In The News
Rutgers Symposium on Learning IV
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On Sunday, November 9th, We celebrated the influential career of Dr. Alan Leslie with a star studded lineup of invited speakers across disciplines. Click here for more details: Rutgers Symposium on Learning IV
Tracking Tiny Facial Movements Can Reveal Subtle Emotions in Autistic Individuals
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A Rutgers-led study examines how detecting microscopic facial movements, previously overlooked, are key to enhancing emotional recognition in autistic individuals. A study led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick researchers suggests that tiny facial movements too slight for the human eye to notice – could help scientists better understand social communication in people with autism. Published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, the study found that while individuals with autism express emotions like everyone else, their facial expressions may be too subtle for the human eye to detect. “Autistic individuals use the same basic facial movements to express emotions, but their intensity often falls outside the culturally familiar range that most people recognize,” said Elizabeth Torres, a psychology professor at the Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences. “This disconnect can lead to missed social cues, causing others to overlook or misinterpret their emotions.” 
RuCCS NTT Faculty Ryan Rhodes won 1st place in the CogSci Mind Challenge
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Dr. Ryan Rhodes is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He won 1st place 🥇 in the 2024 CogSci Mind Challenge hosted at the Cognitive Science
Society: https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-mind-challenge/. In this video, Dr. Ryan Rhodes narrates several processes related to memory in an entertaining and informative way. He leverages exciting audiovisuals to underscore his approachable teaching style and make his video, well, memorable! Each year, the CogSci Mind Challenge invites Cognitive Scientists to create a five-minute video addressing a key question within Cognitive Science for an audience of non-experts, particularly high school and early college students. The question for this competition was, “Why do our memories sometimes fade or fail?”
A special thanks to Prof. Shannon Bryant for agreeing to be the opening act for the presentation~!
Click here to learn more about his submission.
Professor Torres has published a new book by Elsevier Academic Press entitled, "Autism Autonomy: In Search of Our Human Dignity."
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Her book provides a new and unifying methodological framework and discusses machine learning and biometrics techniques to diagnose, characterize, and treat patterns of sensory motor control underlying autism symptoms. With the hope of improving basic research in these areas, this volume will allow readers to design better interventions and provide awareness of a number of new technologies used in the autism field. Wearable bio-sensing technologies, machine learning, and AI methods are all discussed regarding their applications to provide better self-awareness, interaction, diagnosis, and prognosis.
For more books written by Prof Torres, please visit:https://sensorymotorintegrationlab.com/books/
RuCCS Post Doctoral Associate, James Preston Lennon’s paper “Are Phenomenal Theories of Thought Chauvinistic? has been published in the American Philosophical Quarterly.
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Congratulations to James Preston Lennon, a RuCCS Post Doctoral Associate whose research paper, “Are Phenomenal Theories of Thought Chauvinistic? “ was published in a July 2024 issue of the American Philosophical Quarterly!
Read the paper here
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/apq/issue/61/3