jump directly to the hypertext readings and resources
Texts - Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science, 2nd Edition. Paul
Thagard.
- Mind Readings : introductory
selections on cognitive science, Editor - Paul Thagard.
+ coursepack of selected readings.
+ class constructed hypertextbook of internet resources.
GAMES PEOPLE (and MACHINES) PLAY
MICRO MODELS OF INFORMATION PROCESSES
MACRO (GRAND) THEORIES OF COGNITION AND PERFORMANCE
MODELS OF LEARNING (ANIMAL, HUMAN, and MACHINE)
SIMULATIONS OF PERSONALITY
ROBOTICS (Biologically Inspired, Humanoid, Software)
The material for this course will be challenging and new to most of you. You are not expected to come out of this class having mastered all of the material. You are expected to read all of the material before the class period and to be ready to discuss it (or have questions if you are befuddled :-} ). Your grade will depend on both your efforts and engagement with the material and your mastery of the concepts. I expect to hear from each student during every class discussion.
Final Project - Personalized project which can take the form of a research paper, a computer program, an experiment, or anything else you can justify to the instructor ; * ). All projects will involve an oral presentation to the class and an APA style write-up.
Each paper should be less than 3 pages and take no more than an hour to write (above and beyond the reading time). You are allowed to miss 2 days with no penalty. Any further misses will result in 2 percentage point deduction from your final course grade. You must attend the class in order to receive credit for a reaction paper.
Erik's Office Hours - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, 11:15 - 12:15
--- Bio/Psych #236.
Office Phone: x-7657 (leave voice mail here), HCI Lab phone: x-7656.
I have an open door policy. Feel free to drop in at other times. If my door is open, I am available to chat. If it is closed, I am either gone or working on a project with a deadline. Leave a message on my white board or with the departmental secretary.
places to peruse and perchance procure a project!!
Thagard's list of links from the Mind Text
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy overview of Cognitive Science
** Cogprints** -Cognitive Science Electronic Paper Archive
ACM: Technews - Breaking News Stories in Information Technology
Google Directory for Cognitive Science
Mind/Brain Resources hosted at Virginia Tech.
Canada's National Research Council
Santa Fe Institute - a small research center that does some fascinating interdisciplinary work
Here is the list of the one hundred most influential works in cognitive science from the 20th century!
Watzek Library has several new databases that can give you access to full text articles if you access them from their Research Database page from a computer on campus. Worthy of special note is The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library
Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 1st Cog. Sci
In the first chapter of of the Mind Text, Thagard discusses six different academic fields and the methods that they use in the study of cognitive science. Your task is to search for 3 research articles from each of two fields (six total, fields will be assigned in class), copy and paste the titles and abstracts into MSWord and write a 4-6 paragraph discussion for each field describing what questions the papers are asking, what is the approach used to address them, and how the papers within a field are more similar to each other than those across fields. Bring a printout to class on Thursday and also e-mail Erik an electronic version by midnight on Wednesday (nilsen@lclark.edu).
Read Chapter 1 of the Mind Text and be ready to discuss questions 1-6 on pages 20-21. Also read the short news interview with Herb Simon and be ready to discuss his perspective on Cognitive Science and the role of computer simulations as a tool for theory development.
Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 6th
For today's class I have assigned papers from two of the "founders" of cognitive science. The first is Chapter 1 of the Mind Readings book, entitled What is an Explanation of Behavior, by Herbert Simon. For this paper, I want you to summarize, in your own words, the several roles that Simon sees for computer programs in explaining and modeling behavior? What can computer programs do for us and how can they complement other approaches?
Read the classic paper by George Miller entitled: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information. This paper, written in 1956, helped launch the information processing paradigm in psychology and his 7+/- 2 chunks in STM is certainly the most widely cited "number" in memory research. I am asking you to read the original. This is very dense reading. To help us understand it better I am assigning each of you one of the sections to summarize (in writing) and present orally in class. Be sure to define any terms that need it and to explain any graphs that are in your section. You may need to do a bit of outside research to fully understand the material, try to put it into your own words. You will have 5 minutes at the beginning of class to ask Erik questions and discuss the material before presenting it to the class. The section assignments are given below.
Information measurement (Mahria, Danny)
Absolute judgments of unidimensional stimuli (Tim, Stephanie)
Absolute judgments of multidimensional stimuli (Adonya, Anne)
Subitizing (Jennifer, Erik)
The span of immediate memory (Alex, Julie),
Recoding (Sho, Cat)
Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 8th
For Tuesday's class read Chapter 2:Logic from the Mind text as well as chapter 2 from the Mind Readings entitled "The Cognitive Science of Deduction.
