Emmanuel M. Pothos

Department of Psychology
Swansea University

BSc Imperial (1995) Physics
DPhil Oxford (1998) Experimental Psychology

Contact Details
Department of Psychology
University of Wales, Swansea
Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK

email: e.m.pothos@swansea.ac.uk

tel: 044 – (0) 1792 29 5712
fax: 044 – (0) 1792 29 5679

Using mathematics to understand cognition.

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Quantum mechanics: Can we use the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics to model cognition? Quantum logic and probability can be seen as generalizations of their classical counterparts. Psychologically, quantum probability provides a natural framework for understanding certain key behavioural phenomena (such as the violation of the sure thing principle or the conjunction fallacy) which are difficult to reconcile with classical approaches. See also here.

Minimum description length: ‘Simple explanations are usually the best.’ This straightforward idea can form a very powerful basis for modelling inductive inference in language, categorization, decision making, and learning.

Experimental psychology and neuroscience.

Categorization. Changes in perception as a result of learning. Rules and similarity. Learning processes. Attention. Decision making.

Applied psychology.

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Many kinds of appetitive behaviour are associated with corresponding attentional biases. Do such attentional biases have a causal role in enhancing the appetitive behaviour? A lot of our work is concerned with whether food-related or alcohol-related attentional biases can predict future changes in the corresponding behaviour.

Publications

(my CV can be found here)

1. Tapper, K. & Pothos, E. M. (in press). Development and validation of a food preoccupation questionnaire. Eating Behaviors.

2. Hahn, U., Prat-Sala, M., Pothos, E. M., & Brumby, D. (in press). Exemplar Similarity and Rule Application. Cognition.

3. Kosnes, L., Pothos, E. M., & Tapper, K. (in press). Increased affective influence: situational complexity or deliberation time? American Journal of Psychology.

4. Pothos, E. M. & Tapper, K. (2009). Inducing a Stroop effect. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 1-13.

5. Perlman, A., Pothos, E. M., Edwards, D. J., & Tzelgov, J. (in press). Task-relevant chunking in sequence learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

6. Pothos, E. M. & Wood, R. L. (2009). Separate influences in learning: evidence from artificial grammar learning with traumatic brain injury patients. Brain Research, 1275, 67-72.

7. Pothos, E. M., Tapper, K., & Calitri, R. (2009). Cognitive and behavioral correlates of BMI among male and female undergraduate students. Appetite, 52, 797-800.

8. Pothos, E. M. & Busemeyer, J. R. (2009). A quantum probability explanation for violations of 'rational' decision theory. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276, 2171-2178. pdf

9. Pothos, E. M. & Bailey, T. M. (2009). Predicting category intuitiveness with the rational model, the simplicity model, and the Generalized Context Model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1062-1080. pdf

10. Visser, I., Raijmakers, M. E. J., & Pothos, E. M. (2009). Individual strategies in artificial grammar learning. American Journal of Psychology, 122, 293-307. pdf

11. Pothos, E. M., Hahn, U., & Prat-Sala, M. (2009). Similarity chains in the transformational paradigm. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21, 1100-1120.

12. Pothos, E. M. (2008). Spontaneous categorization: A mechanism for the creation of (simple) concepts. Noisis, 3, 181-208. (in Greek).

13. Pothos, E. M., Calitri, R., Tapper, K., Brunstrom, J. M., & Rogers, P. J. (2008). Comparing measures of cognitive bias relating to eating behavior. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 1-17. pdf

14. Nikolopoulos, D. S. & Pothos, E. M. (in press). Dyslexic participants show intact spontaneous categorization processes. Dyslexia.

15. Tapper, K., Pothos, E. M., Fadardi, J. S., & Ziori, E. (2008). Restraint, disinhibition and food-related processing bias. Appetite, 51, 335-338. pdf

16. Brunstrom, J. M., Rogers, P. J., Pothos, E. M., Calitri, R., & Tapper, K. (2008). Estimating everyday portion size using a ‘method of constant stimuli’: In a student sample, portion size is predicted by gender, dietary behaviour, and hunger, but not BMI. Appetite, 51, 296-301. pdf

17. Pothos, E. M. & Close, J. (2008). One or two dimensions in spontaneous classification: A simplicity approach. Cognition, 107, 581-602. pdf

18. Bailey, T. M. & Pothos, E. M. (2008). AGL StimSelect: Software for automated selection of stimuli for Artificial Grammar Learning. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 164-176. pdf

19. Hatzidaki, A. & Pothos, E. M. (2008). Bilingual language representation and cognitive processes in translation. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 125-150. pdf

20. Pothos, E. M. (2007). Occam and Bayes in predicting category intuitiveness. Artificial Intelligence Review, 28, 257-274.

