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Kris De Meyer

King's College London, Centre for Neuroimaging, Post-Doc

King's College London, Informatics, Post-Doc

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Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)

University College Cork

Macquarie University

Kansas State University

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

University of Alberta

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

University of Copenhagen

Vittorio Gallese

Università degli Studi di Parma (Italy)

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

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Papers by Kris De Meyer

An Impotant Contribution to Making Climate Change Risk Representations Intuitively Evaluable

This article points to an important improvement that can be made to the representation of risks r... more This article points to an important improvement that can be made to the representation of risks related to climate change to ensure that risk assessment reports speak more clearly and directly to the concerns of policy makers. Below I will describe some additional psychological factors in support of the boiling frog's case, as well as give pointers for its successful implementation. An empirical imperative for testing alternative climate risk representations Studies in the psychology of risk have shown that its perception can be dramatically C1

The role of feedback in the determination of figure and ground: a combined behavioral and modeling study

Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processin... more Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processing. This study demonstrates how a familiarity bias, acquired only briefly before testing, can affect the subsequent segmentation of an otherwise ambiguous figure-ground array, in favor of perceiving the familiar shape as figure. The behavioral data are then replicated using a biologically plausible neural network model that employs feedback connections to implement the demonstrated familiarity bias.

The Justice Syndicate: using iPads to increase the intensity of participation, conduct agency and encourage flow in live interactive performance

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Jan 2, 2020

The Justice Syndicate is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who take on the role o... more The Justice Syndicate is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who take on the role of jurors considering a difficult case. Participants receive evidence, witness testimonies and prompts to vote and discuss the case on iPads. With this practice-as-research project we sought to explore what are the most effective means of inviting people to participate; how to widen their "horizon of participation"; how to increase the intensity of interaction in order to increase the level of "agentive behaviour" of the participants; and how to create a sense of flow in participants. We found that an effective solution to the fear of experiencing or causing embarrassment is for the invitation to participate to come from a machine and for there to be no distinction between "audience" and "participants." The use of machines to stimulate interaction in the absence of live performers also proved an effective way of stimulating a high intensity of "agentive behaviour" among audience members, although it did not automatically lead to a greater feeling of agency. Applying an adapted version of Lindinger and colleagues' (2013) codification of how to stimulate a state of flow in audience members also proved effective in creating a highly immersive experience.

A model of non-linear interactions between cortical top-down and horizontal connections explains the attentional gating of collinear facilitation

Vision Research, Mar 1, 2009

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Foundations of Stochastic Diffusion Search

Stochastic Diffusion Search (sds) was introduced by Bishop (1989a) as an algorithm to solve patte... more Stochastic Diffusion Search (sds) was introduced by Bishop (1989a) as an algorithm to solve pattern matching problems. It relies on many concurrent partial evaluations of candidate solutions by a population of agents and communication between those agents to locate the optimal match to a target pattern in a search space. In subsequent research, several variations on the original algorithmic formulation were proposed. It also became evident that its main principles-partial evaluation and communication between agents-can be employed to problems outside the pattern matching domain. The primary aim of this dissertation is to develop these expansive views further: sds is proposed as a metaheuristic, a generic heuristic procedure for solving problems through search. Furthermore, it is proposed as a challenge to the dominant metaphor in computer science: sequential computation. The thesis proceeds in a structured way by first considering all questions that can be asked about a heuristic procedure like sds: questions of a foundational nature, questions pertaining to mathematical analysis, questions about application domains and questions about physical implementation. It is to the foundational issues that most attention is devoted. Analogies with selective processes in natural and social systems are investigated, as well as analogies with other metaheuristic techniques from artificial intelligence. An attempt is made to categorise potential variants, and to establish what kind of problems sds would be the optimal problem-solving method for. The work aims to provide an expanded but structured understanding of sds, to give guidelines for future work, and to establish how progress in other scientific disciplines can be of use in the study of sds, and vice versa. Secondly, I would like to thank my parents for taking care of their "lost son" during the last half year; without their support, I would not have been able to concentrate fully on writing the thesis. A special thank-you goes to Piraba, who has kindly harboured me on many occasions, and to the many other friends that have invited me to their homes after I left Reading. Finally, there is the large number of friends that have made life in Reading a rewarding experience. In "chronological" order: Anne and Esther; Thomas;

Multiplicative Gain Modulation Arises Through Unsupervised Learning in a Predictive Coding Model of Cortical Function

