HON 207 Introduction to Cognitive Science

Spring 2011

Instructor

Dr. Craig Miller
Office: 745 CDM Building, 312-362-5085
Email: cmiller@cs.depaul.edu
Web page: http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/cmiller
Office Hours: Announced on Web page

Course Meeting

Monday and Wednesday 1:30 - 3:00
1106 Lewis

Overview

This course introduces students to the multidiciplinary field of cognitive science, which aims to understand human perception, reasoning and language through the creation and evaluation of mechanistic (e.g. computational) theories. The study of cognitive science draws upon diverse disciplines including psychology, linguistics, computer science and philosophy.

Goals

By the end of the quarter, students will be able to:

Readings

Selected readings will be posted from the course schedule. Warning: some of the articles will be challenging to read. A goal of this course is to develop strategies for reading difficult materials so that you get the most out of them.

Tentative Projects

Grade Determination

35% (70 points) Reading summaries (best 7 of 8)
10% (20 points) Attendance and participation
30% (60 points) Small projects (3 at 20 points each)
15% (30 points) Independent project
10% (20 points) Reflective report (take-home final)

Students receiving more than 90% of possible points are guaranteed at least an A-, more than 80% at least a B-, more than 70% at least a C-, and more than 60% at least a D.

The participation grade is based on class attendance with active involvement in class exercises. One class attendance corresponds to one point. Up to four absences can be made up by posting to online discussion forums (2 substantive postings corresponds to one class attendance).

The reading summaries are based on weekly assigned articles, which will generally consist of one academic paper and one or two articles from the popular press (e.g. The New York Times, Time Magazine). Each weekly summary should consist of a 2-3 paragraph summary of the assigned articles plus questions or suggestions to promote a class discussion.

Policies

While some collaboration is encouraged for this class, all submitted reports, projects and summaries must consist of your own original writing, unless quoted phrases are explicitly and appropriately noted. The following types of collaboration are allowed:

The following types of collaboration are not allowed:

Engaging in these last two types of collaboration will be considered a violation of the university's policy on academic integrity.

Late assignments will be accepted up to 3 days late, with a 10% penalty. Assignments submitted more than 3 days after the due date will not be accepted.

Additional assignments for extra credit will not be offered.

All grade challenges must be submitted in writing and include an explanation why the given score or grade should be reconsidered.

School policies on instructor evaluation, email, plagiarism and incompletes.

Tentative Schedule

Week Topic Text Reading Assignment
Mar 28 What is cognitive science?    
April 4 Foundations and mental models NYT article on knowing what others know; Johnson-Laird article on Mental Models Small project 1
April 11 Rules and language Safire on how shrunk snuck in; Pinker and Ullman article on Past Tense  
April 18 Categorization Rosch article on Categories (hardcopy handout) and Categories and Product Design (available on D2L) Small project 2
April 25 Research involving human participants Course notes and IRB materials (Training certificate for Initial Basic Education required instead of reading summaries)  
May 2 Learning and Explanation Carey article on Study Habits; Chi et al article on Self-Explanation Small project 3
May 9 Word Learning (Peter Hastings presents on Monday) Landauer and Dumais article on Latent Semantic Analysis Schedule individual meetings (no class on Wednesday)
May 16 Language and Multitasking Science Daily article on cell phones; Strayer et al. article on Cell phone distractions  
May 23 Culture and cognition Culture and the Self by Markus and Kitayama  
May 30 Presentations (No class on Monday)   Independent project
June 6     Reflective report due