Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series Friday
MSUM Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series Presents:
What is Psychophysics?
Michael Mangini, Ph.D.
Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Department of Psychology, Concordia College, Moorhead
Friday, March 22, 2013
3-3:50 p.m.
118 Science Lab
What is the relationship between the physical world and the perceptions in our minds? Before Sigmund Freud was born, the founders of experimental psychology developed the theories and methods to investigate this relationship. Psychophysics strives to determine the quantitative functional relations between the bodily and mental, the physical and psychical world. In this talk I will provide a bit of history on this topic, present a few of the seminal findings in the field, and describe some of my research that aims at discovering how we categorize complex images like faces and how these methods can even give us a glimpse into the mind of non-human primates.