Fischhoff & Broomell (2020)
Toward the end of this review paper on judgment and decision-making, the authors discuss potential real-world applications of the work they review. Pick some other example of a real-world problem or challenge (that the authors did not discuss) where this work could be relevant. Briefly describe your example and the relevant psychological principles or heuristics that might help to address it.

Anonymous
An example of a real-world problem that the authors did not discuss is misinformation in social media and news outlets. Especially in this day and age where AI has been taking over social media, this is a real issue where people believe anything and everything they see online. Sometimes, when I come across a TikTok video asking me which clip is real and which one is AI, I truly have a difficult time deciphering the two. Perhaps more dangerous however, are false claims about politics, health and wellness, and society in general. Something that plays a big role in "fake news" is confirmation bias. Oftentimes, we only search for information that strengthens our existing beliefs, and as the algorithm aims to please its viewer, naturally you will get more news or media that is specifically catered towards your personal biases. Even if this information is not true, you are convinced that it must be true because it aligns with your own beliefs. Another factor that plays a role in allowing misinformation to spread, is the availability heuristic. As we become a more interconnected society where it is getting easier and easier to access the internet and social media, we are bombarded with reposts upon reposts of the same information on different platforms. Even when this information is not true, you constantly see it on your feed. Repeated exposure to this false information causes you to become familiar with it and therefore perceive it as true. Once people are aware of these psychological principles which drive their decision making, they can learn to fact check information by manually searching up trusted, expert sources instead of allowing their personal biases to hinder their thought process. Platforms could also reduce visibility of misinformation to combat the availability heuristic.

Osherson (1995)
This chapter discusses some interesting ways in which we think about probabilities, including some classic heuristics, biases, and fallacies of reasoning. Partway through the chapter, the author compares these quirks in our judgment to visual illusions. Pick one example Osherson uses, and describe one or two ways in which it resembles a visual illusion, and one or two ways in which it doesn't -- being sure in your answer to refer to material from the lectures on perception.

Ansh Soppina
On page 44, Osherson describes an experiment by Slovic et. al. (1980) whereby participants were 'asked to judge the lethality of various potential causes of death using different, arithmetically equivalent formats.' In particular, he mentions the judgment of the lethality of heart attacks and how a simple change in wording was able to change the numerical estimation answer by a factor of nearly 100.

First, this example does not resemble a visual illusion, as it does not exhibit properties of modularity (or is rather weak in this regard). For instance, after first reading the sentence and falling for the "illusion" in it, then understanding its actual meaning after re-reading it, I wasn't able to experience the same effect again. In visual illusions, even though you are aware of the illusion, you aren't able to visualize it differently. Second, we know that vision is mathematically impossible because the world can be in multiple ways that produce the same pattern of light hitting our eyes. Similarly, the reasoning in this example is mathematically impossible since both questions are arithmetically equivalent.

Moving on from dissimilarities, it is first similar to visual illusions in that it relies on a heuristic. Most visual illusions are based on the heuristic of not assuming coincidences. This form of illusion in the example probably relies on the availability heuristic. Second, like visual illusions, it does not take an exceedingly complex experiment to study the phenomenon because a person can experience it for themselves!

Neufeld (2022)
This paper introduces the notion of psychological essentialism. What is a real-world activity where you think that this theme might play a role in our lives, and why might it be important to know about this? (You might end up suggesting an activity related to politics, or education, or social dynamics, or something completely different.)

Anonymous
Psychological essentialism can be applied to marketing and branding. Understanding how people attribute essence to natural and non-natural beings can help determine categories necessary to establish products/services and brands. I believe that the "entitativity" dimension of essentialism is particularly relevant in this scenario as it reflects categories that are more closely related to material objects/brands. By reflecting on essentialist categories such as homogeneity, unobservability, distinctness, and informativeness, as well as the concepts of theological essentialism and diagnostic reasoning, designers and creative directors can manipulate these features to ensure that specific products/services and brands have an 'essence'. This will make the brand and product more recognisable and unique to the consumer. In the context of a product, this will ensure the consumer sees the product as unique and immutable, making it irreplaceable. In the context of branding, attributing 'essence' through manipulation of psychological essentialism principles will ensure that any product, service, or communication under this brand will be immediately associated with the essence of the brand. It is then up to the creatives to determine what this essence should be. Nevertheless, understanding the concept of psychological essentialism is a powerful tool in ensuring that consumers perceive a brand as reliable and irreplaceable.

