joshua abbott
joshua.t.abbott@gmail.com  

      




me  |  papers

I am a computational cognitive scientist and data scientist. My research broadly focuses on how people learn and reason with concepts and categories, and how this knowledge is structured for useful inference. In particular, my work explores how interactions between inference and representation guide reasoning to enable efficient search and retrieval from semantic memory; to infer the appropriate level of generalization of meaning from few examples; and to help determine what makes something a good or bad member of a category.

My work combines approaches from machine learning and cognitive science, where sometimes I use methods from AI/ML to evaluate cognitive models and theories, and sometimes I use methods from cognitive science to improve the correspondence between AI/ML and cognitive models of generalization, and semantic representation.

I recently completed a Data Science Fellowship at The Data Incubator. I completed my PhD at UC Berkeley in Tom Griffiths' Computational Cognitive Science Lab, and postdocs at the Center for Adaptive Rationality in the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and at the Complex Human Data Hub in the University of Melbourne.


Academic Curriculum Vitae | Resume