Recording
Speaker
Anne Collins
Bio
I am currently an associate professor at UC Berkeley in the psychology department, with an affiliation in the Helen Wills Neuroscience institute. This semester, I’m also a visiting scholar at the University of Bordeaux, France. I did my undergrad at Ecole Polytechnique in France in Maths and engineering, and my PhD at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, France. Then I was a postdoc at Brown university. I study human flexible learning and decision making using behavioral, computational and neuroscience methods.
Abstract
Reinforcement learning frameworks have contributed tremendously to our better understanding of learning processes in brain and behavior. However, this remarkable success obscures the reality of multiple underlying processes that support humans’ unique flexibility and adaptability. In this talk, I will show that not accounting for such underlying processes in computational cognitive modeling weakens the generalizability and interpretability of findings, with important consequences in neuroscience, developmental, clinical research. I will present multiple approaches to disentangle the multiple processes that support flexible learning, including episodic and working memory processes. This works highlights the importance of studying learning as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that relies on multiple separable but inter-dependent computational mechanisms. Insights from how the brain implements learning is essential to informing generalizable, interpretable cognitive modeling.