From the Logic chapter, write definitions of deductive, inductive and abductive
reasoning along with a clear example of each type of reasoning using the domain
of "household pets".
Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 13th
You are to run a mini-experiment before class using the 2 forms of the Wason's Selection Task described on pages 35-37 the Logic chapter of Mind. Using index cards, create the letter/number and bar/age version of the task and find 4 willing friends who will each try both versions, 2 in each counterbalanced order. Be sure that they "talk out loud" giving their explanation for the cards they select to test the rule. Explain your results in terms of the predictions presented by the book and specifically, your subject's use of modus ponens and modus tollens. Did you find any evidence that they learned anything when solving the second version of the task?
I also want you to be ready to discuss how the 3 class of algorithmic theories
of deduction (formal, content specific, and mental models) discussed in the
Mind Readings chapter would account (or fail to account) for your subject's
performance on the Wason Selection task.
Read the article I handed out in class "New Evidence for Distinct Right and Left Brain Systems for Deductive vs. Probabilistic Reasoning" and be ready to discuss it and relate it to the Mind Readings Chapter.
Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 15th
Read Chapter 3 of both the Mind text "Rules" and the Mind Readings Text, "Production Systems and the ACT-R Theory" and be ready to discuss them. Pay particular attention to the production rules for addition found on pages 63 - 65 in Mind Readings.
Read the short SOAR article (handed out in class and write a free response about your impressions of the scope of the SOAR approach to cognitive modeling.
Links to online Slider-puzzles to try out before class. Take your best shot at writing some Production rules for strategies you develop in solving these puzzles.
| NASA
Puzzles 4x4 |
The Ever Popular Otto von Bismarck Puzzle!! 3x3 |
Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 20th Read the long SOAR paper that describes a SOAR model of the 8 puzzle problem (handed out in class on Thursday), and the paper entitled "How to Construct a Believable Opponent using Cognitive Modeling in the Game of Set" that describes novice and expert models for playing the set cards game using ACT-R. For each article, compare and contrast how the programs play the games with the way that you play them.
Also, Search the Web and/or Research databases for two recent (post 2000) research projects/papers that incorporate each Cognitive Architecture (a total of 4). Print out an abstract (if available) or write a brief description of each paper on a separate sheet and bring them to class ready to discuss them.
Erik's finds are below:
SOAR
A description of some experiments we have done with the Quakebot to test how human it behaves and whether we can modify some simple parameters to change skill levels: Creating Human-like Synthetic Characters with Multiple Skill Levels: A Case Study using the Soar Quakebot. This appeared in the AAAI 2000 Fall Symposium Series: Simulating Human Agents, November 2000.SOARing for the Military. A number of research projects to put SOAR artificial agents into combat training, simulation, and sometime in the future, actual combat coordination! I'm going to take some tums!!
ACT-R
Fleetwood, M. D. & Byrne, M. D. (2003).Modeling the visual search of displays: A revised ACT-R/PM model of icon search based on eye-tracking and experimental data. In F. Detje, D. Dörner, & H. Schaub (Eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (pp. 87-92). Bamberg, Germany: Universitas-Verlag Bamberg.
Intelligent Cognitive Tutors as Modeling Tool and Instructional Model
Position Paper for the NCTM Standards 2000 Technology Conference
June 5-6, 1998 Dr. Kenneth R. Koedinger
Abstract
Effective technologies for learning and doing mathematics should be based on sound cognitive theory, be
empirically tested against alternatives, and be primarily addressed at mathematics as a modeling language. I will
discuss the status and promise of research-based "intelligent" systems that support students in mathematical modeling
and tool use. Such systems are beginning to reshape the mathematics classroom, the way teachers teach, and what
and how students learn.
Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 22nd
Read Chapter 4 of the Mind Text, "Concepts" and answer discussion questions 2, 4, 5, and 7.
Also read Chapter 5 in the Mind Readings Text. "Concepts and Conceptual Structure" and play around (on paper,) with the idea of representing and fleshing out the the concepts of "College Student, Lewis & Clark College Student, Reed College Student, George Fox College Student" using the classic, probabilistic, and exemplar-based views of Conceptual Structure
Assignment for Tuesday, Sept. 27th
WordNet and CYC are two ambitious projects that embody the "Conceptual" representation approach to Cognitive Science. They both have theoretical and applied aspects and present interesting contrasts in goals, representation and implementation. Spend an hour or so rummaging around their respective web sites, reading the FAQ's, skimming through research publications or "White Papers", looking at related products and projects. Write a brief (1 page) paper giving your impression of each project.
Good (short) Overview articles by the Main Architect of each system:
WordNet: a lexical database for English. by George A. Miller (Full Text only available from on-campus computer)
Cyc From 2001 to 2001: Common Sense and the Mind of HAL. by Douglas B. Lenat.