'OK, Go' video
Watch this music video (already viewed 29 million times) carefully. Then pick some especially interesting phenomenon or moment from this video, and describe: (1) just when that moment occurred in the video -- giving the relative time-stamp(s); (2) why that moment yielded an interesting visual experience; and (3) how that visual experience could be explained by some of the material you've read (or heard during the lectures) so far about visual perception!

Anonymous
In the beginning section of the music video (0:19-0:48), the OK Go group takes watchers through a series of optical illusions of the same kind; objects of the same color (red, blue, and yellow) that initially appear to be suspended at random positions in space, at various distances and angles from each other, align at specific angles to become a solid, two-dimensional shape. Even by the time the artists take watchers to the third illusion (yellow triangle), watchers are still taken aback when the process is reversed, from a solid, two-dimensional shape to what appears to be random objects hung across three dimensions in space. This yielded an interesting visual experience because even though I knew that the objects were not one, two-dimensional shape, they still appeared to be so. This experience could be explained by the module nature of visual perception; because it is informationally encapsulated, knowledge of the illusion (from the first shape) did not prevent me from seeing the illusion in the second or third shapes. It was a mandatory process. It also supports that humans have a lack of access to interlevels in visual perception; I cannot access the intermediate processing states inside the module, but only the final output of the two-dimensional, unified shape. This experience also reminded me about the importance of the study of perception; it balances rigor and phenomenology, as in order to become aware about complex counterintuitive truths (and realize instinct blindness), people simply need to experience it from a first-person perspective.

New & Scholl (2008) or Most et al. (2001)
These are both relatively short experimental reports, both about visual awareness -- and more particularly about types of fascinating 'blindnesses': Most et al. (2001) [listed in the syllabus for 11/4] explores 'inattentional blindness', and New & Scholl (2008) [listed in the syllabus for 10/30] explores 'motion-induced blindness'. There is still quite a lot that we don't know about these phenomena, so we'd like you to pick one, and to offer some further thoughts about it (after reading them both, of course). If you pick Most et al. (2001), then in your response you should suggest two real-world situations in which people would be likely to experience inattentional blindness -- and you should discuss how those situations could be changed to decrease the likelihood of IB. Or, if you pick New & Scholl (2008), you should try to come up with another possible 'MIB' experiment that sheds light on its nature, or could measure the factors that cause it; briefly describe the question your experiment is meant to address, and how the experiment might work.

Luca Toner
The paper by Most et al. examines the mechanics behind attentional 'capture' of objects; whether they are driven by similarity to an attended set, dissimilarity to an ignored set, affected by multiple characteristics or just the one, and whether the rate of attentional capture of an unexpected object was similar to previous studies. I also wondered about the ways 'inattentional blindness' could be affected by repetition of visual stimuli in the experiments. For example, one could get a series of participants to do the experiments a large number of times, varying the conditions each time but perhaps keeping some aspects constant; would the brain recognise a visual pattern and start selectively ignoring or attending to regions of a screen where they previously observed a high frequency of attended phenomena? Moreover, there is also the possibility that we could locationally select regions of higher attention. One possible real life example of this kind of inattentional blindness would be lowered awareness of cars coming out of familiar streets at intersections. Personally, in the area where I live and drive around frequently, I know of a few streets which almost never have cars waiting at intersections. As such, I often find myself not checking whether cars are there as I pull into the intersection. In the few times where there have been cars, I definitely have later, or even a lack of perception of the car being there, despite looking directly at it, because of my expectation of lack of cars and thus attentional blindness. Another situation where inattentional blindness could occur is in trying to find people in a crowd. If a person is not wearing something they typically wear, or have had a haircut, they may display similarity to ignored sets of individuals when you are looking for them, so you may experience inattentional blindness. In order to remedy this in this situation, one might have to find a universal or unchanging feature or characteristic that they look for in the individuals in the crowd, with this characteristic being 'dissimilar' to the ignored set of people.

