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Jonathan D. Nelson, Ph.D.

I study human cognition using a combination of behavioral experiments, eye tracking, brain imaging, and probabilistic modeling.

My current research foci:

-- relationship between intuitive beliefs and real world stochastic processes
-- statistical foundations of active visual perception: eye movements as hypothesis testing (eye movement experiments); relationship between salience (bottom-up) and task-relevant information (top-down) in visual attention
-- neural bases of the value of information for categorization (fMRI experiments)
-- use of optimal experimental design principles to design informative behavioral experiments, to characterize the intuitive value of information
-- communicative pragmatics of biases (base rate neglect, conservatism) in Bayesian inference
-- effective communication of probabilities using experienced-based learning and natural sampling
-- characterization of helpful and unhelpful strategies for teaching by examples
-- Bayesian modeling of learning on probabilistic and deterministic categorization tasks
-- development of information-search strategies in sequential tasks
-- (see my papers for more info)

Some current collaborators:

Some recent collaborators: