Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Psychology Office: FMS 341
Psychology Phone: 412-268-6284
Email: thomsonr@andrew.cmu.edu
Faculty Mentor: Christian Lebiere

Research Interests:

I am interested in the nature of representations and processes implicated in spatial reasoning and perception. Specific topics of interest include: spatial problem solving, encoding of size and distance relations, and the nature of mental imagery codes. In addition, I am also interested in the kinds of representations implicated in working memory processes, and am involved in projects on anthropomorphic reasoning heuristics and understanding the role of sub-lexical properties in list recall. At CMU I am currently working on the ICArUS-Minds project, with the long-term goal of implementing parietal functionality within ACT-R.

Teaching Interests:

I am interested in teaching courses in cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind. In 2010 I received a certificate in Graduate University Teaching Skills from Carleton University. I have taught the following courses as a Contract Instructor (at Carleton University) between 2007-2011:

Publications:

Thomson, R., & Lacroix, G. (2011). Examining the Role of Object Size in Judgments of Lateral Separation. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Schoenherr, J., Thomson, R., & Davies, J. (2011). What Makes an Explanation Believable: Mechanistic and Anthropomorphic Explanations of Natural Phenomena. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Thomson, R., & Davies, J. (2009). Distance Estimation as a Process of Generating Ad-Hoc Metrical Systems. In N Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2932-2937). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Schoenherr, J. R., & Thomson, R. (2009). Modelling the Category-Order Effect with an Oscillator-Based Connectionist Network. In N.A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 709-714). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Schoenherr, J. R. & Thomson, R. (2008). Category Properties and the Category-Order Effect. In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2183-2188). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

In Preparation:

Thomson, R., & Lacroix, G. Object Size Influences Judgments of Lateral Separation: The Influence of Size on Distance Perception.

Thomson, R. & Schoenherr, J. Using Syllogistic Reasoning Tasks to Investigate Anthropomorphism as a Heuristic in Decision-Making.

Schoenherr, J., Thomson, R., & Lacroix, G. Explanatory Schemata as Determinants of Performance in a Syllogistic Reasoning Task: The Influence of Living Ontologies on Decision-Making.

Schoenherr, J., & Thomson, R. Category-Order Effects in Supraspan Recall: The Role of Sub-Lexical Properties on Ordered List Recall.

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