cognitive science - what is cognitive science?

what is cognitive science?

the study of cognitive processes involved in the acquisition, representation, and use of human knowledge

what disciplines does cognitive science overlap with?

computer science, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and philosophy

what did Edward Tolman create?

cognitive maps

how did Tolman believe organisms acquire stimulus-response associations?

by selectively taking in information from the environment and building up cognitive maps as they learn

how did Tolman demonstrate latent learning?

took 3 groups of rats, no reinforcement, regular reinforcement, reinforcement at day 11, and allowed them to explore a maze

how did Tolman’s reinforcement group perform?

showed steady improvement in performance

how did Tolman’s reinforcement after day 11 group perform?

showed sudden improvement in performance after day 11

how did Tolman’s no reinforcement group perform?

didn’t learn much of anything

when and where was the first artificial intelligence conference held?

1956 at Dartmouth

why was the 1956 Symposium on Information Theory important?

Miller introduced the “Magic Number Seven” and Simon and Newell presented the First Artificial Intelligence Program

what is the “Magic Number Seven”?

the number of digits a person can hold in working memory

why was the First Artificial Intelligence Program important?

it proved theorems

what was Skinner’s view of the function of verbal behavior?

an efficient way for an individual to get another individual to do something

what was Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s view of verbal behavior?

if language was learned through reinforcement it would take much longer for kids to understand the basic structure of their language, so their must be some innate structure for language learning

what observations did Chomsky make about language learning?

poverty of the stimulus and that constraints and principles can’t be learnt

what is the idea of poverty of the stimulus?

kids only hear a finite number of sentences but can produce an infinite number of sentences

what is the idea that constraints and principles can’t be learnt?

kids don’t need to learn about grammar or syntax to be able to produce grammatical sentences

what did Chomsky say any theory of language must be able to explain?

the central tension between the ease of language acquisition and linguistic diversity

what was Chomsky’s proposal for a theory of language?

infants are born with a language acquisition device that has some knowledge of how languages work to get the kid started to learn a language from the environment

what are the criticisms of the language acquisition device?

no explanation for how it works, only touches on syntax and structure without addressing semantics, and relies too much on language universality

what is bottom-up processing?

start with sensory stimuli and build up a representation

what is top-down processing?

start with expectations to help interpret incoming data stream

can later stages of processing affect earlier stages?

yes

what is the single light source assumption?

constraint on visual interpretation based on the assumption that there is a single light source from above

what is the Sternberg task?

subjects have to decide quickly whether an item was on a list they were given to remember or not

what is a serial information processing model?

items are tested one at a time

what does a serial information processing model predict as set size increases?

a linear increase in response time

what is a parallel information processing model?

items can be tested simultaneously

what are the typical Sternberg task results?

relationship between memory set size and reaction time is linear

what are the implications of seeing a linear increase in reaction time as a function of memory set?

implies a serial information processing model

what is the single channel hypothesis?

under a serial processing view, when several pieces of information are received at once, there is a bottleneck, which slows decision-making

what is the double-stimulation paradigm?

if we are processing a stimulus when another occurs, we will be unable to process the second until we finish with the first

what is stimulus-onset asynchrony?

the separation between the onsets of the two stimuli in a double-stimulation paradigm

what is the psychological refractory period?

the slowing of the reaction time to the second stimulus (RT2) in a double-stimulation paradigm

what is parallel and interactive processing?

when perception of one sense is affected by another

what is identifiability?

the ability to specify the correct combination of representations and processes used to accomplish a task

what does the Friedenberg and Silverman reading say are the four categories of representation?

concepts, propositions, rules, and analog representations

what is a concept?

a representation of a single entity or group of entities

what is a proposition?

a statement about the world that can be illustrated with a sentence

what is a rule?

a representation that specifies the relationship between propositions

what are analog representations?

analogies that help us to make comparisons between two similar situations

what does the Friedenberg and Silverman reading say are the four crucial aspects of any representation?

it must be realized by a representation bearer, have context, be grounded, and be interpretable

what does it mean for a representation to be grounded?

there must be some way the representation and its referent are related

what does the Friedenberg and Silverman reading say are the two properties of intentionality?

isomorphism and appropriate causal relation

what is isomorphism?

similarity of structure between a representation and its referent

what is appropriate causal relation?

the representation must be triggered by its referent or things related to it

what is the dual-coding hypothesis?

the use of both digital/symbolic and image representations interchangeably

what is the propositional hypothesis?

mental representations take the form of abstract sentence-like structures

what is a predicate calculus?

a general system of logic that accurately expresses a large variety of assertions and modes of reasoning

what is the tri-level hypothesis?

mental or artificial information-processing events can be evaluated on at least three different levels, the computational, the algorithmic, and the implementational

what is the computational level?

the most abstract level where the problem is clearly defined and the purpose of the process itself is analyzed

what is the algorithmic level?

asks what steps are being used to solve the problem

what is the implementational level?

asks what the information processor is made of and what physical or material changes underlie changes in the processing of information

what is the criticism of the tri-level hypothesis?

it’s fundamentally simplistic since each level can be further subdivided into more levels

what approaches to cognitive science does the Friedenberg and Silverman reading discuss?

philosophical, psychological, cognitive, neuroscience, network, evolutionary, linguistic, artificial intelligence, and robotics