Instructor: Dr. Stephen Hirtle
Office: 735 LIS Building
Office Phone: 624-9434
Email: sch@lis.pitt.edu
Office Hours: Late afternoon, Mon-Thurs
Class Meets: Mon, Wed, 6:00pm-8:50pm
Required Texts:
Overview: This course examines the cognitive, computational and philosophical bases of cognitive science. Cognitive science provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of thinking and cognition, and includes the sub-disciplines of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, linguistics and neuroscience. In the first half of the course, we will review the historical roots of cognitive science and discuss a variety of symbolic representational methods. In the second half of the course, we turn to distributed representations, including machine learning and connectionist approaches. Finally, several specific topics are examined in detail to highlight how the cognitive science approach is unique in answering questions about human cognition. These topics include reasoning, categorization, and language.
The goals of this course are as follows. Since it fits into the "Foundations" area, the course incorporates a fairly wide survey of topics and issues, and it includes an historical perspective. The foundations area courses are designed to help IS students learn about research in other disciplines that provide background and overlap with the interdisciplinary field of Information Science. This particular course draws heavily from the field of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Thus, besides providing the Foundations perspective, this course should also enrich your preparation in the "Cognitive Science" area. At the same time, readings are chosen to avoid too much overlap with other Cognitive Science courses.
Assignments: Your performance will be evaluated on the basis of two exams and one paper. The exams will be held in class and will test your understanding of the readings and class discussions. They will consist of "thought-type" questions. The instructions for the paper are found separately. The paper is due August 7. The paper and each exam will count 1/3 of your grade. The final exam will not be cumulative.
Please note the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will be held in Pittsburgh, July 22- 25th. You might wish to consider volunteering to work at the conference. Those working 12 or more hours will receive free registration and free proceedings. If you are interested, see the form for automatically getting your name on the volunteer list. .
A syllabus showing topics to be discussed each week and a bibliography of assigned readings follows. You need to read the appropriate readings before the class in which they are assigned and to come to the meeting prepared to discuss them thoughtfully. Although I will lecture for most of the meetings, you should be prepared to answer questions that I pose and to contribute ideas, suggestions, and questions of your own.