Firestone & Scholl (2016)
This looooong (but hopefully interesting!) paper showcases an ongoing debate in the field, about the degree to which seeing is distinct from thinking. After you read the target article (excepting Section 2, which isn't required), browse through the many ensuing commentaries from other scientists -- nearly all of which argue against the target article in some way, by design -- and pick one that sounds especially intriguing to you. Then, after reading it carefully, let us know in one paragraph what you think about the status of the debate after reading that commentary. In particular: (1) Summarize the key points of the commentary in a few sentences. (2) Then discuss: did you find the commentary to be compelling? Why or why not? (You can then also search the authors' response -- which starts on p. 53 -- in order to see how we actually responded to your chosen commentary, and then if you want to also incorporate that into your RQ answer, that's fine -- but you don't have to do that.)

Anonymous
When I first read the target article, the first example of top-down processing impacting visual perception that came to mind was hallucinations. Howe and Carter argue that such hallucinations / mental imagery are phenomena that avoid all six pitfalls. They state that pure visual hallucinations (whether drug-induced or stemming from mental conditions) are perceived as real and are simultaneously not driven by bottom-up stimuli, and are thus impossible to explain by peripheral attention, low-level differences, or simple memory recall. If these were just subjective descriptions of what they felt like may have been happening, I would lean towards the counterargument that these exceptions prove the rule. Still, because they are documented to be an objective reality for some people, I feel it makes a fair case. Similarly, mental imagery, which can be exceptionally vivid and activates the primary visual cortex (V1) much like normal perception, represents an internal, top-down cognitive state actively creating a pictorial percept. I think that this is compelling, but true hallucinations versus mental imagery I feel must be distinguished, because mental imagery makes known to a given person that such images are stemming originally from imagination. I like this angle because it shifts the evidence base from debatable lab results (like slant) to intensely dramatic of the encapsulated system (like seeing a figure that isn't physically present). While these are non-standard cases, the overlapping neural mechanisms that establish personalized imagery from internal, top-down cognitive states, in my opinion, fundamentally challenges the idea of 100% total encapsulation.

Stillings et al. (1995)
This classic textbook chapter goes into a bit of detail about the nature of syntactic analysis, focusing in particular on case assignment. (This reading will be tough going, since it is so very technical. But it is also written as an introduction for undergraduates, so with care you should be able to follow this material.) This would be good to read, to help appreciate just a small sliver of the astounding degree of complexity inherent in the syntax of natural languages -- and in contemporary linguistic theories of syntax. So please read this excerpt, and then explain in one short paragraph why the following sentence is not grammatical: "It was assumed that Spring Fling musicians to be famous."

Anonymous
According to the reading, the sentence is ungrammatical because there is nothing to assign case to the NP "Spring Fling musicians." "to be famous" is infinitival, and does not have a tense marker, and thus cannot assign a case. This would result in moving up from the subordinate clause to get the case from the verb there, but "was assumed" is intransitive, and can't assign case to "Spring Fling musicians." Thus, the sentence is ungrammatical as there is nothing to pattern the case of "Spring Fling musicians".

Balpaeme et al. (2018) and Scassellati et al. (2018)
These two papers both muse about possible applications of 'social robotics' -- respectively for education, and autism spectrum disorder. After reading them, let us know your thoughts (in 1-2 paragraphs) about how you think the study of robotics might intersect in interesting ways with other topics from our class -- either abstract themes (such as innateness or modularity) or specific cognitive processes (such as language). What possible connections do you see, and what questions do you have about them? Be sure that your response somehow indicates that you've done these readings, and mentions specific themes/ideas from the lectures.

