Nora Chen

I am a senior undergraduate student at the University of California San Diego majoring in Cognitive Science and specializing in Language and Culture.

Research: I am broadly interested in exploring the cognitive underpinnings that allow people to understand and make fast, robust inferences about diverse, unknown physical phenomena. To facilitate these capabilities, I research how latent physical properties can be inferred from observed data and how humans use this information to improve predictive models of the world. Through this, I aim to shed light on the cognitive processes enabling robust inferential performance and inform the design of artificial intelligence systems that are better equipped to cope with the dynamic, uncertain nature of the physical world and more attuned to its nuanced complexities. (cont.)

Previously, I was an undergraduate research assistant in the Cognitive Tools Lab, advised by Dr. Judith Fan (Stanford).

Currently, I reside as a Research Fellow at Harvard University in the Computation, Cognition, and Development (Ullman) Lab.

This summer, I will join the Cognitive Development and Learning (Gopnik) Lab at UC Berkeley as a Research Intern.

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Physical Intuition and the Role of Counterfactual Reasoning: Insights from Jenga and Fluid Dynamics Simulations

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We show that people can use counterfactual reasoning to make inferences about the physical world, even when kinetic information is degraded. Furthermore, we extend and focus on the specific physical properties that lead people to determine the viscosity of a liquid in our three fluid simulations.