Fall 2002 Syllabus
The primary teaching tool in this course will be readings from the various subfields of cognitive science. Class will be run as a seminar with significant student contributions expected. The syllabus should be treated as a work in progress. Readings and assignments will be added and subtracted based upon the progress of the class. Updates can be found online.
The primary goal of this course is to teach you to learn and think like a cognitive scientist. This means you should be able to read articles in the literature (or even in a newspaper) critically. Further, you should be able to communicate ideas from what you have learned either to other cognitive scientists or to novices in the field. This means that an important component of the course will involve making arguments without relying on your audience's knowledge of jargon or extensive background knowledge.
Introduction: System Constraints and Challenges
A Small Brain in a Big World
September 10.
September 12.
September 17
Braitenberg, V. (1986). Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Introduction
Clark, A. (2001). Mindware, New York, NY: Oxford. Ch 2: Symbol Systems (electronic reserve)
Evolution
September 24
Clark, A. (1989). Microcognition: Philosophy, cognitive science, and parallel distributed processing. The MIT Press. Ch. 4: Biological Constraints. (pp. 61-80) Epilogue: The parable of the high-level architect (pp. 185-186). (coursepack) orientation
The unit of thought
September 26
Kaplan, S. (1978). Perception of an uncertain environment. In Humanscape, Kaplan, S. and Kaplan, R., Duxberry Press. (electronic reserve)
McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Collins. Chapter 2: The Vocabulary of Comics (electronic reserve)
Perky, C.W. (1958). An experimental study of imagination, in Readings in Perception, Beardslee, D.C. and Wertheimer, M. (eds.), Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company. pp. 545-551. (electronic reserve)
Weaver, M. (1992). An active symbol connectionist model of concept representation & concept learning. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Ch. 3: Properties of Categories (pp. 12-16), Ch. 4: The Role of Supervision (coursepack)
McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Collins. Chapter 3: Blood in the Gutter (electronic reserve) October 3
Hebb, D.O. (1972). Textbook of Psychology. Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Company. Ch. 4: Mechanisms of Learning and Development (pp. 56-76) (coursepack)
Braitenberg, V. (1986). Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Ch. 7
Larger Structures: Maps and Hierarchy
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., & Silverstein, M. (1977). A pattern language. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 53: Main Gateways (pp. 276-279) (coursepack)
November 5
Predictive Structure
November 9. Booker, L.B. & Kaplan, S. (1989). Learning in Difficult Environments: A new look at some classical principles. Unpublished manuscript. (coursepack)
Chown, E. (1994). Consolidation and Learning: A Connectionist Model of Human Credit Assignment. Doctoral dissertation. The University of Michigan. Ch. 2: Consolidation, Ch. 3: Credit Assignment (web) (web), (html version)
Sonntag, M.L. (1991). Learning sequence in an associative network: A step towards cognitive structure. Doctoral dissertation. The University of Michigan. Ch 2: The Importance of Learning Sequences (coursepack-optional)
November 12
Emotions
Control Mechanisms
Schwartz, D.A. and Kaplan, S. (1995) Some species of attention: A functional analysis (unpublished manuscript) (coursepack)
WORK FOR THE COURSE: The work for this course includes class participation, readings, two tests, and several group assignments.