Neural Computation, Jun 1, 2011

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Unsupervised Learning of Overlapping Image Components Using Divisive Input Modulation

Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2009

This paper demonstrates that nonnegative matrix factorisation is mathematically related to a clas... more This paper demonstrates that nonnegative matrix factorisation is mathematically related to a class of neural networks that employ negative feedback as a mechanism of competition. This observation inspires a novel learning algorithm which we call Divisive Input Modulation (DIM). The proposed algorithm provides a mathematically simple and computationally efficient method for the unsupervised learning of image components, even in conditions where these elementary features overlap considerably. To test the proposed algorithm, a novel artificial task is introduced which is similar to the frequently-used bars problem but employs squares rather than bars to increase the degree of overlap between components. Using this task, we investigate how the proposed method performs on the parsing of artificial images composed of overlapping features, given the correct representation of the individual components; and secondly, we investigate how well it can learn the elementary components from artificial training images. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with its predecessors including variations on these algorithms that have produced state-of-the-art performance on the bars problem. The proposed algorithm is more successful than its predecessors in dealing with overlap and occlusion in the artificial task that has been used to assess performance.

Communicating climate risk: a handbook

/Vitality Creative Studio About the UCL Climate Action Unit The UCL Climate Action Unit works to ... more /Vitality Creative Studio About the UCL Climate Action Unit The UCL Climate Action Unit works to change how scientists, policymakers, businesses, media, civil society organisations and citizens engage with each other about climate change. Its approach is underpinned by a systems-based understanding of why organisations and individuals are not acting at the scale and pace needed-and how this can be resolved. About the COP26 Universities Network This report is published by the COP26 Universities Network: a growing group of over 80 UK universities and research centres working together to promote a zero carbon, resilient future. Its role is to ensure that the UK academic sector plays its role in delivering a successful COP26.

Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered: Report of the UCL Policy Commission on Communicating Climate Science, 2014

The UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science, chaired by Professor Chris Rap... more The UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science, chaired by Professor Chris Rapley comprises a cross-disciplinary project group of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, science and technology studies, earth sciences and energy research. The Commission examined the challenges faced in communicating climate science effectively to policy-makers and the public, and the role of climate scientists in communication. / The Commission explored the role of climate scientists in contributing to public and policy discourse and decision-making on climate change, including how highly complex scientific research which deals with high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability can be effectively engaged with public and policy dialogue. The Commission also examined the insights that scientific research and professional practice provide into how people process and assimilate information and how such knowledge offers pathways for climate scientists to achieve more effective enga...

Stochastic diffusion optimisation: the application of partial function evaluation and stochastic recruitment in swarm intelligence optimisation

The concept of partial evaluation of ¯tness functions, together with mechanisms manipulating the ... more The concept of partial evaluation of ¯tness functions, together with mechanisms manipulating the resource allocation of population based search methods, are presented in the context of Stochastic Diffusion Search, a novel swarm intelligence metaheuristic that has many similarities with ant and evolutionary algorithms. It is demonstrated that the stochastic process ensuing from these algorithmic concepts has properties that allow the algorithm to optimise noisy fitness functions, to track moving optima, and to redistribute the population after quantitative changes in the fitness function. Empirical results are used to validate theoretical arguments.

If not WG1, then who is qualified to interpret the uncertainty?

If not WG1, then who is qualified to interpret the uncertainty?

A new perspective on decarbonising the global energy system. Full report at www.energychallenge.info/report

An analysis of historical cost trends of energy technologies shows that the decades-long increase... more An analysis of historical cost trends of energy technologies shows that the decades-long increase in the deployment of renewable energy technologies has consistently coincided with steep declines in their costs. For example, the cost of solar photovoltaics has declined by three orders of magnitude over the last 50 years. Similar trends are to be found with wind, energy storage, and electrolysers (hydrogen-based energy). Such declines are set to continue and will take several of these renewable technologies well below the cost base for current fossil fuel energy generation. Most major climate mitigation models produced for the IPCC and the International Energy Agency have continually underestimated such trends despite their being quite consistent and predictable. By incorporating such trends into a simple, transparent energy system model we produce new climate mitigation scenarios that provide a contrasting perspective to those of the standard models. These new scenarios provide an opportunity to shift the common narrative that a Paris-compliant emissions pathway will be expensive, will require reduced energy services or economic growth, and will need to rely on technologies that are currently expensive or unproven as scale. This research provides encouraging evidence for governments that are looking for greater ambition on decarbonising their economies while providing economic growth opportunities and affordable energy

