Core cognition and perception

I will be presenting a body of work developed over the last 10 years looking at the relationship between universal and likely innate forms of human knowledge which are active in pre-verbal infants ("core cognition") and mechanisms of adult visual perception. My work shows that core cognition doesn't simply disappear as we grow up and our concepts evolve, but instead that these building blocks of thought continue to play an active role into adulthood.

I consider this work to constitute what is essentially the first chapter of my scientific career. I will also talk briefly about what is coming for the second and third chapters: (2) Exciting new avenues of research examining core cognition from a cross-cultural perspective at the ENS, and the new School of Collective Intelligence at the UM6P in Ben Guerir Morocco (which I have been helping to create and where I will serve as scientific director) (3) New applied work looking at how deep seated cognitive biases influence collective behavior, and leveraging these insights to improve the functioning of groups (to be conducted with the UM6P, ENS, and a partner French company SCIAM here in Paris).