University Calendar

RABL Speaker: Dr. Cynthia Moss, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University: The role of action in perception of the natural environment

Dr. Cynthia Moss, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University will give a talk titled: The role of action in perception of the natural environment.

As we move through the natural environment, our distance and direction to objects continuously change. How does movement influence perception of the surroundings? Decades of research on perception has measured performance of stationary subjects viewing visual stimuli, and far less is known about perception of freely moving animals that rely on auditory information to guide their actions in the physical world. My lecture will attempt to bridge this gap by considering the behavior of animals engaged in natural tasks in complex environments. I will present a variety of examples but will focus on echolocating bats, animals that produce high frequency sounds and process auditory information carried by returning echoes to guide behavioral decisions for object localization, target discrimination, and navigation. I will present research findings that demonstrate the remarkable spatial resolution of animal sonar, which exceeds that of human vision along some dimensions.

Location:	Warch Campus Cinema
Sponsor:	RABL - Biology
Contact:	Biology
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