Computer Science/Psychology 271L: Introduction to Cognitive Science

Fall 2009

Tuesdays & Thursdays 16:00 - 17:15 in W-1-034

Welcome to "Intro to Cognitive Science!" This page provides current information on the CS/PSYCH L271 course. Please come back to this page regularly during and after the course to check for updates on assignment deadlines, office hours etc. Most importantly, all PowerPoint slides etc. I use in class will be uploaded and available from the syllabus table at the bottom of this page. These files will be uploaded immediately after each class, to make classes more surprising and exciting ;-). If you have any questions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail. 

Last updated on November 20, 2009.

Instructor

Course Description

Textbook

Evaluation (assignments are posted here)

Papers

Software

Syllabus (PowerPoint slides are posted here)

Accommodations

Student Conduct

Instructor:   Marc Pomplun                     Office: S-3-171                     Office Hours: Tuesdays 17:30 - 19:00, Thursdays 14:30 - 16:00                     Office Phone: (617) 287-6443                     Lab: S-3-135                     Lab Phone: (617) 287-6485                     e-mail: marc@cs.umb.edu                     Homepage: http://www.cs.umb.edu/~marc

Course Description:  Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary field fundamentally concerned with furthering our understanding of the development, underlying processes, and implementation of language, perception, problem-solving, learning, memory, and other intelligent capacities. This course offers an introduction to this science for all levels of undergraduate majors in psychology, computer science, biology and other related fields.

Text:       Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind by Jay D. Friedenberg and Gordon Silverman, Sage Publications, ISBN: 9781412925686 (available at the UMB Bookstore but may be cheaper on the web)

Evaluation: There will be four homework assignments. A midterm exam will take place on Thursday, October 22, while the final exam is scheduled for December 10 (see syllabus below). Your final grade will be computed as follows:

Homework:           20%  (5% for each assignment)
Papers:                  20%  (10% for each paper)
Midterm Exam:    30% 
Final Exam:           30%

Paper Assignments:

• Your will write two papers, one addressing one of the topics that we discussed during the first half of the course, and the other one addressing a topic from the second half. 

• Each paper should be at least five double-spaced pages long.

• In each paper, please refer to at least three sources. Some suggestions for literature are below.

• If you want to write about a topic different from those covered by the suggested literature below, please confirm with me by e-mail before you start writing.

• The papers must be submitted by October 29 and December 15 either as a hard copy in class or by e-mail to me (marc@cs.umb.edu).

Suggested Literature:

Books:

• Nilsson, N.J. (1998). Artificial Intelligence: A new synthesis. Morgan Kaufmann

• Churchland, P & Sejnowski, T.J. (1994). The Computational Brain. MIT Press.

Journal articles:

• Bowers J. S. (2002). Challenging the widespread assumption that connectionism and distributed representations go hand-in-hand. Cognit Psychol. 45(3): 413-45.
• Markman AB, Dietrich E. (2000) Extending the classical view of representation. Trends Cogn Sci. 4(12):470- 475.
• Arbib, M.A., Fellous, J.M. (2004). Emotions: from brain to robot. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(12): 554- 561.
• Andersen, R.A., Burdick, J.W., Musallam, S., Pesaran, B., Cham, J.G. (2004). Cognitive neural prosthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(11): 486-493.
• Palmeri, T.J., Wong, A.C.N., Gauthier, I. (2004). Computational approaches to the development of perceptual expertise. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(8):378-386.
• Tesauro, G. and Sejnowski, T.J. (1989). A parallel network that learns to play backgammon. Artificial Intelligence, 39(3):357-390.
• Millán, J.R., Renkens, F., Mouriño, J., Gerstner, W. (2004). Brain-actuated interaction. Artificial Intelligence, 159: 241–259

Software:    eliza.exe    response.dat    expert.exe    sample.txt

Syllabus

(note: PDF files are in grayscale for better printing - HTML files are in color for better on-screen viewing - PPT files are for playing around with)

Session Dates	Topic		Chapter/Material	Slides
Tuesday, September 8	Introduction and Preliminaries		Chapter 1	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, September 10	A Cognitive Science Appetizer: Vision in Humans and Machines		Chapter 4	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, September 15	The Experimental Approach			[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, September 17	Neuroscience: Overview		Chapter 6	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, September 22	Vision: Eye Movements and Visual Attention		Chapter 4	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, September 24	Memory I		Chapter 5	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, September 29	Memory II		Chapter 5	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT] [Paper]
Thursday, October 1	Psycholinguistics I		Chapter 9	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, October 6	Psycholinguistics II		Chapter 9	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, October 8	How to Write and Publish an Experimental Research Paper			[PDF] [HTML] [PPT] [Sample]
Tuesday, October 13	Philosophical Questions I		Chapter 2	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, October 15	Philosophical Questions II		Chapter 2	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, October 20	Midterm Review
Thursday, October 22	Midterm Exam
Tuesday, October 27	The Computational Approach		Chapter 4	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT] [Autom.]
Thursday, October 29	Theory of Computation I: Finite Automata		Chapter 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, November 3	Theory of Computation II: Turing Machines/Computability		Chapter 9	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, November 5	Artificial Intelligence: Symbolic vs. Connectionist AI		Chapters 10, 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, November 10	Symbolic AI I: Game-Playing Algorithms		Chapter 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, November 12	Symbolic AI II: Natural Language Processing & Expert Systems		Chapters 9, 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, November 17	Robotics		Chapter 12	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, November 19	Artificial Neural Networks I: Supervised Learning		Chapter 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT] [Demo]
Tuesday, November 24	Artificial Neural Networks II: Unsupervised Learning		Chapter 11	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, November 26	Thanksgiving		No Class!
Tuesday, December 1	Modeling Cognitive Functions I: Computational Neuroscience		Chapter 4	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Thursday, December 3	Modeling Cognitive Functions II: An Example Study		Chapter 4	[PDF] [HTML] [PPT]
Tuesday, December 8	Final Exam Review
Thursday, December 10	Final Exam

Accommodations:  Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 offers guidelines for curriculum modifications and adaptations for students with documented disabilities. If applicable, students may obtain adaptation recommendations from the Ross Center for Disability Services, M-1-401, (617-287-7430). The student must present these recommendations and discuss them with each professor within a reasonable period, preferably by the end of Drop/Add period.

Student Conduct:  Students are required to adhere to the University Policy on Academic Standards and Cheating, to the University Statement on Plagiarism and the Documentation of Written Work, and to the Code of Student Conduct as delineated in the catalog of Undergraduate Programs, pp. 44-45, and 48-52. The Code is available online at: http://www.umb.edu/student_services/student_rights/code_conduct.html

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