The Memory and Attention Conference, hosted by the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago, will be held June 5-6, 2025. Memory and attention have recently emerged as important theoretical frameworks for considering wide-ranging problems beyond psychology in economics and decision sciences. This conference brings together leading economists, experimental psychologists, and memory theorists for in-depth discussion of current topics at the nexus of these disciplines. It aims to foster conversations across fields, spawning many potential collaborations and research relationships.

This conference is by invitation only. If you have any questions, please contact bfi-events@uchicago.edu.

Presentation format: 25 minutes for presentations, 25 minutes for discussion, and 25 minutes for Q&A.

Agenda

Thursday, June 5, 2025
8:30 am–9:15 am

Registration and Breakfast

10th floor prefunction

9:15 am–9:30 am

Opening Remarks

Abstract Room 10th Floor

9:30 am–10:45 am

Learning to See a World of Opportunities

Nava Ashraf, London School of Economics (Speaker)

Elizabeth Kensinger, Boston College (Discussant)

10:45 am–11:15 am

Break

11:15 am–12:30 pm

Over and Underreaction in Inference and Forecasting

Francesca Bastianello, University of Chicago (Speaker)

George Wu, University of Chicago (Discussant)

12:30 pm–2:15 pm

Lunch and Keynote

Abstract Room 10th Floor

Cognitive Scientists’ Concepts About How People Learn and Use Concepts

Robert Goldstone, Indiana University Bloomington (Keynote Speaker)

2:15 pm–3:30 pm

Trapped by similarity: Understanding Limits to Adaptive Learning in Humans, Groups, and Machines

Todd Gureckis, New York University (Speaker)

Pedro Bordalo, University of Oxford (Discussant)

3:30 pm–4:00 pm

Break

4:00 pm–5:15 pm

Weighting Competing Models

Chiara Aina, Pompeu Fabra University (Speaker)

Tomer Ullman, Harvard University (Discussant)

6:00 pm

Conference Dinner

By invitation only.

Friday, June 6, 2025
8:30 am–9:00 am

Breakfast

10th floor prefunction

9:00 am–10:15 am

Environmental Beliefs and Adaptation to Climate Change

Dev Patel, Harvard University (Speaker)

Neil Stewart, University of Warwick (Discussant)

10:15 am–10:45 am

Break

10:45 am–12:00 pm

Leveraging Deep Representations to Investigate Naturalistic Human Decision-making

Jennifer Trueblood, Indiana University Bloomington (Speaker)

Joshua Schwartzstein, Harvard University (Discussant)

12:00 pm

Conference Adjourns