Proceedings of the twenty-second annual conference of the cognitive science society

The Cognitive Science Programme at Carleton University Andrew Brook, Carleton University Carleton University in Ottawa offers free-standing, fully-integrated Cognitive Science programmes at both the undergraduate and the doctoral level. The undergraduate programme was recently reviewed by two senior Canadian cognitive researchers. Some of their findings and recommendations might be of interest to other cognitive science educators. In this presentation, I will describe some of the strengths and weaknesses of both our programmes, summarize some of the key findings and recommendations about the undergraduate programme, and discuss the implications of the latter. The Three Cultures of Cognitive Science Nils Dahlback, Linköping University When designing an educational program for cognitive science, it is important to base this on some coherent view of the field. If not, there is a risk that the students are presented with a haphazard selection of courses that is more a reflection of the interests of the current available faculty than anything else. Lacking an integrative framework, it will be difficult for the students to relate the different topics and perspectives presented to each other, and it will be difficult for prospective employers in both industry and academia to know which competence the students bring with them. In this talk, an alternative view of cognitive science as neither one unified cognitive science nor just a multidisciplinary field of a number of sciences (psychology, AI, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, etc.) is presented. It is argued that cognitive science is best described as a matrix of two dimensions, a content or domain dimension (e.g., language, problem solving etc., and subsets of these) and a methods dimension, comprising three basic approaches to research: empirical, formal, and model building. The latter are seen not only as methods per se, but rather as scientific ‘cultures,’ carriers of differing explicit and implicit views of what constitutes ‘good research.’ Since cultural knowledge to a large extent can be acquired only by ‘living’ in the culture, the Linköping Cognitive Science Master's program is built on the assumption that the students should early in their studies learn all three scientific traditions, both the theoretical and methodological aspects, on an equal footing, before specializing in a particular sub-field. The talk presents the ‘three cultures’ view of cognitive science, how this has influenced the general design of the program, and describes theoretical and applied courses which illustrate our approach to supporting the students acquiring their own perspective of a multicultural but still unified field of cognitive science. Using Project Work in Teaching Cognitive Science Randy Jones, Colby College In recent years I have developed and taught introductory undergraduate courses in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, as well as one graduate-level course on cognitive science. In developing my courses, I have strongly subscribed to a proposition that I assume most of us (as teachers and cognitive scientists) believe: an effective form of education requires students to participate actively in constructive projects that exercise the material they are learning in class. This presentation describes a set of class projects I have developed, in the hopes that others will find them useful in teaching courses on cognitive science. Some of the projects are directly applicable to a cognitive science course. Others I have developed for a course on artificial intelligence, but would also be appropriate for cognitive science, depending on the emphasis of the course. Among other topics, the projects include study of knowledge representation, learning, production systems, cognitive modeling, and interactive systems. Project descriptions and executable code are available on-line at http://www.cs.colby.edu/~rjones/courses/cs397/projects/ and http://www.cs.colby.edu/~rjones/courses/cs353/projects/. Teaching Multiple Disciplinary Perspectives: A First Year Course in Cognitive Science Keith Stenning, University of Edinburgh First year Edinburgh undergraduate students arrive knowing little of AI, computer science, linguistics, logic, philosophy, psychology – the component disciplines of cognitive science. They don't even know whether these component disciplines are of interest to them. For the last four years we have been teaching a half-year course on Human Communication which is designed to give students from all departments in the university a grasp of what cognitive science is, and how the component disciplines contribute to it. This talk will describe some of our experiences. Are we best teaching single disciplines first, and integrating only after? Or is it better to start by treating disciplines as merely perspectives on a common subject matter? Cognitive Science Education at Penn and the Undergraduate Summer Workshop John C. Trueswell In this talk, I will try to convey the flavor of cognitive science education from the perspective of the group at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years, Penn has maintained a loose federation approach to cognitive science, in the sense that the departments that make up the participating subdisciplines of cognitive science have used the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS) as a gathering place and intellectual-exchange center, but also as a catalyst for interdisciplinary course offerings at the undergraduate and graduate level. I'll discuss the pros and cons of such an educational system, and emphasize how it leaves open the definition of cognitive science, recognizing the current dynamics of the field. As an illustration of this, I will focus on a r ecent educ ational initiative stemming from IRCS: The Undergraduate Summer Workshop in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience. Each year, IRCS brings together a select group of undergraduate students from around the world who are interested in pursuing graduate work within some area of cognitive science or cognitive neuroscience. The workshop provides students with an intense two-week introduction to Penn's perspective on these emerging disciplines. Penn faculty offer day-long seminars and labs in their area of specialization, permitting in depth discussion of a particular research topic. Each week ends with a panel discussion by the faculty, relating the topics of that week, and providing spontaneous discussion of where the field of cognitive science might be headed in the coming years. By acknowledging and educating students that cognitive science is still an ill-defined rapidly changing field, we stimulate students to learn more about cognitive science, and entice them to contribute to its development and definition. Scientific Explanation, Systematicity, and Conceptual Change Organizer and Chair: David R. Kaufman Cognition and Development, Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley, CA, 94720 email: davek@socrates.berkeley.edu Speakers: Stella Vosniadou Department of History and Philosophy of Science National and Capodistrian University of Athens; Athens, Greece email: svosniad@athena.compulink.gr