menu: home -- (papers) -- cv.pdf -- teaching -- personal

Jonathan D. Nelson, Online Papers

Nelson, JD (in press). Naive optimality: Subjects' heuristics can be better motivated than experimenters' optimal models Behavioral and Brain Sciences.   (.pdf draft)

Nelson, JD (2008). Towards a rational theory of human information acquisition. In Oaksford, M & Chater, N (Eds.), The probabilistic mind: Prospects for rational models of cognition (pp. 143-163). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (pdf 340k)

Filimon, F; Nelson, JD; Hagler, DJ; Sereno, MI (2007). Human cortical representations for reaching: mirror neurons for execution, observation, and imagery. NeuroImage, 37(4), 1315-1328.   doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.06.008

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW (2007).   A probabilistic model of eye movements in concept formation.  Neurocomputing, 70, 2256-2272. (accepted pdf 430k)   doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2006.02.026

Nelson, JD (2005). Finding useful questions: on Bayesian diagnosticity, probability, impact and information gain.  Psychological Review, 112(4), 979-999.  (pdf 400k) (supplement 150k)

Nelson, JD (2005). Optimal Experimental Design as a Theory of Perceptual and Cognitive Information Acquisition. PhD dissertation, Cognitive Science Department, University of California, at San Diego. (pdf of chapter 1)

McKenzie, CRM; Nelson, JD (2003). What a speaker's choice of frame reveals: Reference points, frame selection, and framing effects.  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 10(3), 596-602.   (pdf 180k)

Movellan, JR; Nelson, JD (2001). Probabilistic functionalism: a unifying paradigm for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(4), 690-692.   (pdf 266k)   (ps 744k)

Nelson, JD; Tenenbaum, JB; Movellan, JR (2001). Active inference in concept learning. In J. D. Moore & K. Stenning (Eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 692-697. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.   (pdf 180k)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2001) Active inference in concept learning. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 13, 45-51.   (ps.gz 400k)

Published abstracts

Filimon, F., Nelson, J., & Sereno, M. (2007, May). Human fMRI of tactile spatial representations. Journal of Vision, 7(9):301, 301a, doi:10.1167/7.9.301.

Nelson, J. D., McKenzie, C., Cottrell, G., & Sejnowski, T. (2007, May). Towards a descriptive theory of value of information in categorization tasks: implications for theories of eye movement and information search. Journal of Vision, 7(9):960, 960a, doi:10.1167/7.9.960.

Nelson, J. D., & Cottrell, G. W. (2006, May). An optimal experimental design model of information acquisition on a classic concept learning task. Journal of Vision, 6(6):489, 489a, doi:10.1167/6.6.489.

Filimon, F., Nelson, J. D., & Sereno, M. I. (2006, May). Egocentric and allocentric reference frames for eye movements -- an fMRI study. Journal of Vision, 6(6):979, 979a, doi:10.1167/6.6.979.

Nelson, JD (2005, July). Intuitive experimental design: Toward a theory of questions' usefulness.   ASIC, Briancon, France.   (abstract)

Filimon, F., Nelson, J. D., & Sereno, M. I. (2005, May). Parietal cortex involvement in visually guided, non-visually guided, observed, and imagined reaching, compared to saccades. Journal of Vision, 5(8), 629a, http://journalofvision.org/5/8/629/, doi:10.1167/5.8.629. (abstract)

Nelson, JD (2004, August). Finding useful questions in a natural environment. Cognitive Science Society Conference, Chicago.  (.pdf 87k)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Movellan, JR; Sereno, MI (2004, May). Yarbus lives: a foveated exploration of saccadic eye movement. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 741 (abstract).    Vision Science Society conference, Sarasota, Florida. (.pdf poster 55 Mb) (example foveated data).   

Nelson, JD (2003, May). When the ideal observer meets the brain: A new approach to modeling saccadic eye movement. 10th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, UC Irvine. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2001, May). Inference by means of uncertainty. 8th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, Salk Institute. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2000, May). Concept induction in the presence of uncertainty. 7th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, University of Southern California. (abstract)

Other presentations

Nelson, JD (2005, June). Ideal ideal observers. Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Retreat, Salk Institute.   (abstract 5 mb)

Nelson, JD (2005). Late breaking results in intuitive experimental design. Psychology Dept., UCSD. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Filimon, F; Sejnowski, T (2005, Dec). Optimal experimental design models of naive human information acquisition. NIPS 2005, Whistler, Canada.   (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Movellan, JR (2004). Explaining eye movements during learning as an active sampling process. International Conference on Development and Learning, Oct, 2004. (.pdf 100k)

Nelson, JD (2004) Statistical principles and intuitive experimental design. Experimental Philosophy Lab, UCSD, Oct, 2004.  (abstract)