Emre Ugur

Ph.D.

Introduction to Cognitive Science
Monday 12:00-13:00 – BM A3
Tuesday 09:00-11:00 – BM A3


Aim: Introduction of basic concepts, approaches and issues in the field of cognitive science to increase the awareness of the students to the questions raised in the disciplines of computer science, linguistics, philosophy and psychology; focus on the interaction of these disciplines in approaching the study of the mind; specialization on topics central to cognitive science such as the nature of mental representation, reasoning, perception, language use, learning as well as other cognitive processes of humans and other intelligent systems.
Textbook: The course will have no main textbook, but the following topics and readings week by week.
Lecture slides: Available at the course page.
Instructor: Emre Ugur (contact)
Office hours: Mondays 09:00-10:00
Mailing-list: Please send email to instructor if you are not registered!
Grades

Schedule (subject to change):

24-25 Sep. Introduction: Introduction to the study of cognitive sciences. A brief history of cognitive science. Methodological concerns in philosophy, artificial intelligence and psychology.
  • Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, chapters 2,3,4. Gardner, Howard E. The mind's new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. Basic books, 2008.
  • One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), Stanford University, accessed August 1, 2016
  • “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND LIFE IN 2030" https://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report
  • Kihlstrom and Park, "Cognitive Psychology, Overview", Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, 2002 (optional)
  • Nilsson, The Quest for Artificial Intelligence. (optional)
Slides
Guest Lecture: Hamit Basgol
01-02 Oct.
The Brain as a System: Structure and constituents of the brain, brief history of neuroscience, looking a brain signals.
  • Chapter 1 and section 2.3, Bermúdez, José Luis. Cognitive science: An introduction to the science of the mind. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • Chapters 1 and 2 of Hilgard, Ernest Ropiequet, Richard C. Atkinson, and Rita L. Atkinson. Introduction to psychology. Oxford and IBH Publishing, 1975.
  • Gazzaniga, Michael S. "Organization of the human brain." Science 245.4921 (1989): 947-952. (optional)
  • Atkinson et al., Intro. To Psychology, chap 2 (optional)
  • O’Shea, The Brain: A very short introduction, chap 2,3 (optional)
  • Sajda, Neural Networks (optional)
Slides
01.09 Oct. Guest Lecture: Prof. Dr. Cem Say
08-09 Oct. Brain and sensorymotor information: Processing of sensory information in the brain; motor and sensory areas; Brain Imaging, fMRI, MEG, PET, EEG,
  • "Neural Networks" chapter of "Encyclopedia of the Human Brain" by Paul Sajda (optional)
  • "Neuroimaging" chapter of "Encyclopedia of the Human Brain" by Ganis and Kosslyn (optional)
  • Imaging: Brain Mapping Methods, JOHN C. MAZZIOTTA, RICHARD S. J. FRACKOWIAK