Understanding Engagement, Marketing, and Motivation to Benefit Recruitment and Retention in Citizen Science

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2022

Climate science reconsidered

Nature Climate Change, 2014

There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society... more There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society. Closing this gap represents a necessary but insufficient step towards improved public discourse and more constructive policy formulation on climate change. How should climate scientists balance their efforts between investigating the climate system and engaging with policy-makers and the public? When engaging, should they merely aim to inform policy, or should they advocate specific actions? In a newly published study 1 we argue that these questions are unresolved, and that there is a gap between the role of the climate science community and the needs of society. The implications of climate science merit widespread constructive and thoughtful discussion. Yet the public discourse is commonly fraught with contention, and climate scientists often find themselves on the receiving end of emotionally-charged reactions to their work. To turn this situation around, we encourage the community to reconsider its professional practices, skills and norms, and to adjust its training and development activities accordingly.

Developing Better Climate Mitigation Policies: Challenging current climate change risk assessment approaches UCL POLICY COMMISSION ON COMMUNICATING CLIMATE SCIENCE

Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate poli... more Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate policy. The UCL Policy Commission for Communicating Climate Science brought together 30 policy makers, climate scientists and research funders in a workshop to explore how climate change risk assessments can be made more effective drivers of climate change mitigation policy. The Report summarises the outcomes of the event including barriers and opportunities for progress.

The Justice Syndicate: how interactive theatre provides a window into jury decision making and the public understanding of law

Law and Humanities, 2020

The Justice Syndicate (TJS) is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who become juror... more The Justice Syndicate (TJS) is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who become jurors considering a difficult case. Via iPads, participants receive evidence, witness testimonies and prompts to vote and discuss the case. We compare TJS to other theatre performances in which audiences are juries, arguing it is unique in only having twelve audience members, with no additional spectators. We compare TJS to experiments researching jury decision-making. In its novel use of technology, it offers a scalable method to research group decision-making in jury-style settings, or to give legal practitioners and prospective jurors an experience of the psychological factors affecting jury deliberation. We discuss how different juries can be presented with identical evidence and come to opposing verdicts. We argue that these wildly different outcomes are linked to how the participants – individually and as a group – resolve the tension between what is legal and what is just.

Enhancing physical geography schools outreach: Insights from co-production and storytelling narratives

Global environmental change is one of the most pressing issues facing future generations. Equippi... more

Time for change?:climate science reconsidered

Sound II, installed in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral. Photography by Joe Low Urgent and unpre... more Sound II, installed in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral. Photography by Joe Low Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract. This contract represents a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding. The new and unmet needs of society include more comprehensive information, understanding, and technologies for society to move towards a more sustainable biosphere-one which is ecologically sound, economically feasible, and socially just. New research, faster and more effective transmission of new and existing knowledge to policy-and decision-makers, and better communication of this knowledge to the public will all be required to meet this challenge.

The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling Study - eScholarship

The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling ... more The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling Study Lawrence A. Watling ([email protected]) Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London, U.K. Michael W. Spratling ([email protected]) Division of Engineering, King's College London, U.K. Kris De Meyer (kris.de_meyer@ kcl.ac.uk) Division of Engineering, King's College London, U.K. Mark H. Johnson ([email protected]) Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London, U.K. Abstract Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processing. This study demonstrates how a familiarity bias, acquired only briefly before testing, can affect the subsequent segmentation of an otherwise ambiguous figure-ground array, in favor of perceiving the familiar shape as figure. The behavioral data are then replicated using a biologically plausible...

An Impotant Contribution to Making Climate Change Risk Representations Intuitively Evaluable

This article points to an important improvement that can be made to the representation of risks r... more This article points to an important improvement that can be made to the representation of risks related to climate change to ensure that risk assessment reports speak more clearly and directly to the concerns of policy makers. Below I will describe some additional psychological factors in support of the boiling frog's case, as well as give pointers for its successful implementation. An empirical imperative for testing alternative climate risk representations Studies in the psychology of risk have shown that its perception can be dramatically C1

The role of feedback in the determination of figure and ground: a combined behavioral and modeling study

Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processin... more Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processing. This study demonstrates how a familiarity bias, acquired only briefly before testing, can affect the subsequent segmentation of an otherwise ambiguous figure-ground array, in favor of perceiving the familiar shape as figure. The behavioral data are then replicated using a biologically plausible neural network model that employs feedback connections to implement the demonstrated familiarity bias.