21. Hines, P., Pothos, E. M., & Chater, N. (2007). A non-parametric approach to simplicity clustering. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 21, 729-752. pdf

22. Pothos, E. M. (2007). Theories of Artificial Grammar Learning. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 227-244. pdf

23. Cox, W. M., Pothos, E. M., & Hosier, S. G. (2007). Cognitive-motivational predictors of excessive drinkers’ success in changing. Psychopharmacology, 192, 499-510. pdf

24. Pothos, E. M. & Juola, P. (2007). Characterizing linguistic structure with mutual information. British Journal of Psychology, 98, 291-304. pdf

25. Pothos, E. M. & Wolff, J. G. (2006). The Simplicity and Power model for inductive inference. Artificial Intelligence Review, 26, 211-225.

26. Cox, W. M., Fadardi, J. S., & Pothos, E. M. (2006). The addiction-Stroop test: Theoretical considerations and procedural recommendations. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 443-476. pdf

27. Pothos, E. M., Chater, N., & Ziori, E. (2006). Does stimulus appearance affect learning? The American Journal of Psychology, 119, 277-301. pdf

28. Pothos, E. M. (2005). Expectations about stimulus structure in implicit learning. Memory & Cognition, 33, 171-181. pdf

29. Pothos, E. M. & Chater, N. (2005). Unsupervised categorization and category learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58A, 733-752. pdf

30. Pothos, E. M. (2005). The rules versus similarity distinction. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 28, 1-49. (target article) pdf

31. Pothos, E. M., Chater, N., & Stewart, A. J. (2004). Information about the logical structure of a category affects generalization. British Journal of Psychology, 95, 371-386. pdf

32. Pothos, E. M. & Kirk, J. (2004). Investigating learning deficits associated with dyslexia. Dyslexia, 10, 61-76. pdf

33. Pothos, E. M., & Cox, W. M. (2002). Cognitive bias for alcohol-related information in inferential processes. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 66(3), 235-241. (Included in abstracts collection: Alcohol Research (2002), vol. 7, p. 222.) pdf

34. Pothos, E. M. & Chater, N. (2002). A simplicity principle in unsupervised human categorization. Cognitive Science, 26, 303-343. pdf

35. Cox, W. M., Pothos, E. M., Laberg, J., & Johnsen, B. (2001). Methodological issues attached to the alcohol Stroop paradigm: Comments on a paper by Sharma, Albery, and Cook (2001). Addiction, 96, 1261-1265. pdf

36. Leek, E. C. & Pothos, E. M. (2001). Open peer commentary. What is specific about category-specificity? Fractionating patterns of impairments and the spurious living/nonliving dichotomy. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 487-488.

37. Pothos, E. M. (2001). Open peer commentary. Context effects equally applicable in generalization and similarity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 699-700.

38. Pothos, E. M. & Juola, P. (2001). Open peer commentary. Linguistic structure and short term memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 138-139.

39. Cox, W. M., Pothos, E. M., & Bauer, D. (2000). More recommendations for the Stroop colour-naming task and addictive behaviours: A Reply to Faunce and Job. Addiction, 95, 1440-1442.

40. Pothos, E. M. & Bailey, T. M. (2000). The importance of similarity in artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 847-862. pdf

41. Pothos, E. M. & Hahn, U. (2000). So concepts aren't definitions, but do they have necessary *or* sufficient features? British Journal of Psychology, 91, 439-450. pdf

42. Pothos, E. M. & Ward, R. (2000). Symmetry, repetition, and figural goodness: an investigation of the weight of evidence theory. Cognition, 75, B65-B78. pdf

Tools

Journals

Students' area

Undergraduate students please click here to download the overheads for my categorization lectures in PTRII. Note this is a large file! (about 8 MB).

MSc students please click here to download the Generic Research skills description.