Profs & Pints Nashville: Tapping Our Powers of Perception

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Defense Visual Information Distribution Service / Public Domain.

Louise Bourgeois sculptures at the Leeum Museum in Seoul.

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Tapping Our Powers of Perception,” a look at groundbreaking brain research that is changing assumptions about ability and talent, with Isabel Gauthier, professor of psychology and head of the Object Perception Lab at Vanderbilt University.

Do you think that your IQ score or your preferred learning style define your intellectual boundaries? Then maybe it’s time to think again.

Come to Fait La Force taproom for a transformative look at the intricacies of human potential and the huge role that variations in our perceptual abilities play in our lives. Whether you are an educator keen on implementing evidence-based practices, a student eager to optimize your learning, or simply a curious individual fascinated by the untapped depths of the human mind, you’ll appreciate how much this talk gives you a fresh perspective on human abilities.

The speaker, Dr. Isabel Gauthier, is a neuroscientist whose research on our visual abilities, such as our skill at object recognition, has resulted in numerous influential studies that challenge widely held beliefs about who can become an expert in certain fields.

She plans to begin her eye-opening talk by debunking a notion many educators swear by, the idea that people have different learning styles—visual, auditory or kinesthetic—and learn better if instructed according to them. She’ll offer evidence that the idea stands on shaky scientific ground and represents a persistent “neuromyth” which is not supported by evidence and may be limiting our efforts to teach and learn better.

From there, she’ll introduce you to a new idea that reshapes the landscape of what we understand as human abilities, operating independently of traditional measures like intelligence or learning preferences like a visual learning style. It’s the idea that object recognition, an ability she measures as the value "o," is an important measure of intellectual ability. You will learn about compelling evidence that individuals vary as much in their perceptual abilities as they do in cognitive skills – and how most people have very little idea of how good they are at perceptual tasks.

Her research suggests that people who are good at recognizing birds also will be especially able to identify planes or spot tumors on X-rays. It has implications for fields like healthcare and art and for jobs such as satellite imagery interpretation and fingerprint identification. It may even help you recognize new areas where you might find success. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)