The Justice Syndicate: using iPads to increase the intensity of participation, conduct agency and encourage flow in live interactive performance

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Jan 2, 2020

The Justice Syndicate is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who take on the role o... more The Justice Syndicate is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who take on the role of jurors considering a difficult case. Participants receive evidence, witness testimonies and prompts to vote and discuss the case on iPads. With this practice-as-research project we sought to explore what are the most effective means of inviting people to participate; how to widen their "horizon of participation"; how to increase the intensity of interaction in order to increase the level of "agentive behaviour" of the participants; and how to create a sense of flow in participants. We found that an effective solution to the fear of experiencing or causing embarrassment is for the invitation to participate to come from a machine and for there to be no distinction between "audience" and "participants." The use of machines to stimulate interaction in the absence of live performers also proved an effective way of stimulating a high intensity of "agentive behaviour" among audience members, although it did not automatically lead to a greater feeling of agency. Applying an adapted version of Lindinger and colleagues' (2013) codification of how to stimulate a state of flow in audience members also proved effective in creating a highly immersive experience.

A model of non-linear interactions between cortical top-down and horizontal connections explains the attentional gating of collinear facilitation

Vision Research, Mar 1, 2009

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Foundations of Stochastic Diffusion Search

Stochastic Diffusion Search (sds) was introduced by Bishop (1989a) as an algorithm to solve patte... more Stochastic Diffusion Search (sds) was introduced by Bishop (1989a) as an algorithm to solve pattern matching problems. It relies on many concurrent partial evaluations of candidate solutions by a population of agents and communication between those agents to locate the optimal match to a target pattern in a search space. In subsequent research, several variations on the original algorithmic formulation were proposed. It also became evident that its main principles-partial evaluation and communication between agents-can be employed to problems outside the pattern matching domain. The primary aim of this dissertation is to develop these expansive views further: sds is proposed as a metaheuristic, a generic heuristic procedure for solving problems through search. Furthermore, it is proposed as a challenge to the dominant metaphor in computer science: sequential computation. The thesis proceeds in a structured way by first considering all questions that can be asked about a heuristic procedure like sds: questions of a foundational nature, questions pertaining to mathematical analysis, questions about application domains and questions about physical implementation. It is to the foundational issues that most attention is devoted. Analogies with selective processes in natural and social systems are investigated, as well as analogies with other metaheuristic techniques from artificial intelligence. An attempt is made to categorise potential variants, and to establish what kind of problems sds would be the optimal problem-solving method for. The work aims to provide an expanded but structured understanding of sds, to give guidelines for future work, and to establish how progress in other scientific disciplines can be of use in the study of sds, and vice versa. Secondly, I would like to thank my parents for taking care of their "lost son" during the last half year; without their support, I would not have been able to concentrate fully on writing the thesis. A special thank-you goes to Piraba, who has kindly harboured me on many occasions, and to the many other friends that have invited me to their homes after I left Reading. Finally, there is the large number of friends that have made life in Reading a rewarding experience. In "chronological" order: Anne and Esther; Thomas;

Multiplicative Gain Modulation Arises Through Unsupervised Learning in a Predictive Coding Model of Cortical Function

Neural Computation, Jun 1, 2011

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Unsupervised Learning of Overlapping Image Components Using Divisive Input Modulation

Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2009

This paper demonstrates that nonnegative matrix factorisation is mathematically related to a clas... more This paper demonstrates that nonnegative matrix factorisation is mathematically related to a class of neural networks that employ negative feedback as a mechanism of competition. This observation inspires a novel learning algorithm which we call Divisive Input Modulation (DIM). The proposed algorithm provides a mathematically simple and computationally efficient method for the unsupervised learning of image components, even in conditions where these elementary features overlap considerably. To test the proposed algorithm, a novel artificial task is introduced which is similar to the frequently-used bars problem but employs squares rather than bars to increase the degree of overlap between components. Using this task, we investigate how the proposed method performs on the parsing of artificial images composed of overlapping features, given the correct representation of the individual components; and secondly, we investigate how well it can learn the elementary components from artificial training images. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with its predecessors including variations on these algorithms that have produced state-of-the-art performance on the bars problem. The proposed algorithm is more successful than its predecessors in dealing with overlap and occlusion in the artificial task that has been used to assess performance.