A very recent view of CYC research in 2005 Searching for Common Sense: Populating Cyc from the Web.
Read and be ready to discuss a fascinating article on layperson's categorization of mental illness by our very own Thomas Schoeneman and LC student researchers
Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 29th
Read chapter 5 "Analogies" from the hard-cover MIND Text and answer the 5 discussion questions on page 92 in writing.
Also, be ready to discuss Final Project Ideas.
Interesting applied use of analogies as a way to explain medical conditions to patients.
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 4th
Go through the1st 2 sections of the Copycat Tutorial (Introduction and Copycat: A Gentle overview) and do the included exercises 1 - 6. Part of the tutorial uses a working version of the copycat model that you should open up in a separate window. The author suggests that this works best in IE explorer.
Read and be ready to discuss the paper I handed out in class, Analogy Making as a Complex Adaptive System, by Melanie Mitchell.
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 11th
Read Chapter 7 "Connections" from the hard-cover MIND Text and chapter 8 in the Mind Readings Text.
Try out this Neural network simulation for "solving" the Necker Cube.
Try to train this simple neural network called MIMIC to recognize 4 patterns
No writing assignment this time.
Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 13th
- Read about the Human Face Detection Project at Carnegie Mellon University. This paper describes a novel Computer Vision approach incorporating a neural network to recognize faces in pictures submitted by anyone on the Web. Technology willing, we will submit some pictures and see if the program successfully finds our faces.
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 18th
Read the Psych. Review article that I passed out last Thursday entitled "On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the stroop effect."
For each simulation, be ready to discuss the following questions:
1. What is the simulation trying to show?
2. How well does the simulation data match the empirical data?
3. What features of the neural network simulation are most responsible for producing
the correspondence between empirical data and simulation results.
Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 20th
Read
about TD-Gammon, a Neural Network Backgammon Expert that learns without
input from Humans!
Play at least 2 games of backgammon against a computer
opponent
Search the web and online research databases for two recent examples (2002 or later) of the use of neural network/connectionist,PDP modeling. One of the examples should be focused on theory development and the other on an applied topic. Be prepared to give a brief overview of the research in class on Thursday using the computer projection unit to show us your "finds".
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 25th
Read chapter 8 in the mind text. Rank order the the 5 computational approaches (We skipped Imagery) in order according to how impressed you are with the approach. for the "best" and "worst" approach, write a paragraph on what impressed you the most and what is one downside of the approach. E-mail me your rankings and paragraphs by 9:00 p.m. on Monday
Read one of the classic papers in cognitive science by written by Alan Turing in 1950 entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Turing poses the question"Can machines think?"
Here is what one reviewer had to say about the paper when nominating it for the 3rd most influential paper in cognitive science for the 20th century.
This paper is often said to mark the beginning of the cognitivist revolution in psychology by arguing that computing machines that think are possible, thus defending the appropriateness of computational models of intelligence and, by extension, other cognitive processes. The paper also recommends the controversial Turing test, according to which a computing machine that can simulate a thinking, speaking human so well that a human judge cannot detect the simulation should be deemed to possess genuine intelligence.
Read the paper and write a response paper commenting on the adequacy of the Turing Test "Imitation Game" for determining machine intelligence. Which of the objections that Turing presents do you find the most compelling and why? Which is the least convincing objection? Come up with an objection of your own to the Turing Test. What would it take to convince you that a Machine was truly intelligent?
In class today we will play the "Imitation Game" and also test your human wits against the machine in a domain specific Turing Test for Poetry Writing. Come prepared to defend humanity!!
Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 27th
Here is the an article on the Computer Poet that we used for our Domain Specific Turing test that we ran in class on Tuesday.
Travel to the 2005 Loebner Prize Home page to learn about the $100,000 award offered to the first computer program that passes an unrestricted Turing Test. Follow the links to learn about the rules and history of the test and peruse the transcripts of the Winners (really the best losers) from previous contests.
Be sure to engage in a conversation with this year's Winner, Jabberwacky! Jot down any interesting dialogue that comes from your "conversation" to share in class. Search the web site to learn what you can about how Jabberwacky "thinks".
In class we will contrast Jabberwacky's conversational abilities with the Grand Dame of Chatterbot's, Eliza. Here you will find a paper describing Eliza that describes her principles of operation. How does Jabberwacky work differently?
Assignment for Tuesday, Nov. 1st.
Read Chapter 10 "Emotions" in the Mind text and be ready to discuss it.
