Boston University, Department of Psychology

PS 525 Cognitive Science  Spring 2000

Time: Tues-Thurs 9:30-11:00    Place: PSY 155

this file: http://web.bu.edu/PSYCH/faculty/charris/cogsci.html

Instructor: Catherine Harris   Office: Psychology Department 123 

Phone: 353-2956  Office Hours: M 3-4, TH 1-2  charris@bu.edu

Course Description. Cognitive scientists share a commitment to developing theories of human cognition which can integrate findings from diverse fields (psychology, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience). Interdisciplinary research methodology, including connectionist modeling, will be reviewed and applied to questions on human thinking, problem solving, development, dysfunction and social behavior.

Prerequisites. One of the following courses: Cognitive Psychology (PS 336), Neuropsychology (PS 338), Physiological Psychology (231), Minds and Machines (PH 265), Mind, Brain and Self (PH 266), Philosophy of Cognitive Science (PH 468). Background in statistics at least to the level of MA 115 or PS 211. Recommended: A previous course in Computer Science (CS 103 or higher).

Main Sources of Readings

Pinker, S. (1997).  How the mind works.  Norton.  Overview of contents.

Elman, J.L., Bates E. A., Johnson, M.H., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., and Plunkett, K. (1996) Rethinking Innateness. MIT Press.

Plunkett, K. and Elman, J.L. (1997). Exercises in Rethinking innateness. A handbook for connectionist simulations. MIT Press (comes with disks Macintosh and Windows) To download tlearn software.  Website describing different types of free neural net software.

Students without access to a Macintosh or PC running Windows can use the Macintosh in Prof. Harris' lab in rm 127 of the Psychology Dept.

Course Requirements

• Weekly assignments: Assigned exercises draw on Exercises in Rethinking innateness, or ask students to choose from a list of discussion questions
• Help lead a class on a topic in the second half of the course.  Look through topics listed from March 14 - May 2.  Read/skim the readings on this topic in Pinker, then choose an additional article for the rest of the class to read.  Suggestions are provided for each day.  Some of these books/articles are available at Mugar; Prof Harris has many of them can you can borrow them from her at your convenience.
• Term paper/project -- length flexible, but topic must have an interdisciplinary component
• Students are expected to attend all classes and contribute to discussion as much as possible.

Topics

Interdisciplinary approaches to the big questions in the study of mind and behavior:  

• To what extent is the neural architecture underlying cognition a system of symbolic rules (symbolic approach) versus networks of weighted connections which give rise to statistical processing, constraint satisfaction and analogical reasoning?   Relevance of this question to innateness and modularity, cognitive development, brain bases of cognition, brain disorders.
• Does the computational theory of mind fit with evolutionary biology?  How should cognitive scientists view the new field of evolutionary psychology?  Can evolutionary psychology help understand clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder? 
• Consciousness:  why do we have the visual phenomenology we have?  Why are emotions important to cognition?
• Is cognitive science relevant to understanding small groups and larger social systems, social psychology, literature, art?  

Availability of books and articles.

The three main books are at the BU Bookstore

Elman et al, Rethinking Innateness: also at Mugar Library Reserve

Articles will be available in the Psychology Dept Reading room (room 108, also called the MA reading room).  Articles can be borrowed to be read or xeroxed, but please be considerate to other class members and return articles as soon as convenient.

Articles mentioned as "background" or "follow-up" are pointers to additional relevant material. These are typically topics on which I will lecture. Obtaining and reading these papers is not required, and the articles are listed here simply for your information. I have personal copies of many of the articles suggested for background/follow-up and can lend these out on request.

Weekly Topics and Reading

Jan 11, 13   Course Introduction;  History of Artificial Intelligence 

• Plunkett, Chapters 1-3: how to use the tlearn simulator; basic connectionist concepts
• Elman, Chapter 2 through page 63: Introduces connectionism, complements Exercises
• Pinker 's introduction to Neural networks, connectionism: p. 98-112

Jan 18, 20 Internal representations; Generalization, Modularity

• Elman, Chapter 2 p. 63-79
• Plunkett, Chapters 4-6
• Pinker's material on constraint satisfaction in the visual system could be useful (p. 214-242)

Jan 25, 27 Recurrent networks: Finding structure in time. Emergent properties.

• Elman, remainder of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 107-147.
• Plunkett, 7-8, Chapter 11.

Background:

• Posner, M., & Keele, S. (1968). On the genesis of abstract ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 353-363.
• In Rumelhart & McClelland's (1986) Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition , volume 2: On learning the past tenses of English verbs. Sci/Eng Reserve BF455 .R853 1986. Non-reserve, available in Mugar stacks: Mugar BF455 .R853
• Plunkett, K., Sinha, C., Moller, M.F., Strandsby, O. (1992). Symbol grounding or the emergence of symbols? Vocabulary growth in children and a connectionist net. Connection Science, 4, 293-312.

