Cognitive
Science Reading Seminar
Bermudez, Cognitive Science: an
introduction to the science of the mind
Semester 1, 2012
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Sutton's home page.
Please feel free to email me
This is the home page for the Cognitive Science PhD
reading seminar in May-June 2012 at Macquarie Uni.
I'll put up further links and resources here in due course (feel free
to send through any useful links and ideas).
For now, please let me know which week/s you'd like to be in the
presenting team to start discussion.
Schedule
We meet on Thursdays, 12 noon to 1pm for 8 weeks. There are some
venue changes, please check the schedule below.
Week 1. Thursday 10 May, E5A 180. Course introduction. Chapters
1-3.
1. The Prehistory
of Cognitive Science. The reaction against behaviorism in
psychology; algorithms and computation; linguistics and the formal
analysis of language; information-processing models in psychology.
2. The
Disciplines Mature: three milestones. Language and
micro-worlds; how do mental images represent?; an interdisciplinary
model of vision.
3. The Turn to
the Brain. Cognitive systems as functional systems; brain
anatomy and the primary visual pathway; computational modelling and the
brain; mapping the stages of lexical processing.
Week 2. Thursday 17 May, Senate
Room (C8A 310). Chapters 4-5. Presenters:
Aline Cordonnier, Andy Etchell, & Robert Ross
4. Cognitive
Science and the Integration Challenge (26pp). Levels of explanation - contrast
psychology and neuroscience; the integration challenge; case 1:
evolutionary psychology of reasoning; case 2: neural activity &
BOLD signals.
5. Tackling the
Integration Challenge (24pp).
Intertheoretic reduction and the integration challenge; Marr's
tri-level hypothesis; models of mental architecture.
Week 3. Thursday 24 May, E5A
180. Chapters 6-7. Presenters: Nathan
Caruana, Anastasiya Romanova, & Likan Zhan
6. Physical
Symbol Systems and the Language of Thought (30pp). The physical symbol systems
hypothesis; the language of thought; the Chinese Room argument.
7. Applying the
Symbolic Paradigm (36pp). Expert
systems, machine learning, and the heuristic search hypothesis; ID3, an
algorithm for machine learning; WHISPER, stability in a block world;
SHAKEY the robot.
Week 4. Thursday 31 May,
Senate Room (C8A 310). Chapters 8-9. Presenters:
Danielle Colenbrander, Yvette Kezilas, Trudy Krajenbrink, &
Joann Tang
8. Neural
Networks and Distributed Information Processing (30pp). Neurally-inspired models;
single-layer networks; multilayer networks; information processing in
neural networks.
9. Neural Network
Models of Cognitive Processes (36pp). Language and rules; language
learning in neural networks; object permanence & physical
reasoning; network models of children's physical reasoning.
Week 5. Thursday 7 June,
Senate Room (C8A 310). Chapter 10. Presenters:
Richard Heersmink, Chris McCarroll, & Monica Ricci
10. How
Are Cognitive Systems Organized? (36pp) Architectures for
intelligent agents; Fodor on the modularity of mind; massive
modularity; hybrid architectures.
Week
6. Thursday 14 June, Senate Room (C8A 310). Chapter 11. Presenters: Leidy Castro-Meneses,
Wei He, & Xenia Schmalz
11. Strategies for Brain Mapping (36pp). Structure and function in the
brain; techniques from cognitive neuroscience; the locus of selection
problem; networks for attention; from data to maps, problems and
pitfalls.
Week 7. Thursday 21 June,
Senate Room (C8A 310). Chapter 12. Presenters:
Anne Jager, Amanda Selwood, Marina Trakas, & Shu Yau
12. A Case
Study: Exploring Mindreading (46pp). Pretend play and
misrepresentation; metarepresentation, autism, and theory of mind; the
mindreading system; false belief; simulation; cognitive neuroscience of
mindreading.
Week 8. Thursday 28 June,
C8A311. Chapter 13. Presenters: Erin
Banales, Mirko Farina, & Bianca de Wit
13. New
Horizons: dynamical systems and situated cognition (42pp). Dynamical systems; examples from
child development; situated cognition and biorobotics; behaviour-based
robotics.
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Last updated 22 May 2012.