
Professor Jeffrey Bowers
B.Sc.(Tor.), Ph.D.(Arizona)
Current positions
Professor
School of Psychological Science
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
My research addresses a range of issues in perception, language and memory, using behavioural and computational methods. In recent years I have focused on what Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) can teach us about the mind and brain. Although it is widely claimed that ANNs are the current best models of vision and language, my colleagues and I have challenged this position. The problem is that researchers often draw causal conclusions from correlational studies. For example, many researchers compete in how well ANNs predict on behavioural and brain benchmarks, with better predictions taken to indicate that the ANNs are mechanistically aligned with biological intelligence. However, when we manipulate variables to test hypotheses, we consistently show that ANNs fail to align with humans. The main message from my research is that standard methods of manipulating independent variables to test hypotheses are needed in NeuroAI before drawing any strong conclusions.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Exploring the multiple loci of learning and computation in simple artificial neural networks
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Psychological ScienceDates
01/03/2023 to 31/08/2024
M and M
Principal Investigator
Description
Can we use Deep Neural Networks to understand how the mind works? The 5-year ERC grant entitled “Generalisation in Mind and Machine” compares how humans and artificial neural networks generalise…Managing organisational unit
School of Psychological ScienceDates
01/09/2017 to 31/08/2022
ARE FORM-RELATED WORDS CO-ACTIVATED DURING THE GENERATION OF A SPOKEN RESPONSE?
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Psychological ScienceDates
01/06/2006 to 01/06/2007
THE IMPACT OF EARLY EXPERIENCE ON LATER SPEECH PERCEPTION
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Psychological ScienceDates
05/09/2005 to 05/03/2009
IS SPEECH PERCEPTION INFLUENCED BY TOP-DOWN FEEDBACK
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Psychological ScienceDates
01/07/2005 to 01/07/2006
Thesis supervisions
Selectivity in Neural Networks
Supervisors
Combinatorial Generalisation in Machine Vision
Supervisors
Cognitive Inhibition as a Core Component of Executive Functions
Supervisors
Computational Meta-Theory in Cognitive Science
Supervisors
Examining visual representations in mind and machine
Supervisors
Is eyewitness memory better when a Face Recognition System selects the lineup members compared to humans?
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
03/11/2025The successes and failures of artificial neural networks (ANNs) highlight the importance of innate linguistic priors for human language acquisition
Psychological Review
Visual reasoning in object-centric deep neural networks
Neural Networks
Adapting to time
PLOS Computational Biology
Convolutional Neural Networks Trained to Identify Words Provide a Surprisingly Good Account of Visual Form Priming Effects
Computational Brain & Behavior
Human Shape Representations Are Not an Emergent Property of Learning to Classify Objects
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General