Naomi St Jean
A concern that should be included in the robotics discussion is the shortcomings of AI and how it would impact the stages of learning, for example, language acquisition. According to the lectures, unlike the brain, artificial intelligence is not a reliable source of information and struggles with generalizations, and can't "think" beyond the database it used for training. Since these robots utilize artificial intelligence, usually for making them adaptable and autonomous, they are limited in how well they can teach a child organically, especially considering the spontaneity children have. Another concern with AI is the errors that it makes and how they are drastically different from human errors on an algorithmic and implementation level. Since AI and the brain have differing levels of complexity and, thus, produce different errors, I wonder if children would mimic mistakes that are uniquely AI. If the AI were to malfunction and expose its architecture, how would this impact cognitive processes that require external stimulation, such as language? It's a possibility that children using these robots to learn language may develop communication patterns that don't blend well with natural speech. Integrating AI into education can be beneficial in multiple ways, but its impact must still be studied further.

Extra 'Thought' Question
Now that we've learned about fMRI, here's a task: First, find an article in a newspaper or a popular-press magazine that discusses an fMRI experiment. (Consider doing a little hunting to find something especially interesting and unique, rather than simply choosing the first one you find at the top of a search list!) Send us the reference citation for the article (e.g. title, publication title, date, author) and very briefly describe the article in a short paragraph. Then, most importantly, briefly discuss whether this article fairly reflected the nature of fMRI research (as covered in class). Were there important facts, assumptions, or nuances that the article elided? How could the scientific accuracy and nuance of the article have been improved? To get credit, be sure that your response directly references material from the lectures.

Ronit Totwani
Citation: Reissman, Hailey. "Brain Signals Can Predict How Often a News Article Is Shared Online." Annenberg School for Communication News / University of Pennsylvania, 24 October 2023.

Summary: The following article discusses a study examining the brain activity of participants in two different countries who were asked to read headlines and summaries of online New York Times articles and rate their willingness to share while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The article describes how regardless of country, the brain signals provided clues for which articles would go on to be popular on social media, but cultural differences (such as the Dutch participants' ratings being less reliable) explained differences in ratings. The article then uses the fact that brain signals predicted which articles got popular to propose the "value-based model of sharing" - that the desire to share is based on fundamental human rewarding and valuable impulses like presenting yourself in a positive way, seeking status, and connecting with others.

Reflection: While this article was interesting as a whole, it did poorly in terms of explaining the scientific procedure involved in this fMRI research and exemplified some of the major issues with the nature of fMRI research. Firstly, this article did not mention which exact brain signals were activated or which regions of the brain were more active when participants read an article that would become more popular. However, even if the article did describe "the where" of brain regions, what would really be needed to add more scientific accuracy and nuance to the article would be a more in depth explanation of the scientific procedure involved and "the how". From lecture, we know that all regions of the brain are always active, but brain "signals" used in studies like these are when these regions are more active compared to other regions of the brain and more active compared to when facing other stimuli - more discussion of this relativity of activation would help. To tie this to the 6 related worries discussed in class, this article really ties with worries 2 and 3 - fMRI predicts and describes better than it explains. This article describes how certain brain signals are predictive of the popularity of the article on social media, but does not explain why certain regions of the brain are more active than others in those "social value-based" articles or how exactly the mind has these signals and how these signals even work. In this article, there is little explanation about the scientific procedure, but it produces an exciting result and uses fancy language of fMRI, so people will take it as rich in explanatory depth (worry #6). Like that monkey study in class - what if we gave participants a drug to turn off those regions and other regions of the brain had predictive power too - would that affect the hypothesis and how do we know what this activation means (worry #4) (especially because this article doesn't even say where there is activation)? This article is interesting for its predictive power and implications on the spread of fake news and creating reliable news in a way that spreads, but at its core it is weak for answering the cog-sci question of how exactly the mind works and represents many of the worries of fMRI research.

Everaert et al. (2015) and/or Pinker (1994)
A 2-part question: (1) Write a grammatical sentence that is at least 250 words long. (2) Why, according to the authors, is it interesting and important that you can do this?

Note: For part #1, each of your TFs will nominate a single 'best' response from their group, and they will then collectively vote on the best overall 3 responses (where 'best' = most insightful, clever, literarily impressive, and/or funny). The authors of those responses will have their answers shown at the beginning of a later class, and will each get an 'extra credit' point that can take the place of one reading response.

