of the emotional content of our own response\, then there is an obvious potential for significant\nmisunderstanding. In the a bsence of co-presence\, particularly when using an asynchronous communicat ion environment\, the moderating effect of an interlocutor through the est ablishment of levels of empathy is also\nlost. In understanding these effe cts\, and in our speculations about the development of a culture of use\, it is important to recognise that emotional competence in interaction is n ot evenly distributed across all\nmembers of a society.\n\n\n16.15 – 17. 00 Evolution\, deception and terror ROSS ANDERSON(University of Cambridge) \n\nMost security engineering problems have a significant human component. Economics and\, increasingly\, psychology are important to understand ri sks and to come up with effective ways of dealing with them. Many security failures involve deception rather than purely technical attacks\; others involve protective measures that are hard to use\; and yet others exploit well-known biases in human behaviour\, such as the preference for a sure b enefit today at the cost of an uncertain burden tomorrow. The heuristics a nd biases tradition in behavioural economics can explain many of these. Pe rhaps the biggest problem\, however\, is terrorism. Why are modern societi es so prone to overreact? And what can be done about it? \n\n17:00 Discuss ion Session SIMONE SCHNALL (University of Cambridge) LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Builiding END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR