Host Institution:  The University of North Carolina at Greensboro {directions are below}

Date and Time:  9:00 AM - 5:30 PM, Saturday February 26, 2011

Room:  122 Bryan Hall

Parking:  At Walker Parking Deck, UNCG campus

Contact:  nccc@uncg.edu {email / all co-organizers}; 336-256-0010 {phone / Peter Delaney, co-organizer}

Keynote Speaker

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Mark McDaniel of Washington University in St. Louis will deliver this year's keynote address.  Dr. McDaniel is one of the leading memory researchers in the world whose published work has addressed issues as wide-ranging as basic memory processes in semantic priming and strategies that students can use to learn more in college courses.

He is the author of over 150 journal articles and 6 books, as well as numerous chapters.  More details can be found on his web site.  The abstract of his talk -- which may be of broad interest to educators and psychologists alike -- is reproduced in the program (see below).

Tentative Schedule of Events

(Click on the link to the right of the title to view the abstract for each talk.)

8:30 - 9:00:   Breakfast and Registration

9:00 - 9:25:  Selective directed forgetting [abstract]
                    Peter F. Delaney, Emily R. Waldum and Namrata Godbole
                    University of North Carolina at Greensboro

9:25 - 9:50:  Assessing symbol comprehension for teratogen warnings [abstract]
                    Christopher B. Mayhorn
                    North Carolina State University

9:50 - 10:15:  Applied cognitive psychology: Visual learning in the botany classroom [abstract]
                     Bruce K. Kirchoff
                     University of North Carolina at Greensboro

10:15 - 10:35:   Coffee Break

10:35 - 11:00:  Bias in number line estimation [abstract]
                       Dale J. Cohen and Daryn Blanc-Goldhammer
                       University of North Carolina Wilmington

11:00 - 12:00:  KEYNOTE ADDRESS

                   Individual differences in concept learning: Tendencies to focus on exemplars versus abstraction
                   Mark S. McDaniel
                   Washington University

Abstract:  An important part of classroom learning involves understanding general concepts derived from a set of exemplars. However, I suggest that not everyone approaches concept learning in the same way. Specifically, I propose that during training, some learners focus on acquiring the particular exemplars and responses associated with those exemplars, wheras other learners attempt to abstract underlying regularities. These latter people I term "abstractors." Whether a person focuses on exemplars or is an abstractor might be a relatively stable characteristic of different learners. I report laboratory experiments demonstrating that people who were a priori identified as abstractors (through a method called function-learning extrapolation profiling) were more likely to transfer their knowledge to new exemplars in several kinds of concept learning tasks. I also present a classroom study suggesting that these individual differences are related to course performance.

12:00 - 1:30:   Lunch Break and Poster Session

1:30 - 1:55:  Alzheimer’s disease and memory-monitoring anosognosia: Alzheimer’s patients show a monitoring deficit that is greater than their accuracy deficit [abstract]
                    Chad Dodson
                    University of Virginia

1:55 - 2:20:  Does executive attention mediate the relationship between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence?  [abstract]
                    Thomas S. Reddick
                    Georgia Institute of Technology

2:20 - 2:45:  Context effects on tempo preference for familiar songs [abstract]
                    Matthew A. Rashotte and Douglas Wedell
                    University of South Carolina

2:45 - 3:10:   Revisiting McGeoch and McDonald (1931): Similarity and retroactive interference 80 years later [abstract]
                    Nathan A. Foster and Lili Sahakyan
                    University of North Carolina at Greensboro

3:10 - 3:30:  Coffee Break

3:30 - 3:55:  The effect of color on cognitive performance: A first look at Mehta & Zhu (2009) [abstract]
                    Kenneth M. Steele
                    Appalachian State University

3:55 - 4:20:  Ironic effects of monitoring for misinformation in popular history films [abstract]
                    Sharda Umanath, Andrew C. Butler, and Elizabeth J. Marsh
                    Duke University

3:20 - 4:45:  Atypical performance on the Stroop color-word task among college undergraduates: Implications for reading proficiency and academic outcomes [abstract]
                    Sara C. Wrenn and Alan Goble
                    Bennett College

4:45 - 4:50:  Business Meeting

Pre-registration and Fee

The conference fee is $30, which you may pay with cash or check at the conference.  (UNCG will not allow us to accept credit cards, but there are ATMs in the Elliott University Center, which is next door to the Bryan building.)  The fee covers parking, breakfast, lunch, and drinks during the conference.

To allow us to order the food, we ask that you pre-register by February 18th by sending an email to nccc@uncg.edu with the following information:

1)  Your  name, as you would like it to appear on your name badge
2)  Your affiliation (if any), as you would like it to appear on your name badge
3)  Your lunch choice:
   A)  Chicken - roasted chicken with herbed havarti cheese, roasted red peppers, lettuce and tomato on a roll
   B)  Tuna Salad - with lettuce and tomato on croissant
   C)  Hummus - with alfalfa sprouts, lettuce and tomato on five-grain bread
   D)  Roast Beef - with provelone cheese, lettuce and tomato on a roll

The speaker's fees were covered by a generous contribution by the UNCG College of Arts and Sciences and the UNCG Department of Psychology.

Directions

From the East:  From I-40/85 West, take the NC-6 / East Lee Street exit.  Turn right on Aycock Street.  (Go slow in this part, because your next turn is easy to miss.  There is a traffic light, but it is usually green, so if you're moving too fast you'll miss the sign.)  Turn right into campus on Walker Street.  The Walker garage will be on your right.

From the West:  From I-40 East, take the Wendover Ave East exit. Follow Wendover to the exit for Market St. (3.5 miles). Turn right on Market St. and follow for less than 1 mile. Near the hospital, turn right on S Elam Street. Turn left on Walker Avenue (it's about five blocks; the houses will be replaced with restaurants and bars, and that's how you will know you are there.)  Follow Walker until you enter campus; the Walker garage will be on your right. 

Equipment for Speakers

We will have a PC available for speakers to load their talks on to, along with a projector for the screen.  We can make an overhead projector available upon request.  If you will be using a Macintosh computer, please bring your laptop and a "Maclink" so that we can attach it to the projector.

History of the NCCC

Courtesy of Slater Newman, we know that the first North Carolina Cognition Conference was held in 1972 at North Carolina State.  Since then, it has happened almost every year.  Starting in the 1980s, the conference began to invite a keynote speaker on an irregular basis, and since 1993, there has been a keynote speaker every year. 

The list of keynote speakers includes some of the best-known cognitive psychologists in the world.  The "official" NCCC speakers were Eugene Winograd (1978), Thomas Landauer (1979), Lynn Hasher (1984 and 2005), Henry Roediger (1989), Herbert Simon (1990), Reed Hunt (1993), Thomas Carr (1994), Kenneth Paap (1995), Tom Nelson (1996), Robyn Fivush (1997), Daniel Schacter (1998), Marcia Johnson (1999), Michael Posner (2000), Colin MacLeod (2001), Steven Sloman (also 2001), Elliot Hirshman (2002), Lawrence Barsalou (2003), Hal Pashler (2004), Michael Anderson (2006), Neal Cohen (2007), Christopher Hertzog (2008), Jim Nairne (2009), and Art Kramer (2010).