COGS 493 Senior Seminar in Cognitive
Science
Fall 2012
Wednesdays 1:10-3:50, TPL 113
Instructor: Andrea Danyluk
Department of Computer Science and Program in
Cognitive Science
TCL 305 | x2178 | andrea@cs.williams.edu
Office Hours: Any time I’m in my office with the door
open, but in particular Thursdays 1:00-3:00, and by appointment
(Exceptions: I’ll be out of town for
conferences/giving talks 10/2-5 and 11/15-16)
This course serves as the
capstone for the Cognitive Science concentration. In your electives, you have
had the opportunity to explore specific interests in cognitive science. This seminar now brings all of you
together to share your individual knowledge and perspectives with each other
while learning about and discussing current research, issues, and controversies
in this interdisciplinary endeavor.
Requirements and Grading
Two Symposium Papers (12.5% each; i.e., 25% of the final grade)
The format for the seminar
will consist largely of student presentations of papers, and class discussion
of the issues raised by student papers and the readings. Each week, one or two students will craft individual symposium papers to be included
among the readings for the seminar. Each student will be responsible for two
symposium papers over the course of the semester. An author of a symposium paper
should take the assigned readings as a starting point for her own investigation
of the literature on the week’s topic.
Her task, then, is to synthesize and comment on the material she has
read. It
will be her responsibility to provide an overview of the principal issues for
that week. Symposium authors are
encouraged to offer critical comments in their work.
Symposium papers should be
approximately 5 pages long: typewritten, double spaced in a 12 point font. No title page. Papers are due Tuesdays by 9:00 PM, the
night before the seminar meeting.
Symposium authors are asked to distribute their papers by email to the
entire seminar.
Symposium Paper Presentations / Discussion Leadership
(5% each; 10% total)
Authors of symposium papers
for a given week are expected to lead discussion. Students should meet with the instructor to coordinate the
week’s agenda.
Participation (15%)
Your thoughtful
participation is essential to the vitality of the seminar. It is also the instructor’s primary
indicator that you are reading the assigned papers carefully.
Many students are concerned
with this aspect of the classroom dynamic, but it should not be a source of
anxiety. Keep in mind that your
first priority is reading the assignments carefully and working diligently on
the writing for the course.
Thoughtful, honest, and respectful participation derives from these. Every effort will be made to ensure
that the class is a welcoming forum for sharing serious ideas. In addition, ‘participation’ is more
inclusive than many students realize.
Being attentive and engaged in class and asking clarificatory questions
fall under this heading.
If you will be unable to
attend a session of the seminar (due to, for example, a field trip for another
course, a religious observance, etc.), please inform the instructor as early in
the semester as possible.
Project (15%)
The short project will
provide you with the opportunity to explore in a “hands on” way some area of
cognitive science. This might
involve neural network modeling, an exploration within the framework of a
cognitive architecture such as SOAR or ACT-R, or a simulation of a complex system
implemented in StarLogo. For those
exploring Honors work in Cognitive Science, this might be directly related to
the thesis project.
Project Presentation (5%)
Each student will give a
brief presentation of his or her project to the class on Nov. 7.
Final Paper (25%)
The final assignment for the
course will be a term paper on a topic of your choice (and with approval of the
instructor). Students who hope to
pursue Honors in Cognitive Science are advised to treat this paper as the first
phase of thesis research.
Final papers should be 10-15
pages long: typewritten, double spaced, in a 12 point font. No title page. Final papers are due by 5:00 PM on
December 15 (the last day that the Dean’s Office allows written work to be
turned in for courses without final exams).
Final Paper Presentation (5%)
Each student will give a
brief (15-20 minute) presentation on his or her research topic in the final class
meeting of the semester (Dec. 5).
Resources Beyond the Instructor
The Writing Workshop
operates in the evenings in Sawyer Library, Schow Science Library, and
Paresky. Students may drop in for
a session or, when traffic is high, schedule an appointment. Students who want to improve their
writing may also request a tutor (or “Writing Partner”) by emailing
writingworkshop@williams.edu.
Students with disabilities
who may need disability-related classroom accommodations for this course are
encouraged to set up an appointment with me as soon as possible and to contact
the Dean’s Office at x4262 to better insure that accommodations are provided in
a timely manner.
Weekly Schedule of Topics
and Readings
September 12 Behaviorism
and Language
Skinner, B. F.
(1957). Verbal Behavior.
NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Chapters 1 and 2. (Additional chapters available on
e-reserve.)
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review
of Verbal Behavior. Language, 35, 26-58.
MacCorquodale,
K. (1970). On Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of
Behavior, 13, 83-99.
Palmer,
D. C. (2006). On Chomsky’s Appraisal of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior: A Half Century of Misunderstanding. The Behavior Analyst, 29, 253-267.
September 19 Mirror
Neurons
Rizzolati, G. and Arbib, M. A. (1998). Language within our grasp. Trends in
Neuroscience, 21, 188-194.
Gallese,
V., Keysers, C., and Rizzolati, G.
(2004). A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 396-403.
Iacoboni
M. and Dapretto M. (2006). The
mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction. Nature
Reviews of Neuroscience, 7, 942-951.
Dinstein, E., Thomas, C., Behrmann, M., and Heeger, D. J. (2008). A mirror up to nature. Current Biology, 18, R13-R18.
Kilner, J. M. (2011). More than one pathway to action understanding. Trends in
Cognitive
Sciences, 15, 352-357.
September 26 How
Abstract is Abstract Thought?
