PhD-Defence
Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo will defend his dissertation: Spontaneous and Hierarchical segmentation of non-functional events
Oplysninger om arrangementet
Tidspunkt
Sted
Aarhus University, Auditorium 2, room 112, Building 1441.
Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo will be defending his dissertation:
Spontaneous and Hierarchical segmentation of non-functional events.
The defence will take place on wednesday June 27th 2012 at Aarhus University, Department of Culture and Society, Taasingegade 3, Auditorium 2, room 112, Building 1441.
Assesment committee:
- Professor, Dr.Phil. Armin Geertz (chairman), Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Professor, PhD Pascal Boyer, Department of Psycology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Professor, PhD Don Braxton, Department of Religious Studies, Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA, USA
Supervisor:
- Associate Professor, Dr.Phil. Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark
Co-supervisor:
- Associate professor, PhD Jesper Soerensen, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark ?
The defence will be conducted in English by Associate Professor, PhD Lene Kühle
A copy of the dissertation will be available for perusal prior to the defence at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Taasingegade 3, Building 1443.
Short summary:
Spontaneous and Hierarchical Segmentation of Non-funcional Events
The dissertation, Spontaneous and Hierarchical Segmentation of Non-functional Events, explores and tests human perception of so-called non-functional events (i.e., event or action sequences that lack a necessary link between sequence sub-actions and seqence goal). Non-functional events are typically embedded in or constitute ritual behavior in a range of cultural contexts. Since ritual behavior is one of the primary behavioral expressions of religious belief and practice, a substantial part of the dissertation is devoted to modeling if and how such contextual information and cultural priors can modulate human event perception. A dual approach is applied in the dissertation's empirical part, which combines behavioral experiments with computer simulations. The results indicate that non-functional events increase prediction error and attentional load, which lead to a saturation of working memory resources. Furthermore, unique contextual information associated with the non-functional events (e.g., religious beliefs) can modulate the magnitude of these effects, and stabilize the event segmentation system. Finally, the dissertation offers a mechanistic model of perception of non-functional events that can be generalized to the level of cultural ritual behavior.