Here’s some of the stuff I’ve been working on / thinking about recently:
Epistemic Action Understanding
Whereas some actions are aimed at changing the world, others are aimed at learning about it. For example, someone might press on a door to open it, or to determine whether it’s locked; someone might place their toe into a pool to enter it, or to gauge its temperature; someone might shake a container to shuffle its contents, or to figure out what’s inside. Building on this distinction, I recently introduced to the literature the notion of “epistemic action understanding” — the capacity and inclination to ascribe information-seeking goals to the behaviors of others on the basis of their observed body movements. You can read about this work in PNAS. I have completed follow-up work exploring (a) its broader consequences for action understanding, and (b) the development of this capacity in children. Stay tuned for more publications!
Constraints on Physical Reasoning
Humans have a remarkable ability to accurately predict the unfolding of physical scenes: We can tell in just a glance whether a stack of books will fall, or what direction a billiard ball might roll when struck head on with a cue ball. But not all physical scenes are made equal. In another project, I explore an understudied physical system — knots and tangles — to demonstrate surprising ‘failures’ of human physical reasoning. This work has consequences for larger-scale theories of physical scene understanding, and their relation to other judgments we make about objects and even people. You can read about this work in Open Mind.
Critical Vision Science
In what ways does Vision Science, as a knowledge production process, reflect and reify the social context that creates it? Whose interests does vision science serve, and how can we be cognizant of the ways in which vision science interacts with the various power dynamics present in society? You can learn more about this topic (and watch me give a talk on it!) by visiting the Critical Perspectives in Vision Science symposium website! There is also a manuscript in progress, which has been invited for submission to the Journal of Vision.
Sholei Croom 