Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Cognitive
Science
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Cognitive Science 200: Ten theses
in Cognitive Science
Fall 2007
A discussion board is available here.
To join the cs200 mailing list to receive
announcements
of talks, see this
instruction page
Cognitive Science 200 is an interdisciplinary seminar of
changing topics, and is used as a mechanism for
Ph.D. students in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program and in
the Cognitive Science Department to achieve breadth.
This quarter, the topic is "Ten theses in Cognitive Science:
Ph.D. Theses, that is!"
This quarter we will be bringing back graduates of the
Interdisciplinary PhD Program (IDP) in Cognitive Science and
the Cognitive Science department to give their thesis talks
with an update. The idea is to give current PhD students in
the IDP and Ph.D. students in Cognitive Science an idea of
what constitutes a thesis in Cognitive Science. The
presenters span a wide range of topics, from philosophy of
mind to the hard-core mathematics and engineering of
facial expression tracking. All students in Cognitive
Science should find something of interest here!
The room for Cogsci 200 is Cognitive Science Building
003. The meeting times are Fridays 2-2:50PM for registered
students, and 3:00-4:30PM for the lectures (to which the
UCSD Cognitive Science community is invited). This will be
followed usually by the cognitive science happy hour in the
cog sci building courtyard.
The first meeting is Friday, September 28th, 2007.
The graduate student section from 2-2:50 will involve the
professor using the dreaded index card method: students will
be asked questions about the papers that are intended to
generate some discussion and understanding of the
material. Students are therefore expected to have done the
reading before class. The method involves index cards with
every student's name on them. These are shuffled at the
beginning of class, and then students are asked questions in
order of their appearance on the card. The first question is
almost always, "What is the point of this paper?", and is
often asked several times until we converge on one or more
main themes of the paper.
The requirements for the class are: 1) reading
the assigned papers; 2) being able to answer questions about
them in discussion section; 3) asking the speaker a question
about 20% of the time (I'll be keeping track! I.e., you need to ask 2
questions all quarter) and 4) writing an
approximately 10 page research proposal that is of your own
choosing - it could be an extension to one of the topics
covered in the lectures, or it could be something completely
novel, as long as it covers a topic in Cognitive Science!
It should be specific enough that there
are clear criteria for success or failure.
The draft of this is due in the 8th week, the final version
is due on the Monday of finals week.
| DATE |
PRESENTER |
TITLE |
PAPER
|
SLIDES |
September 28
|
Tim Marks
|
Facing Uncertainty:
3D Face Tracking and Learning with Generative Models |
Introduction
to Tim's thesis
|
|
October 5
|
Jonathan Nelson
|
Optimal experimental design as a
theory of
perceptual and cognitive information acquisition
|
Nelson,
JD (in press). Towards a rational theory of human information
acquisition. In Oaksford, M & Chater, N (Eds.), The probabilistic
mind: Prospects for rational models of cognition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Optional:
Nelson,
JD (2005). Optimal experimental design as a theory
of
perceptual and cognitive information acquisition.
Ph.D. dissertation,
Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego. |
|
October 12
|
Rick Grush
|
The emulation theory of
representation
|
Grush
R. (2004) The emulation theory of representation: Motor control,
imagery, and perception. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences 27:377-442
Note: Only the first 20 pages are required, but the
commentary should be interesting! |
|
October 19
|
Aarre Laakso
|
The significance of spatial
representation: The current state of the state space semantics debate
|
Laakso, A., & Cottrell, G.
W. (2000). Content and cluster analysis: assessing representational
similarity in neural systems. Philosophical Psychology, 13(1), 47-76.
Laakso, A., &
Cottrell, G. W. (2006). Churchland on connectionism. In B. L. Keeley
(Ed.), Paul Churchland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
|
|
October 26
|
David Noelle
|
|
|
|
November 2
|
Brian Keeley
|
Cognitive Science as the
Computational Neuroethology of Intelligent Behavior: Why Biological
Facts are Important for Explaining Intelligent Behavior
|
Keeley,
B. (2002) Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in
humans and other animals. Journal of
Philosophy, 44(1):5-28.
|
|
November 9
|
Michael Mozer
|
The perception of multiple
objects
|
Mozer,
M. C. (2002). Frames of reference in unilateral neglect and spatial
attention: A computational perspective. Psychological Review, 109,
156-185.
Optional:
Mozer,
M. C., & Behrmann, M. (1990). On the interaction of selective
attention and lexical knowledge: A connectionist account of neglect
dyslexia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 96-123.
also optional:
Mozer,
M. C., Halligan, P. W., & Marshall, J. C. (1997). The end of the
line for a brain-damaged model of unilateral neglect. Cognitive
Neuroscience, 9, 171-190.
|
|
November 16
|
Marni Stewart Bartlett
|
Information maximization in face
processing
|
Barlow,
Horace B. (1961) Possible principles underlying the transformations of
sensory messages.
Bartlett,
Marian S. (2007) Information maximization in face processing.
Neurocmputing 70:2204–2217
Optional:
Simoncelli,
E. & Olshausen, B. Natural image statistics and neural
representation. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 2001. 24:1193–216
|
|
November 23
|
Thanksgiving break!
|
|
|
|
November 30
|
Robert Kluender
|
|
Kluender, R. and Kutas, M.
(1993)
Bridging the gap: Evidence from ERPs on the processing of unbounded
dependencies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5(2):196-213.
Cowles,
H.W., Kluender, R., Kutas, M., and Polinsky, M. (2007). `Violations of
information structure: An electrophysiological study of answers
to wh-questions'. Brain and Language 102, 228-242.
|
|
December 7
|
John Stricker
|
Context, Artificial Neural
Networks and the Hippocampus
|
Stricker, J.L. and Brown,
G.G. (draft) Exploring a simple model of distributed memory: What
neuropsychologists can learn from connectionism.
Smith,
DM and Mizumori, S.J.Y. (2006) Hippocampal Place Cells, Context, and
Episodic Memory. Hippocampus16:716–729.
Optional:
Harley, T.A.
(2004) Does Cognitive Neuropsychology have a future? Cognitive Neuropsychology 21(1):3–16
|
|
The instructor is Professor
Gary Cottrell, whose office is CSE Building room 4130.
Feel free to send email to
arrange
an appointment, or telephone (858) 534-6640.
REGISTRATION
Students may take the seminar only for four units of S/U credit.
Students should register for COGS 200, section id 599281.
If you must have a letter
grade (because of your departmental requirements), please see me and
let me know!
Most recently updated on December 4, 2007 by Gary Cottrell, gary@ucsd.edu