成人大片

• Qualifications

  2009 Ph.D., Department of Psychology, McGill University, Advisor: Dr. A.G. Baker

  2001 B. Science, Department of Psychology, McGill University, Major in Psychology, Minor Concentration in German Studies

   

• Awards & Achievements

  2014-2017 Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, Australian Research Council, project title: "Associative learning and fluid intelligence: Computational and neurogenetic analyses"

  2010-2012 Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (held at the University of Cambridge).

  2010 New Investigator Award, American Psychological Association Division of Experimental Psychology, for "Human judgments of positive and negative causal chains." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 35, 153-168.

  2006-2009 Postgraduate Scholarship, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (held at McGill University).

  2005-2006 McGill Major Fellowship, McGill University.

   

• Research Interests

  I am interested in discovering plausible mechanisms by which the brain can infer and represent the relationship between causes and effects. To do so, I use computational models that are inspired by some characteristics of the nervous system to simulate existing data on learning phenomena and generate novel, testable, predictions. I use behavioural and psychophysiological measures to study how people detect statistical regularities in their environment and how this influences the way they allocate their attention. I am also interested in studying brain disorders that involve learning and attention abnormalities.

   

• Publications

  Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (in press). Reasoning about redundant and non-redundant alternative causes of a single outcome: Blocking or enhancement caused by the stronger cause. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

  Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (2016). Human learning about causation. In R.A. Murphy and R. Honey (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook on the Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning. (pp. 380 – 408). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

  Lober, J., Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (2016). Bottom-up associative mechanisms and generalization can account for apparent contrast effects between causes of different strengths. In J.B. Trobalon and V.D. Chamizo (Eds.), Associative Learning and Cognition, Homage to Prof. N.J. Mackintosh, Barcelona.

  Baetu, I., Burns, N.R., Urry, K., Barbante, G.G., & Pitcher, J.B. (2015). Commonly-occurring polymorphisms in the COMT, DRD1 and DRD2 genes influence different aspects of motor sequence learning in humans. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 125, 176-188.

  Urry K, Burns N, Baetu I (2015) Accuracy-based measures provide a better measure of sequence learning than reaction time-based measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.

  Barberia, I, Baetu, I., Sansa, J. & Baker, A.G. (2014). When is a cause the "same"? Incoherent generalization across contexts. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

  Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (2012). Are preventive and generative causal reasoning symmetrical? Extinction and competition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 1675-1698.

  Baetu, I., Barberia, I., Murphy, R.A., & Baker, A.G. (2011). Maybe this old dinosaur isn't extinct: What does Bayesian modeling add to associationism? Reply to Jones & Love. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 190-191.
  
  Barberia, I., Baetu, I., Murphy, R.A., & Baker, A.G. (2011). Do associations explain mental models of cause? International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 24, 365-388.
  
  Barberia, I, Baetu, I., Sansa, J. & Baker, A.G. (2010). Choosing optimal causal backgrounds for causal discovery. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 2413-2431.
  
  Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (2010). Extinction and blocking of conditioned inhibition in human causal learning. Learning & Behavior, 38, 394-407.
  
  Baetu, I., & Shultz, T. R. (2010). Development of prototype abstraction and exemplar memorization. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 814-819). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  
  Baetu, I., & Baker, A.G. (2009). Human judgments of positive and negative causal chains. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 35, 153-168.
  
  Baker, A.G., Baetu, I. & Murphy, R.A. (2009). Propositional learning is a useful research heuristic but it is not a theoretical algorithm. Reply to Mitchell, De Houwer & Lovibond. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 199-200.
  
  Darredeau, C., Baetu, I., Baker, A.G., & Murphy, R.A. (2009). Competition between multiple causes of a single outcome in causal reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 35, 1-14.
  
  Baetu, I., Baker, A.G., Darredeau, C. & Murphy, R.A. (2005). A comparative approach to cue competition with one and two strong predictors. Learning & Behavior, 33, 160-171.
  
  Baker, A.G., Murphy, R., Mehta, R., & Baetu, I. (2005). Mental models of causation: A comparative view. Wills, A. J. (Ed). New directions in human associative learning. (pp. 11-40). 260 pp. Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Entry last updated: Tuesday, 29 Mar 2022

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