PROSEMINAR IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Fall 2000
16:185:500:01
Index #07174
Day and Time: Tuesdays, 9:00-11:40 a.m.
Location: Psychology Building Addition, Room A139, Busch Campus
Professors: Ernie Lepore and Guest Lecturers (see below)


Schedule:
 
Sept. 5Zenon Pylyshyn: What's in your mind?
- What's in your mind? (ch.1, text)
Sept. 12Zenon Pylyshyn (continued)
 
Sept. 19Karin Stromswold: Acquisition of language and its dysfunctions
- Cognitive and neural aspects of language acquisition (ch. 13, text and 4 page handout)
- Pinker, Language acquisition (recommended)
Sept. 26Alan Prince: Optimality Theory
- Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 1997. Optimality: from neural networks to universal grammar, Science 275, 1604-1610.
- Linguistic and cognitive explanation in optimality theory (ch. 10, text)
Oct. 3Lila Gleitman: The problem of word learning
- L. Gleitman (1990), The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition 1(1) 3 - 55
- E. Markman and G. Wachtel (1988), Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology 20, 121-157.
Oct. 10Matthew Stone: Conversational process and communicative intent
- Thomason: Accommodation, Meaning and Implicature
- Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs: Referring as a collaborative process
- Stone: Towards a computational account of knowledge, action and inference in instructions
Oct. 17Alan Leslie: Modularity in infant's and children's cognition
- ‘Theory of mind’ as a mechanism of selective attention
Oct. 24Vidal Annan, Jr.: The role of immediate past experience on the perceived lightness of surfaces
- Dinnerstein, D.(1965) Previous and Concurrent Visual Experience as determinants of Phenomenal Shape. American Journal of Psychology, 78, 235-242.
- Shimozaki, S.S., Eckstein, M.P., & Thomas, J.P. (1999) The Maintenance of Apparent Luminance of an Object. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25(5), 1433-1453.
Oct. 31Rochel Gelman: Cognitive Development - Domain Specificity
- Domain specificity in cognitive development: universals and nonuniversals
- Nonverbal counting in humans: The psychophysics of number representation
Nov. 7Randy Gallistel: The computational basis of modularity
- The replacement of general-purpose learning models with adaptively specialized learning modules
Nov. 14Steve Hanson: Neural Computation: Foundations and Key Problems
- Connectionist neuroscience: Representational and learning issues for neuroscience (ch. 14, text)
 
Nov. 21- no class (Tuesday is Thursday class)
 
Nov. 28Doug DeCarlo: Applications of computer vision to HCI
- Non-verbal vision-based interfaces
- Emancipated pixels: Real-world graphics in the luminous room
- Visual sensing of humans for active public interfaces
Dec. 5Ilona Kovács: Brain and vision
- Gestalten of today: Early processing of visual contours and surfaces
- When the brain changes its mind: Interocular grouping during binocular rivalry
Dec. 12Thomas V. Papathomas: Interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes in vision
- See how they turn: False depth and motion in Hughes's reverspectives
- The brain as a hypothesis-constructing-and-testing agent (ch. 7, text)

Required Text:

What is Cognitive Science?  Ernest Lepore and Zenon Pylyshyn (Editors), Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
Additional readings to be distributed in class - approximate cost $15-20.

Grading:

Attendance is mandatory - no more than 2 excused absences (submit a letter from your doctor or dean) will be permitted (no unexcused absences). Additional absences will result in reduction of 1/2 grade per absence.

Requirements - 2 short papers (8-10 pages)

    paper 1 - due Tuesday, October 24
    paper 2 - due Tuesday, December 19 by 12:00 noon

Content/topic of papers to be determined upon consultation with Prof. Pylyshyn or Lepore.


Web pages & Email addresses
Ernest Lepore lepore@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Zenon Pylyshyn zenon@ruccs.rutgers.edu 
Karin Stromswold karin@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Alan Prince prince@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Lila Gleitman gleitman@cattell.psych.upenn.edu
Matthew Stone mdstone@ruccs.rutgers.edu 
Alan Leslie aleslie@ruccs.rutgers.edu 
Vidal Annan, Jr. avidal@pegasus.rutgers.edu
Rochel Gelman rgelman@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Randy Gallistel galliste@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Stephen Jose Hanson jose@psychology.rutgers.edu
Doug DeCarlo decarlo@ruccs.rutgers.edu 
Ilona Kovács ikovacs@cyclops.rutgers.edu
Thomas Papathomas papathom@rci.rutgers.edu