PROSEMINAR IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Fall 1999

16:185:500:01 Index #27542

Day and Time: Tuesdays-9:00-11:40 a.m.
Location: Psychology Building, Room 301, Busch Campus
Professors: Ernie Lepore, Bruce Tesar and Guest Lecturers (see below)

 

Sept. 7 Bruce Tesar: Introduction

Sept. 14 Mark Baker: Syntax Research: teasing apart the Universal and the Particular
Reading:- Syntax (introductory)
or - On the Interplay of the Universal and the Particular: Case Studies from Edo (more in-depth)

Sept. 21 Alan Prince
Readings:- 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)

Sept. 28 Emma Borg: Semantics
Reading:- Larson, R. and Segal, G. 1995. Knowledge of Meaning, Cambridge, Mass: MIT; Chs.1 & 2.

Oct. 5 Karin Stromswold: Acquisition of language and its dysfunctions
Readings:- Cognitive and neural aspects of language acquisition (ch. 13, text and 4 page handout)
- Language acquisition (recommended)

Oct. 12 Julie Boland: Language processing — the empirical data on adults
Readings:- Dissociating brain responses to syntactic and semantic anomalies: Evidence from event-related potentials
- Interaction with autonomy: Multiple Output models and the inadequacy of the Great Divide
- The relationship between syntactic and semantic processes in sentence comprehension (optional)

Oct. 19 Suzanne Stevenson: Language processing as a computational problem
Reading: - Bridging the symbolic-connectionist gap in language comprehension (ch. 12, text)
Hybrid language processing

Oct. 26 Matthew Stone: Language generation and referential ambiguity
Readings:- Using Language, chapters 5 & 7
- Collaborating on referring expressions
- Computational interpretations of the Gricean maxims in the generation of referring expressions)

Nov. 2 Alan Leslie: Objecthood in infancy
Reading:- Indexing and the object concept: Developing ‘what' and ‘where' systems

Nov. 9 Zenon Pylyshyn: What's in your mind?
Reading: - What’s in your mind? (ch.1, text)

Nov. 16 Steve Stich: Reasoning and rationality
Reading:- Rethinking Rationality: From bleak implications to Darwinian modules (ch. 3, text)

Nov. 23 Doug DeCarlo: Applications of Computer Vision to HCI
Readings:- Quick, F.K.H. Non-verbal vision-based interfaces, 1995, paper accompanying keynote speech at IWHIT '95 (International Workshop in Human Interface Technology)
- Jacob, R.J.K., 1993, What you look at is what you get: eye movement user interfaces, IEEE Computer, vol. 26, no. 7, 65-67.
- Cassell, J., Bickmore, T., Billinghurst, M., Campbell, L., Chang, K., Vilhjálmsson, H., and Yan, H. 1999, CHI '99 Conference Proceedings, 520-527.

Nov. 30 Jacob Feldman: Perceptual organization and perceptual semantics
Reading:- Does vision work? Towards a semantics of perception (ch. 6, text)

Dec. 7 Ilona Kovacs: Brain and vision
Readings:- Gestalten of today: Early processing of visual contours and surfaces
- When the brain changes its mind: Interocular grouping during binocular rivalry

Dec. 14 Sven Dickinson: Vision -- the computational problem
Reading:- Object representation and recognition (ch. 5, 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