Reading Schedule (Summer)
The main textbook for this class is Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind, by Friedenberg and Silverman. It is available from both the Georgia Tech Bookstore and Engineer’s Bookstore. Be sure to look under look under all the crosslisted sections (CS, ISYE, PST, PSY) if you do not find it under your section.
Week 1 (May 15): Introduction to Cognitive Science
- Lecture 1: Introduction to the class
- Lecture 2: Mind as computer
- Lecture 3: Leveling the Mind
- Lecture 4: What representations do for thought
Reading:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 1.
- David Marr (1982). Quotations from Vision, chapter 1.
- Optional reading: David Marr (1977). Artificial Intelligence: A personal view. Artificial Intelligence 9. 37-48.
Week 2 (May 22): Philosophical issues.
- Lectures 5-6: Things like analogies (part 1 part 2)
- Lecture 7: Spock’s brain, Descarte’s pineal gland
- Lecture 8: Headrooms 1: The Chinese Room
Readings:
- Gentner, D. (1999). Analogy. In R. A. Wilson & F. C. Keil (Eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (pp. 17-20). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapters 2-3.
- Searle, J.R. (1980) Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417-457
Week 3 (May 29): Early psychological models.
- Lecture 9: Headrooms 2: The Cartesian Theatre
- Lecture 10: Analogies of the mind
- Lecture 11: Gestalt: The sum of its parts
- Lecture 12: Behaviorism
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 3.
- Dennett, D.C. & Kinsbourne, M. (1992) Time and the Observer. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (2) 183-247.
- Other readings TBA
Week 4 (June 5): Cognitive psychology
- Lectures 13-14: Gestalt, continued.
- Lecture 15-16: Marr’s theory of vision, feature integration theory
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 4.
- Biederman, I. (1995). Visual object recognition. In S. F. Kosslyn and D. N. Osherson (Eds.). An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd edition, Volume 2., Visual Cognition. MIT Press. Chapter 4, pp. 121-165. Part 1 [PDF] Part 2 [PDF]
- Optional reading: Kimberly Kirkpartrick. Object Recognition (web site). Good description of RBC, plus pigeons!
Week 5 (June 12):Memory and problem solving
- Lecture 17-18: Biederman’s Recognition by Components theory, and Introduction to Memory models
- Lecture 19: Problem solving
- Midterm 1 (June 15)
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 5.
Week 6 (June 19): Imagery and Neurology
- Lecture 20: ACT-R
- Lecture 21: The imagery debate, part 1
- Lecture 22: The imagery debate, part 2
- Lecture 23: Agnosia
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 6.
Week 7 (June 26): Networks
- Lecture 24-25: Neural networks
- Lecture 26-27: Semantic networks
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 7.
Week 8 (July 3): Evolutionary cognition
- No class on July 4
- Lecture 28: Evolutionary models of cognition
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 8.
Week 9 (July 10): Linguistics
- Lecture 30-31: Chomsky and grammar
- Lecture 32: Language acquisition
- Lecture 33: The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 9.
Week 10 (July 17): Midterm II, Artificial Intelligence
- Lecture 34-35: Turing meets Eliza, unhappily
- Midterm II
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapter 10 (please also begin reading chapter 11)
Week 11 (July 24): Artificial Intelligence
- Lecture 36: Expert systems
- Lecture 37: All the knowledge that’s fit to encode: The Cyc Project
- Lecture 38-39: Robotics and situated cognition
Readings:
- Friedenberg & Silverman, chapters 11 & 12.
- Optional: Chapter 13.
Final Exam: Tuesday, August 1, 8:00 – 10:50 am.
I’m glad you changed the look of the readings I can actually tell what to read now I found it extremely confusing before.
In class, I think you mentioned that we should complete the readings over the duration of the week, so should we read them in the order they are listed?
In general, yes. The readings are given in the order you should read them. In most cases, which readings correspond to which lectures can be determined by just looking at the subjects.
Umm, I see the date for midterm 2, but where is the date for midterm 1? (or am I just blind?)
It’s June 15.
Here’s an interesting article in Cognitive Science that deals with analogies.
http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/cogsci/Gentner.pdf
It’s considered a classic in CogSci and has had a large influence on research into analogy.
R. Brooks Van Horn III
This is just one paper of several classic works on that site, so I’ve added the site’s URL to the bookmark list.