Slides
15-16 Oct. From Sensation to Cognition; Roots of Cognitive Science: Mirror Neurons, Cybernetics; From physics to meaning; Analog vs. Digital: Code duality
  • Dupuy, On the origins of cognitive science, chapters 1,2
  • Jesper Hoffmeyer (2002): “Code Duality Revisted”, SEED (Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development) 2 (1), pp. 1-19. (optional)
  • Michael A. Arbib, From Monkey-like Action Recogni tion to Human Language: An Evolutionary Framework for Neurolinguistics, Behavioral and Brain Sciences link
15 Oct. Guest Lecture: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Erhan Oztop
16 Oct. Guest Lecture: Prof. Dr. Yagmur Denizhan
22-23 Oct. Representation of Sensory Information; Multisensory integration in cortex; Language (Overregularizations and irregularizations in Turkish)
  • Napikoglu, Mine, and Nihan Ketrez. "Children’s overregularizations and irregularizations of the Turkish aorist." BUCLD 30: Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development. Vol. 2. 2006.
  • Stein, B. E., Meredith, M. A., Huneycutt, W. S., & McDade, L. (1989). Behavioral indices of multisensory integration: orientation to visual cues is affected by auditory stimuli. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1(1), 12-24.
  • Wallace, Mark T., and Barry E. Stein. "Sensory organization of the superior colliculus in cat and monkey." Progress in brain research 112 (1996): 301-311.
Slides
23 Oct. Guest Lecture: Prof. Dr. Mine Nakipoglu
30 Oct. Midterm
05-06 Nov. Language What is language?; linguistic knowledge: syntax, semantics, (and pragmatics); generative linguistics; brain and language; language disorders; lateralization; the great past tense debate
  • Bermudez, Chapter 1, 1.3: Linguistics and the formal analysis of language
  • An Introduction to Language, Chapters 1-2
  • Tomasello, Michael. The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard university press, Chapter 4, 2009. Focus pg. 118-131.
  • Tomasello, Michael. Constructing a language., Chapter 9, Harvard university press, 2009.
  • optional:
    • Caplan, Neural Basis of Language
    • Elman et al. Rethinking Innateness, chap 3
    • Elman, “Annotated reading list of past tense, infant learning, and generalization”
    • Fodor, LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Seeliger et al. Generative linguistics.
Slides
06 Nov. Guest Lecture: Oguz Erdin
12-13 Nov. Affordances
  • Sahin, E., Cakmak, M., Dogar, M. R., Ugur, E., and Ucoluk, G. (2007). To afford or not to afford: A new formalization of affordances toward affordance-based robot control. Adaptive Behavior, 15(4), 447-472.
  • Jamone, L., Ugur, E., Cangelosi, A., Fadiga, L., Bernardino, A., Piater, J. and Santos-Victor, J., 2016. Affordances in psychology, neuroscience and robotics: a survey. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems.
Slides
13 Nov. Guest Lecture: Mert Imre
19 Nov. Learning
  • Unsupervised learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning
26-27 Nov. Learning: Intro to Neural Nets (McCulloch Pitts neurons, perceptron learning, child development
  • Introduction to Psychology, Chapter 3, pg. 68-86.
  • E. Alpaydın, Intro. to Machine Learning
Slides
27 Nov. Guest Lecture: Assist. Prof. Dr. Aysegul Metindogan
03-04 Dec. Memory: Constucting memories; explicit vs. implicit memory; information processing (three-boxes) model of memory; sensory memory; short-term/long-term/episodic memory
  • Atkinson&Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology, Chapter 8, Memory
  • Miller, George A. "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information." Psychological review 63.2 (1956): 81.
Slides
04 Dec. Guest Lecture: Assist. Prof. Dr. Deniz Tahiroglu
10-11 Dec. Attention Attention and related concepts; human visual attention; computational models of attention; applications of computational models of attention
  • Vecera and Luck, Attention, Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, pp. 269-284.
  • Knudsen, Fundamental concepts of attention, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 30:57-78, 2007. (optional)
  • Kana et al. The Scope and Limits of Top-Down Attention in Unconscious Visual Processing
  • Koch and Tsuchiya, Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes
  • Battelli et al., The ‘when’ pathway of the right parietal lobe
  • Snowden, Thompson, Troscianko, Basic Vision, Ch. 6, The perception of motion
Slides
Guest Lecture: Assist. Prof. Dr. Inci Ayhan
17-18 Dec. Reasoning Rationality; bounded rationality; heuristics and biases;
  • + Atkinson&Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology Chapter 9,
  • Itti, Koch, "Computational Modeling of Visual Attention", Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2001.
  • Hertwig & Todd, Heuristics (optional)
  • Simon, Bounded Rationality in Social Science: Today and Tomorrow, Mind & Society, 1, 2000, 25-39.(optional)
Slides

Grading: TBA
  • Quizzes: 10
  • 10 homeworks: 30
  • midterm: 20
  • final: 20
  • project: 20

Project: Project or term paper.
Quizzes: One quiz in each lecture at a random time. Please bring your own paper.
Cheating: Any sharing or copying will be considered as cheating. Please do not cheat! See CMPE procedures for cheating behavior.