Jay Wimsatt

The pursuit of laws, a centuries-old tradition in the physical sciences, is sometimes overlooked in psychology and the cognitive sciences. As a researcher, this is Dr. Wimsatt's primary interest and objective, and (like all scientists of the present day) he stands on the shoulders of giants. Ernst Weber, Gustav Fechner, Stanley Stevens, Roger Shepard, and others demonstrated decades ago that human cognitive phenomena can be effectively captured by simple mathematical expressions. By building upon these foundations, we can gradually progress, step-by-step, toward new laws (perhaps even for more complex cognitive processes), and a more rigorous, replicable discipline.

Much of Dr. Wimsatt's research has been in the domain of human categorization and concept formation. He is interested in understanding the fundamental processes by which the human brain (and, by extension, the human mind) interprets symmetries in the environment and represents concepts. Suppose, for example, you've entered a friend's home for the first time, and she gives you a tour. In the family room, you see an object, and immediately you identify it to be a lamp. This may seem like a mundane and simple thing, but it requires a remarkable cognitive capability. You've never seen this object before! You've never even seen its environmental context before! Yet, in a fraction of a second, you understand precisely what it is and how it's meant to be used. We take this ability to generalize for granted, but it is fundamental to our survival and, arguably, a key talent that helps to define our uniquely human intelligence. Seemingly, you possess some kind of mental representation (i.e., a concept) that indicates for you what a "lamp" is, and you are able to access and utilize that representation on a moment's notice. Dr. Wimsatt seeks to better understand human generalization and conceptual representation -- what is the representation and how is it formed?

Dr. Wimsatt is also interested in human perception, reasoning, and decision making phenomena as well as the mathematical and computational modeling of cognitive processes.