15 September 2008
Bilbao Campus
The Vice-Rector of the University of Deusto, José Luis Ávila, and the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education Sciences opened this Congress. This year?s speakers will include: Ralph R.Millar, from the State University of New York at Binghamton, Ricardo Pellón, from the Spanish Open University-UNED, and Frank Van Overwalle, from the Free University of Brussels.
The Labpsico is a research group made up of researchers at the University of Deusto including Helena Matute, Miguel Angel Vadillo, Cristina Orgaz, Ion Yarritu, and Fernando Blanco, whose interest is focused on the mechanisms through which we learn.Above all, they are interested in finding out how we learn about the cause-effect relationship between two events (such as that existing between clouds and rain), and how we distinguish between these causal relationships and others that are merely predictive (such as that existing, for example, between a barometer reading and rain).In addition, they are also interested in the effects that some emotional states like depression can have on a learning process.
Traditionally, these experiments have been carried out in the laboratory of the University of Deusto. However, at present, this team is focused on the development of software that may enable to carry out these experiments also over the Internet and, more specifically, through their website:http://www.labpsico.com, which turns this website into a Virtual Laboratory.Research carried out so far concludes that the learning experiments performed over the Internet have similar outcomes to those carried out in a traditional laboratory.
