HON 207: Intro to Cognitive Science: Cognitive Modeling - Fall 2009

Classes are held on Tuesday and Thursday from 3:10pm to 4:40pm in Lewis 1213.

News
Thursday, 2009/08/30, 12:27
Welcome to HON 207, Introduction to Cognitive Science. This is the course homepage. Links to lecture notes, assignments, and other items of interest can be found here.
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Full course syllabus
Cognitive Science Links
The Cognitive Science Society
DePaul's Institutional Review Board
For information about research using human subjects
Lecture Slides
Corin Pitcher's XSLT stylesheets for lecture slides
How to produce your own lecture slides
Schedule
TuesdayThursday

1 (9/10): Course overview. Intro to Cognitive Science. Slides Print
2 (9/15): More overview of Cognitive Science Slides Print
Read: Cognitive Science from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3 (9/17): Language Slides Print
Read: S. Pinker, 1995. Language Acquisition in Gleitman et al, "Invitation to Cog Sci: Language"
4 (9/22): LAB: Language (in Lewis 1307) Slides Print
Read: Come to the lab with your list of verbs
5 (9/24): Past tense Slides Print
Read: Pinker and Ullman (2002), The past and future of the past tense, Trends in Cognitive Science. Reading guide
6 (9/28): Scientific method, Symbolic models Slides Print
Read: Anderson, 1996. ACT: A Simple Theory of Complex Cognition, American Psychologist. Reading guide
Due: P1: Verb conjugation
7 (10/01): Repair Theory Slides Print
Read: Brown, 1980. Repair theory: A Generative theory of bugs in procedural skills, Cognitive Science, 4. Problems with the link above? Here's another pdf version if that one didn't work And here is: an MS Word version. Reading guide.
8 (10/06): LAB: Subtraction (in Lewis 1307) Slides Print
Read: Each group should bring a list of 10 bugs from Appendix 2 that they think could be generated by 2 procedures (5 each). For each, give the bug name, an example problem, and how you think you could generate the bug (i.e. what line of the procedure do you think you'd have to delete, and what repair (if any) would be used?).
9 (10/08): Learning (Soar) Slides Print
Read: Laird, 2006. Gentle Introduction to Soar: 2006 Update, from Soar homepage: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/soar. Reading guide
10 (10/13): Neural Nets Slides Print
Read: Stergiou and Siganos, Neural networks.
Due: P2: Subtraction
11 (10/15): Midterm quiz
12 (10/20): Neural Nets Examples Slides Print
Read: First page, second page, third page
13 (10/22): LAB: Neural nets (in Lewis 1307) Slides Print
Read: Each student should bring a picture of what you think the symmetry net should look like.
14 (10/27): Similarity Slides Print
Read: Goldstone, 1994. Similarity, Interactive Activation, and Mapping, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20. Reading guide
15 (10/29): Multitasking Slides Print
Read: Find something on the web or in the library about multitasking, either from the popular press (good) or from scholarly research (better). Read it and write up a short summary (a paragraph or two) to present to class and hand in. (Not the usual critical analysis.)
16 (11/03): Emotion
Read: Can computers have emotions? Follow "The Panel" link and read their position statements. Also read the "Key questions and possible answers".
Due: P3: Neural Nets
17 (11/05): LAB: TBA (in Lewis 1307)
Read:
18 (11/10): Embodiment
Read: Rohrer, 2006. The Body in Space: Dimensions of Embodiment. Body, Language and Mind. If that link didn't work, try this one or else google the title
19 (11/12): Philosophy: Chinese Room, Turing test
Read: Read and be prepared to discuss:
  • The Turing Test
  • Harnad, 1990. The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346,
  • Searle's Chinese room,
  • and the Loebner Prize.

  • 20 (11/17): TBA
    Read: Find a scholarly article about our topic, read it, and be prepared to give a short summary to the class, including relations to other topics covered in class.
    Due: P4: TBA

    22 (11/24): Final Exam, 2:45 - 5:00 PM

    Instructor Information
    Email peterh@cdm.depaul.edu
    Home Page http://reed.cs.depaul.edu/peterh/
    Phone 312-362-5736
    Hours Tuesday and Thursday 1:30-3:00 or by arrangement
    Address College of CDM
    DePaul University
    243 South Wabash Avenue
    Chicago, IL 60604-2301
    USA