Communicating climate risk: a handbook

/Vitality Creative Studio About the UCL Climate Action Unit The UCL Climate Action Unit works to ... more /Vitality Creative Studio About the UCL Climate Action Unit The UCL Climate Action Unit works to change how scientists, policymakers, businesses, media, civil society organisations and citizens engage with each other about climate change. Its approach is underpinned by a systems-based understanding of why organisations and individuals are not acting at the scale and pace needed-and how this can be resolved. About the COP26 Universities Network This report is published by the COP26 Universities Network: a growing group of over 80 UK universities and research centres working together to promote a zero carbon, resilient future. Its role is to ensure that the UK academic sector plays its role in delivering a successful COP26.

Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered: Report of the UCL Policy Commission on Communicating Climate Science, 2014

The UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science, chaired by Professor Chris Rap... more The UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science, chaired by Professor Chris Rapley comprises a cross-disciplinary project group of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, science and technology studies, earth sciences and energy research. The Commission examined the challenges faced in communicating climate science effectively to policy-makers and the public, and the role of climate scientists in communication. / The Commission explored the role of climate scientists in contributing to public and policy discourse and decision-making on climate change, including how highly complex scientific research which deals with high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability can be effectively engaged with public and policy dialogue. The Commission also examined the insights that scientific research and professional practice provide into how people process and assimilate information and how such knowledge offers pathways for climate scientists to achieve more effective enga...

Stochastic diffusion optimisation: the application of partial function evaluation and stochastic recruitment in swarm intelligence optimisation

The concept of partial evaluation of ¯tness functions, together with mechanisms manipulating the ... more The concept of partial evaluation of ¯tness functions, together with mechanisms manipulating the resource allocation of population based search methods, are presented in the context of Stochastic Diffusion Search, a novel swarm intelligence metaheuristic that has many similarities with ant and evolutionary algorithms. It is demonstrated that the stochastic process ensuing from these algorithmic concepts has properties that allow the algorithm to optimise noisy fitness functions, to track moving optima, and to redistribute the population after quantitative changes in the fitness function. Empirical results are used to validate theoretical arguments.

If not WG1, then who is qualified to interpret the uncertainty?

If not WG1, then who is qualified to interpret the uncertainty?

A new perspective on decarbonising the global energy system. Full report at www.energychallenge.info/report

An analysis of historical cost trends of energy technologies shows that the decades-long increase... more An analysis of historical cost trends of energy technologies shows that the decades-long increase in the deployment of renewable energy technologies has consistently coincided with steep declines in their costs. For example, the cost of solar photovoltaics has declined by three orders of magnitude over the last 50 years. Similar trends are to be found with wind, energy storage, and electrolysers (hydrogen-based energy). Such declines are set to continue and will take several of these renewable technologies well below the cost base for current fossil fuel energy generation. Most major climate mitigation models produced for the IPCC and the International Energy Agency have continually underestimated such trends despite their being quite consistent and predictable. By incorporating such trends into a simple, transparent energy system model we produce new climate mitigation scenarios that provide a contrasting perspective to those of the standard models. These new scenarios provide an opportunity to shift the common narrative that a Paris-compliant emissions pathway will be expensive, will require reduced energy services or economic growth, and will need to rely on technologies that are currently expensive or unproven as scale. This research provides encouraging evidence for governments that are looking for greater ambition on decarbonising their economies while providing economic growth opportunities and affordable energy

Understanding Engagement, Marketing, and Motivation to Benefit Recruitment and Retention in Citizen Science

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2022

Climate science reconsidered

Nature Climate Change, 2014

There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society... more There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society. Closing this gap represents a necessary but insufficient step towards improved public discourse and more constructive policy formulation on climate change. How should climate scientists balance their efforts between investigating the climate system and engaging with policy-makers and the public? When engaging, should they merely aim to inform policy, or should they advocate specific actions? In a newly published study 1 we argue that these questions are unresolved, and that there is a gap between the role of the climate science community and the needs of society. The implications of climate science merit widespread constructive and thoughtful discussion. Yet the public discourse is commonly fraught with contention, and climate scientists often find themselves on the receiving end of emotionally-charged reactions to their work. To turn this situation around, we encourage the community to reconsider its professional practices, skills and norms, and to adjust its training and development activities accordingly.

Developing Better Climate Mitigation Policies: Challenging current climate change risk assessment approaches UCL POLICY COMMISSION ON COMMUNICATING CLIMATE SCIENCE

Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate poli... more Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate policy. The UCL Policy Commission for Communicating Climate Science brought together 30 policy makers, climate scientists and research funders in a workshop to explore how climate change risk assessments can be made more effective drivers of climate change mitigation policy. The Report summarises the outcomes of the event including barriers and opportunities for progress.

