Over the last decade, there has been a significant growth in the deployment of computational models to probe latent cognitive processes in experimental tasks. These have a number of benefits for the cognitive sciences: (i) refining theories by making quantitative, rather than qualitative predictions about the cognitive processes underlying behaviour, (ii) uncovering hidden cognitive processes guiding behaviour that might not be immediately obvious through standard statistical analyses, and (iii) precise quantification in how sensitive individuals are to those cognitive processes, allowing individual differences to be better understood. By providing moment-by-moment indices of changes in cognitive processes, they can also be combined with neuroimaging to understand underlying brain mechanisms. As a result, computational models are becoming routinely deployed to examine cognition (e.g. working memory, associative learning), its underlying mechanisms, and to probe dysfunction such as in the growing field of computational psychiatry. However, largely, the field of social cognition has not kept the same pace in deploying computational models. 

Yet, when computational models have been used, it has been very fruitful. Reinforcement learning models have been able to capture how people learn to behave altruistically, Bayesian models have been used to capture social influence, models of theory of mind can capture the cognitive processes underlying strategic social interactions, models of effort discounting have captured several aspects of how motivation impacts on social cognition, and drift diffusion models can capture the cognitive processes underlying people’s social decisions. Now is the moment to train the next generation of social cognition researchers in computational modelling techniques.

Attending the joint Birmingham-Leiden Computational Social Cognition (CSC) Summer School will equip a diverse cohort of early career researchers (Masters through to 1st year faculty) with the ability to understand, program and interpret the output of a range of computational models of social cognition. You will receive different types of training aimed at understanding modelling as well as the theoretical and practical inferences that can be drawn from computational models.