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Dr.’s
Long and Toppino present a paper in Japan
Caitlin Collins ’05
The Fifth Tsukuba International Conference on Memory:
Dynamic Cognitive Processes, was held in Tsukuba Japan from March 13-15.
Dr. Thomas C. Toppino, chair of the Department of Psychology and his colleague
Dr Gerald Long, Dean of Graduate Studies, were invited to the conference
that was organized by Dr. Nobuo Ohta of the University of Tsukuba and
Dr. Colin MacLeod of the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Toppino and Long gave an invited address titled “Top-Down and Bottom-Up
Processes in the Perception of Reversible Figures” at the international
conference. Consisting of 14 invited speakers, the conference also had
several sessions of shorter papers and posters by other researchers. The
invited speakers were prominent researchers in the areas of perception,
memory and cognition from the United States, Canada, England, Japan and
Australia.
Toppino made the actual presentation of their co-authored work. Defining
reversible figures as ambiguous visual patterns that support at least
two markedly different perceptual organizations, Toppino and Long provide
evidence for the effects of both bottom-up and top-down processes in figure
reversal. In addition, they argue that a hybrid model involving kinds
of processes will be required to explain the observed fluctuations in
conscious perceptual experience. Among many of their other findings, at
the conference, Toppino presented evidence that the increase in reversal
rate is produced in part by fatigue and partly by learning. Toppino and
Long’s research set up a framework for future research that encourages
work that addresses the critical questions of how bottom-up and top-down
processes are coordinated and how their effects are integrated in determining
conscious perceptual experience.
Toppino and Long both attended the three day conference, which was delivered
in entirely in English. The presentations took place at Tsukuba International
Congress Center, in the center of Tsukuba Science City, the location of
many government and industrial research facilities and the University
of Tsukuba.
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