The Justice Syndicate: how interactive theatre provides a window into jury decision making and the public understanding of law

Law and Humanities, 2020

The Justice Syndicate (TJS) is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who become juror... more The Justice Syndicate (TJS) is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who become jurors considering a difficult case. Via iPads, participants receive evidence, witness testimonies and prompts to vote and discuss the case. We compare TJS to other theatre performances in which audiences are juries, arguing it is unique in only having twelve audience members, with no additional spectators. We compare TJS to experiments researching jury decision-making. In its novel use of technology, it offers a scalable method to research group decision-making in jury-style settings, or to give legal practitioners and prospective jurors an experience of the psychological factors affecting jury deliberation. We discuss how different juries can be presented with identical evidence and come to opposing verdicts. We argue that these wildly different outcomes are linked to how the participants – individually and as a group – resolve the tension between what is legal and what is just.

Enhancing physical geography schools outreach: Insights from co-production and storytelling narratives

Global environmental change is one of the most pressing issues facing future generations. Equippi... more

Time for change?:climate science reconsidered

Sound II, installed in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral. Photography by Joe Low Urgent and unpre... more Sound II, installed in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral. Photography by Joe Low Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract. This contract represents a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding. The new and unmet needs of society include more comprehensive information, understanding, and technologies for society to move towards a more sustainable biosphere-one which is ecologically sound, economically feasible, and socially just. New research, faster and more effective transmission of new and existing knowledge to policy-and decision-makers, and better communication of this knowledge to the public will all be required to meet this challenge.

The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling Study - eScholarship

The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling ... more The Role of Feedback in the Determination of Figure and Ground: A Combined Behavioral & Modeling Study Lawrence A. Watling ([email protected]) Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London, U.K. Michael W. Spratling ([email protected]) Division of Engineering, King's College London, U.K. Kris De Meyer (kris.de_meyer@ kcl.ac.uk) Division of Engineering, King's College London, U.K. Mark H. Johnson ([email protected]) Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, London, U.K. Abstract Object knowledge can exert on important influence on even the earliest stages of visual processing. This study demonstrates how a familiarity bias, acquired only briefly before testing, can affect the subsequent segmentation of an otherwise ambiguous figure-ground array, in favor of perceiving the familiar shape as figure. The behavioral data are then replicated using a biologically plausible...

Developing Better Climate Mitigation Policies: Challenging current climate change risk assessment approaches UCL POLICY COMMISSION ON COMMUNICATING CLIMATE SCIENCE

by Kris De Meyer and Chris G Rapley

Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate poli... more Climate change risk assessments act as a bridge between climate science research and climate policy. The UCL Policy Commission for Communicating Climate Science brought together 30 policy makers, climate scientists and research funders in a workshop to explore how climate change risk assessments can be made more effective drivers of climate change mitigation policy. The Report summarises the outcomes of the event including barriers and opportunities for progress.

Right Between Your Ears - Documentary

A documentary about cognitive dissonance. Watch on http://rightbetween.com

Sustainability, "Us", and "Them"

Sustainability: new questions, new answers. Ed Rosie Robison, Chapter 6, pp35-38, Nov 2015

As a neuroscientist, I study how our brains impose order and meaning on the information coming fr... more As a neuroscientist, I study how our brains impose order and meaning on the information coming from the world around us. As a citizen, I follow important public debates and have become puzzled by how people can look at the same events and come to hold radically different views, which then lead them to denigrate those who disagree with them. Over time, these two interests have come together, and I now look at societal disagreements about important issues from the perspective of how our brains and minds work. As an example of such societal disagreement, the public debate about sustainability and climate change has become fractious and polarised. At either end of the spectrum of public opinion are groups of people with strongly-held convictions about the reality of climate change, what its impact will be, and what we should do about it. Because of such deep disagreements, people often feel distrust about the motivations of those on the 'other side', which reinforces the negative tone of the debate. As several other articles in this book attest to, this is not the only problem for how we engage with issues of sustainability. But in this article I will explore a particular question that follows from my research work: can scientific insights into how we come to hold convictions and judge other people help us deal more constructively with fundamental disagreements about sustainability?

Climate Science Reconsidered

by Kris De Meyer and Chris G Rapley

There is a gap between the current role of the climate science community and the needs of society... more

Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered.

by Kris De Meyer and Chris G Rapley

Final Report of the UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science