Feb 1, 3 The importance of starting small; Critical periods

• Plunkett, Chapter 12

Also relevant:

• Elman, J.L. (1990). Learning and development in neural networks: The importance of starting small. Cognition, 48, 71-99.
• Hare, M., & Elman, J.L. (1995). Learning and morphological change. Cognition, 56, 61-98.

Feb 8, 10 Dynamical systems; Double dissociations don't imply modularity, Brain Development.

• Elman, Chapter 4 - 5

also relevant:

• Farah, M.J., & McClelland, J.L. (1991). A computational model of semantic memory impairment: Modality specificity and emergent category specificity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 339-357.
• Johnson, M. (1993). Brain development and cognition: A reader. Blackwell. Michel, G.F., & Moore, C.L. (1995). Developmental Psychobiology: An Interdisciplinary Science. MIT.

Feb 15, 17 Rethinking Innateness

• Elman, Chapters 6 and 7

Feb 24 (holiday Feb 22) Connectionism and language disorders

• Hinton, G.E., Plaut, D.C., Shallice, T. (1993). Simulating brain damage. Scientific American, October 1993.  Available in Psychology reading room.
• Plaut, D.C. (1997). Structure and function in the lexical system: Insights from distributed models of word reading and lexical decision. Language and Cognitive Processes. Download from Plaut's homepage.

also relevant :

• Plaut, D.C. (1994). Relearning after damage in connectionist networks: Toward a theory of rehabilitation. Download from Plaut's homepage

Feb 29, Mar 2.   Consciousness I: Visual system, change blindness, repetition blindness

Web pages with demonstrations:  

• Participate in Dan Simon's on-line experiment
• Ron Rensink's site.

Readings

• Pinker, Chapter 2, p. 131-148 (discusses consciousness)
• Pinker, Chapter 4 p. 256-275 (may be useful here for student who want more background on the visual system)
• O'Regan, J. K. (1992). Solving the "real" mysteries of visual perception: The world as an outside memory. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 46(3), 461-488.  Psychology reading room.
• O'Regan, K. and Noe, A. (2000).  A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Download.

also relevant:

• Rensink RA (2000a). The Dynamic Representation of Scenes. Visual Cognition, 7, 17-42. (pdf file)

Mar 4-12 Spring break

Mar 14, 16  Topics to be announced

For the following topics, some readings are as assigned immediately after the date/topic header.  Readings for the other date will be determined by the student who wants to lead discussion for class meetings of this week. Suggestions for these are listed under "additional reading suggestions." Discussion leaders can also recommend their own readings.

Mar 21, 23 Categorization, Folk theories, stereotypes, racism

• Pinker, Chapter 5

Additional reading suggestions, depending on which topics interest students in the categorization, folk theories grab bag of topics:  

Folkbiology by Douglas L. Medin, Scott Atran (Editors) (1999)

"Theory of mind" reading suggestions

• Gopnik, Alison.(1999). The scientist in the crib: minds, brains, and how children learn. William Morrow. Mugar BF311 .G627
• Gopnik, Alison. (1993).  How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 1-101.

Social psychology suggestions: (these may also be appropriate for April 4, 6 dates)

• Read, S.J., & Miller, L.C. (1998). Connectionist models of social reasoning and social behavior.  Lawrence Erlbaum. Available from Mugar HM251 .C686

Mar 28, 30 Consciousness II: Emotions

• Pinker, Chapter 6
• Sloman, A. (1997). What sort of control system is able to have a personality. In R. Trappl and P. Petta (Eds.),Creating personalities for synthetic actors: towards autonomous personality agents. Springer. Sci/Eng TR897.7 .C7

Reading suggestions:

• Damasio, Antonio R.(1994). Descartes' error : emotion, reason, and the human brain  Putnam. Mugar QP401 .D2
• Damasio, A.R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Mugar BF311 .D33 1999
• Johnston, V.S. (1999). Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions.  Amazon.com description.

Apr 4, 6 Evolutionary Psychology

• Pinker, Chapter 7.  (Pinker Chapter 3 may also be helpful, as here he introduces background on evolutionary theory, although this material may already be familiar to students.) 

