180160 SE New Trends in Cognitive Science (2014W)

The main part of the seminar will be dedicated to hands‐on explorations of different ways of investigating naturalistic social interactions to reveal, describe, and appreciate more of the intricacies of social engagements, to develop research questions and gain insights inspired by this appreciation. There are two main techniques we will introduce to you and set you up with to run a small, self-contained hands on research project of your own, collaborating in small teams. (You are free to nominate and delve into alternative methodologies if interested.) (1) We will explore behavioral observation and closely engage with videos (also introducing some helpful video analysis tools), working on them together, including sample clips from our own research (e.g. looking at infant-caregiver-object interactions) and later on video material of interactions that you yourself can collect in your projects. (2) We will also get you started on working with our lightweight eye trackers and social eye tracking methods we are currently developing to making visible peoples' eye movements and documenting their social gaze coordination. All our trackers are based on affordable open source hardware and software [pupil‐labs.com] and are accessible at every level. Video analysis methods and eye tracking visualizations (and potentially alternative methodologies of interest) can also be combined if you are interested in all of them. For your team projects, you get to design, set up, and investigate activities you find interesting and we will support you in choosing and applying appropriate methods and tools to make sense of them.