Professional Education


  • Master of Science, Ecole Normale Superieure (2011)
  • Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University (2017)
  • Bachelor of Arts, Stanford University, HUMBI-BAH (2009)

All Publications


  • Mid-level visual features underlie the high-level categorical organization of the ventral stream PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Long, B., Yu, C., Konkle, T. 2018; 115 (38): E9015–E9024

    Abstract

    Human object-selective cortex shows a large-scale organization characterized by the high-level properties of both animacy and object size. To what extent are these neural responses explained by primitive perceptual features that distinguish animals from objects and big objects from small objects? To address this question, we used a texture synthesis algorithm to create a class of stimuli-texforms-which preserve some mid-level texture and form information from objects while rendering them unrecognizable. We found that unrecognizable texforms were sufficient to elicit the large-scale organizations of object-selective cortex along the entire ventral pathway. Further, the structure in the neural patterns elicited by texforms was well predicted by curvature features and by intermediate layers of a deep convolutional neural network, supporting the mid-level nature of the representations. These results provide clear evidence that a substantial portion of ventral stream organization can be accounted for by coarse texture and form information without requiring explicit recognition of intact objects.

    View details for PubMedID 30171168

  • Data availability, reusability, and analytic reproducibility: evaluating the impact of a mandatory open data policy at the journal Cognition ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE Hardwicke, T. E., Mathur, M. B., MacDonald, K., Nilsonne, G., Banks, G. C., Kidwell, M. C., Mohr, A., Clayton, E., Yoon, E. J., Tessler, M., Lenne, R. L., Altman, S., Long, B., Frank, M. C. 2018; 5 (8)
  • Constructing agency: the role of language FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY Fausey, C. M., Long, B. L., Inamori, A., Boroditsky, L. 2010; 1

    Abstract

    Is agency a straightforward and universal feature of human experience? Or is the construction of agency (including attention to and memory for people involved in events) guided by patterns in culture? In this paper we focus on one aspect of cultural experience: patterns in language. We examined English and Japanese speakers' descriptions of intentional and accidental events. English and Japanese speakers described intentional events similarly, using mostly agentive language (e.g., "She broke the vase"). However, when it came to accidental events English speakers used more agentive language than did Japanese speakers. We then tested whether these different patterns found in language may also manifest in cross-cultural differences in attention and memory. Results from a non-linguistic memory task showed that English and Japanese speakers remembered the agents of intentional events equally well. However, English speakers remembered the agents of accidents better than did Japanese speakers, as predicted from patterns in language. Further, directly manipulating agency in language during another laboratory task changed people's eye-witness memory, confirming a possible causal role for language. Patterns in one's linguistic environment may promote and support how people instantiate agency in context.

    View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00162

    View details for Web of Science ID 000208849100059

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3153776