Reading suggestions:

• Wong, P.T.P, Fry, P.S. (1998). The human quest for meaning: a handbook of psychological research and clinical applications. Erlbaum. Mugar BF463.M4 H86.  (some readings also relevant to May 2 date)
• Simpson, J.A. and Kenrick, D.T. (1997). Evolutionary social psychology .  Erlbaum. Mugar HM251 .E846
• Buss, D.M., and Malamuth, N.M. (1996).  Sex, power, conflict: Evolutionary and feminist perspectives. Oxford. Mugar HQ801.83 .S49 1996
• Etcoff, N.L. (1999). Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.  Amazon.com description.
• Cummins, D.D. and Allen, C. (1998). The evolution of mind. Oxford University Press. Mugar BF311 .E876

Apr 11, 13 Cognitive science and society

On one of these two dates I will present material from the following book and CD-ROM, but no reading required.  The remaining day remains open for another topic relevant to cognitive science and society (perhaps inspired from one of the topics about society and social relations in Pinker Chapter 7).

• Epstein, J. M.and Axtell, R. (1996). Growing artificial societies: social science from the bottom up. Brookings Institution Press    Mugar H61 .E67 1996

Apr 18, 20 Neural networks and brain disorders

• Dror, I.E., Gallogly (1999). Computational analyses in cognitive neuroscience:  In defense of biological implausibility. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 6, 173-182.

Reading suggestions:

• Rolls, E.T., & Treves, A. (1998). Neural networks and brain function. Oxford.
• Reggia, J.A., Ruppin, E. Berndt, R.S. (1996). Neural modeling of brain and cognitive disorders. World Scientific Publishing Co.

Apr 25, 27 Evolutionary Psychiatry

• Dinn, W.M. and Harris, C.L. (1999).  Orbitofrontal dysfunction:  A neurobehavioral continuum.

Reading suggestions:

• McGuire, M.T., & Troisi, A. (1998). Darwinian Psychiatry. Oxford.  (Harris has this book)
• Stevens, A.,  and Price, J. (1996).Evolutionary psychiatry: a new beginning.  Routledge, 1996. Sci/Eng RC454.4 .S73

May 2 Cognitive science and art, literature.

• Pinker Ch. 8

Reading suggestions:

• Simon, H. (1995). Literatry criticism: A cognitive approach.  Stanford Electronic Humanities Review. 4. Go to site.
• Turner, M. (1991). Reading minds: the study of English in the age of cognitive science. Princeton University Press.  Mugar PE68.U5 T87

May 8 -- Papers due

Pinker, How the mind works

The chapter titles in Pinker's How the Mind Works are sometimes opaque. Here is a review of the contents to assist in integrating this material into the course and to help students in choosing what material they want to cover in the class section when they are the discussion leader.

Chapter 1: "Standard equipment"

A grab bag of topics introducing the book and Pinker's combining of two research traditions on p. 23: "Cognitive science helps us o understand how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have. Evolutionary biology helps us to understand why we have the kind of mind we have...Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind is a set of modules... the organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program, but that does not mean that there is a gene for every trait ... the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes."

Chapter 2: "Thinking machines"

• Neural networks, connectionism: p. 98-112
• Critique of the connectionist paradigm 112-131
• Consciousness p. 131-148

Chapter 3: "Revenge of the nerds"

• Evolution of animal intelligence p. 149-185
• Evolution of neural networks 177-197
• Evolution of human intelligence 186-205
• Cultural evolution 205-210

Chapter 4. "The mind's eye" (the visual system)

Examples of constraint satisfaction in the visual system

• Stereovision 214
• Shape from shading 242

Frames of reference, object recognition 256

Face recognition 272   Mental rotation, mental imagery 275

Chapter 5. "Good ideas" (categorization)

Introduces the debate on whether our brain is "overkill" for the environment in which it evolved. 299-306

• Categorization 306
• Stereotypes and racism 313
• Infant categorization abilities 317
• Folk theories (naive biology, psychology, math, statistics) 352
• Metaphor 352

Chapter 6 "Hotheads" -- The role of emotion in "how the mind works"

• History of the division between reason and emotion 369
• Neurological foundations of emotions 371

Pinker's thesis, p. 370: "...emotions are adaptations, well-engineered software modules that work in harmony with the intellect and are indispensable to the functioning of the whole mind...We often call an act "emotional" when it is harmful o the social group, damaging to the actor's happiness in the long run, uncontrollable and impervious to persuasion, or a product of self-delusion... these outcomes are not malfunctions but precisely what we would expect from well-engineered emotions."

Why we have emotions: An animal can not pursue all of its goals at once.

• Perception of beauty 374
• Disgust, food aversion 378
• Fear 386
• Happiness 389
• Discounting of future rewards 393
• Selfishness, guilt, gratitude, sympathy, irrationality, 396
• Romantic love 417
• Self-deception 421

Chapter 7 "Family values"

The evolutionary psychology of social relations. Topics:

arranged marriage, altruism toward kin, parent-child conflict, sibling rivalry, evolution of sex, human mating systems, male/female differences in sexual behavior, role of appearance in mate-selection, status, friendship, war.

Chapter 8 "The meaning of life"

How do we explain humans' interest in art, music, story-telling, religion, humor?