Casasanto, D. (2008).
Similarity and proximity: When does close in space mean close in mind? Memory and Cognition, 36 (6), 1047-1056.
Wilson,
N. L. and Gibbs, R. W., Jr. (2007). Real and imagined body movement primes
metaphor comprehension. Cognitive Science,
31, 721-731.
Weiskopf,
D. A. (2010). Embodied cognition and linguistic comprehension. Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science, 41, 294-304.
Gibbs,
R. W., Jr. and Perlman, M. (2010). Language understanding is grounded in
experiential simulations: a response to Weiskopf. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 41, 305-308.
Weiskopf,
D. A. (2010). Understanding is not simulating: a reply to Gibbs and Perlman. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science,
41, 309-312.
October 3 Language,
Number, and Space
Gordon,
P. (2004) Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from
Amazonia.
Science, 306, 496-499.
Pica,
P., Lemer, C., Izard, V., and Dehaene, S. (2004) Exact and Approximate
Arithmetic
in an Amazonian Indigene Group. Science,
306, 499-503.
Frank,
M. C., Everett, D. L., Fedorenko, E., and Gibson, E. (2008) Number as a
cognitive
technology: Evidence from Pirahã language
and cognition.
Cognition, 108, 819-824.
Butterworth,
B., Reeve, R., and Reynolds, F. (2011) Using Mental
Representations
of Space When Words Are Unavailable: Studies of Enumeration
and
Arithmetic in Indigenous Australia. Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology,
42,
630-638.
Clark, A. (2006) Language, embodiment, and the
cognitive niche, Trends in
Cognitive
Sciences, 10 (8), 370-374.
October 10 Dynamical
Systems
Spivey,
M. (2007). The Continuity of Mind.
NY: Oxford. Chapter 1. (Additional
chapters available on e-reserve.)
Kukona,
A. and Tabor, W. (2011). Impulse Processing: A Dynamical Systems
Model
of Incremental Eye Movements in the Visual World Paradigm. Cognitive
Science, 35, 1009-1051.
Botvinick,
M. (2012). Commentary: Why I Am Not a Dynamicist. Topics in
Cognitive
Science, 4, 78-83.
October 17 Quantum
Theories of Consciousness
(special guest: Prof. Bill Wootters)
Penrose,
R., and Hameroff, S. (2011). Consciousness in the universe: Neuroscience,
quantum space-time geometry and the Orch OR Theory.
Journal of Cosmology, 14.
Litt,
A., Eliasmith, C., Kroon, F., Weinstein, S., and Thagard, P. (2006). Is the
brain a quantum computer? Cognitive
Science, 30, 593-603.
Hameroff, S.R. (2007). The brain is both neurocomputer and quantum computer. Cognitive Science, 31, 1035-1045.
October 24 The
Promise and Pitfalls of Cognitive Neuroscience
(special guest: Prof. Nate Kornell [tentative])
Gazzaniga,
M. S., Ivry, R. B., and Mangun, G. R. (2008). Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of Mind, 3rd ED.
(Excerpt: 148-159).
Kosslyn, S. M. (1998). If neuroimaging is the answer, what is the question? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, 354, 1283-1294.
Poldrack, R. A. (2008). The role of fMRI in Cognitive Neuroscience: where do we stand? Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18, 223-227.
Van Horn, J. D. and Poldrack, R. A. (2009). Functional MRI at the crossroads. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 73, 3-9.
Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., and Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 470-477.
October 31 Projects,
week 1: Individual Meetings (NO CLASS MEETING)
November 7 Projects,
week 2: Class Presentations
November 14 Creativity
Boden,
M. (2004) The Creative Mind: Myths and
mechanisms. New York:
Routledge.
Chapters 2 and 4.
Thagard,
P. and Stewart, T. C. (2011) The AHA! Experience: Creativity Through
Emergent
Binding in Neural Networks, Cognitive
Science, 35, 1-33.
November 28 Tool
Use in Non-Human Animals
Bluff,
L. A., Weir, A. A. S., Rutz, C., Wimpenny, J. H., Kacelnik, A. (2007).
Tool-related
cognition in New Caledonian crows. Comparative Cognition and
Behavior Reviews, 2, 1-25.
Videos can be found embedded in the html
version of this paper.
McGrew, W.C.
(2004) Primatology: Advanced ape technology. Current
Biology, 14, R1046-7.
Related videos can be found in a paper
by Sanz and co-workers, to be found here.
Whiten,
A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W. C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama,
Y.,
Tutin, C. E. G., Wrangham, R. W., and Boesch, C. (1999) Cultures
in
chimpanzees. Science,
399, 682-5.
Johnson-Frey,
S.H. (2003) What’s so special about human tool
use? Neuron, 39,
201-204.
December 5 Student
Presentations of Term Paper Topics
Honor Code
The project and all written
work should be completed by each student independently. Otherwise, discussion outside of class
is highly encouraged. For example,
when two students are co-leading a class discussion, they should work together
in preparing for that discussion, but their symposium papers should be written
independently. Students are also
encouraged to seek help from the instructor on any assignment.
Plagiarism includes
copying text or making use of ideas from any source (such as another person, a
book, an article, or a web site) without acknowledging that source. Thus, in
the assignments students must acknowledge all sources with citations, and either endnotes or footnotes containing the
full reference information for those citations.
Please see “Academic
Honesty and Honor Code” in the Student Handbook. Please also be sure to see the instructor if you need
clarification of any aspect of the Honor Code.