REACTION PAPER
Read the 2004 Psych. review article I handed out in class on Thursday entitled
"Spiking
Phineas Gage: A Neurocomputational Theory of
Cognitive–Affective Integration in Decision Making" by Brandon
M. Wagar and Paul Thagard. Write a 1 page reaction paper contrasting the neural
network that they develop in this paper with the previous connectionist models
that we studied (e.g.Face Detection and Stroop) in terms of how it is put together,
how it is trained, how it is evaluated and neurological plausibility.
REACTION PAPER 2
Read the paper "Computer modeling and simulation of Personality" handed
out in class on Tuesday. Compare and contrast the approach of Aldous and Parry
in modeling emotions. What do you think about the validity of their approach?
Parry has passed a version of the Turing test. Compare this testing format with
the unrestricted turing test. Why do you think that Parry is so convincing when
Eliza is so lame?
Assignment for Thursday, Nov. 3rd
Read the 2005 paper entitled "Robot Science Meets Social Science: An Embodied Computational Model of Social Referencing" by Cynthia Breazeal.
Kismet is a sociable robot being developed at MIT which uses facial expressiveness as a central feature. Browse around the Kismet web site to get a feel for the goals of the project and what they have accomplished to date! Be sure to check out Kismet's "space of emotive facial expressions" and look at the pages concerning social interaction and how Kismet "learns"
Assignment for Tuesday, Nov. 8th
Read the two BioRobotics papers linked here and be ready to discuss the papers.
Webb, B. (1996). A robot cricket. Scientific American, 275(6), 94-99.
Webb, B (2000) What does robotics offer animal behaviour? Animal Behaviour, 60, 545-558 (pdf file)
Before class, do some searching on the web for other examples of biologically inspired robot research using a different (non-human) animal. Try to find examples that have some research information about the principles of operation and that try to emulate some interesting behavior.
During class, each of you will choose (or be assigned) a particular "robot animal" to research over the weekend. Next Thursday (Nov. 10th) we will have oral (and web-based) presentations of your findings.
Assignment for Thursday, Nov. 10th
Each person will have 10 minutes to make an oral/multi-media presentation about your biologically inspired robot. Along with the the presentation you will create a 1 - 3 page handout that gives an overview of your research and addresses the following questions. Be sure to write this handout in your own words.
E-mail your handout to Erik (nilsen@lclark.edu) preferably before class and bring a clean hard copy to class for xeroxing.
- Who is doing the research? Include names of researchers, institutions and web pages.
- What behavior are they modeling?
- Why did they choose this animal?
- What do the robots look like and how do they work? ( small images are good if you can find them )
- What do the robots do that is impressive?
- Future plans and related projects
T Nov. 15 Kick Start for Final Projects Th Nov. 17 Computer (and Brain) Models of Humor
A Comprehensive Overview Paper
Current Directions in Computational Humour. G. Ritchie, (2001). Artificial Intelligence Review, 16(2), pp.119-135.
A Fascinating Brain Imaging Paper
Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers
D Mobbs, MD Greicius, E Abdel-Azim, et. al. Neuron, 2003
Computer Programs that create (bad) puns
Computational Mechanisms for Pun Generation
G. Ritchie, (2005). Proceedings of the 10th European Natural Language Generation Workshop, Aberdeen, 2005.
Just for Fun, Visit Laugh Lab and read the worlds funniest jokes (empirically supported funnies even)!
T Nov. 22 Computer Vision
Peruse the web site of a leading researcher in Computer Vision, Yiannis Aloimonos
Read the 2 papers I handed out in class on Thursday and be ready to discuss the questions below.
What is the Inverse Optics/Scene Recovery problem? Why is it a problem for humans and computer vision systems? What approaches have been suggested by both papers to address the problem and make it "solvable".
For class discussion, pay particular attention to the MSDA principle and the SDA algorithm in the Line drawing article as it pertains to interpreting the "best" 3 dimensional object. In class we will discuss the implications of this approach for explaining the Necker Cube and other illusions in it's class.
Th Nov. 24 NO CLASS, Turkey Day T Nov. 29 Cyborg Psychology!
Cyborgs, Donald A. Norman, March 2001. Communications of the ACM, Volume 44 Issue 3
Taming of the Cyborg, unpublished Manuscript, GJ Stilwell - people.interaction-ivrea.it
And now for something completely different! Stelarc lives? Cruise around this website and prepared to be a bit disturbed! 2004 Interview with Stelarc which is a bit more organized overview of his work.
For a slightly less insane example of a person who desires to be a cyborg, check out Professor Kevin Warwick's web page describing a project that involves putting a 100 electrode array in his arm to interface his nervous system with computers.
Th Dec. 1 Three Project Presentations Link for Julie's Presentation T Dec. 6 Three Project Presentations Final exam period, Sat. December 10th, 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. Four Project Presentations