Christina Bourmpou
Even though writing a single sentence that stretches over the word count of 250 words may feel unnatural, it's possible when you let your thoughts flow, because instead of stopping after every single idea, you keep linking each thought to the next one that occurs, like how I can begin by describing the way I woke up in the dark this morning for rowing practice, then explain how the peacefulness of the river at sunrise always makes me think and reflect on discipline, which naturally can connect to the kind of focus I need in all my psychology classes, where we discuss how learning and memory work, and then I can keep adding to it by noting how language learning reminds me of drills we do while rowing, since both of these depend on patterns that slowly build into something that becomes more automatic, and from there I might let my mind think about how each stroke in the boat I am rowing in is like a word in a sentence – separate in one sense but in reality part of a bigger rhythm that only makes sense when you step a bit further back and feel the structure, and if I then try to push this comparison even further I can link small details about the sound of blades touching the surface of the water, the way timing can shift when one person is off rhythm, and how the boat only really lifts off the water when every individual action aligns into a larger framework, which is in a similar way you're able to do in a long sentence, because your brain is not just moving one word at a time in a straight line but it is organizing everything to stay coherent, even when the sentence keeps going.

Mikayla Morse
As I sit down to complete this assignment, I find myself in the Buttery of Grace Hopper College, which happens to be my favorite Buttery, however now I wonder if you, my dear reader, dear Teaching fellow, and dearest Cognitive Scientist, even know what a Buttery is, but in order to explain that, I would have to walk you through the entire Residential College System at Yale, so I will do that by telling you that the Residential College is basically a fancy term for a dorm in which every first year Yale student gets sorted into prior to their arrival Yale, and these residential colleges each have a lot of special features, like a buttery for example, which is a student run cafe/kitchen that operates through the night, from approximately ten o'clock post meridiem to one o'clock ante meridiem, and the reason I find myself here is because two of my lovely, beautiful, kind, humble, and perfect teammates work at this particular Buttery location, and even though they are not supposed to – ugh, rules or something like that -- they provide us with free midnight snacks, including delicacies like a buffalo chicken quesadilla made with Dino Nuggets or frozen mozzarella sticks, and in case you, my fantastic Teaching Fellow were wondering, these delicacies are what is keeping me awake while writing this unfortunately, unnecessarily, ridiculously, avoidably, uselessly, and extravagantly long sentence for this cognitive science class that you have chosen to be the teaching fellow for, and I –regretably so in this moment of me writing a two hundred and fifty word grammatically correct sentence, although typically I thoroughly enjoy this cognitive science introductory course– have chosen to take, so please do enjoy reading through all of these sentences, in all of their unnecessary and extravagant length.

Elora Sparnicht
Whenever I am having a bad day that just keeps getting worse (which is rare, because I pride myself on having generally fantastic days, generally fantastic weeks, generally fantastic months, generally fantastic years, and a generally fantastic life), I remember the delightfully relatable children's book by Judith Viorst called "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" – which, on an unrelated note, was made into a major motion picture in 2014 starring Jennifer Garner and Jennifier Coolidge, who happen to be two of my all-time favorite Jens – and laugh and cry happy tears because sometimes, life throws us curveballs in the form of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, and we just have to remember that, although they are difficult and terrible, and horrible, not good (not even a little bit, not even at all) and very, incredibly, enormously, monumentally, immensely, colossally bad, they can teach us something about resilience and serve as a reminder that nothing, absolutely nothing – whether it's getting a bad grade on an exam, running late to class, forgetting about a meeting, getting rejected from an internship, missing the bus, sleeping through an alarm, slipping on ice, slipping on vomit, slipping on absolutely nothing at all, upsetting a friend (or getting upset by a friend), spilling coffee, getting hit by a car, hitting someone with your car, baking banana nut muffins and accidentally giving one to your friend with a severe nut allergy, forgetting to put clothes on, projectile vomiting in the Othniel Charles Marsh Lecture Hall at Yale University, getting projectile vomited on in the Othniel Charles Marsh Lecture Hall at Yale University, losing your dog, finding your dog and then realizing that you found someone else's dog so you have to return the dog to its real owner despite the fact that you are still dogless, or realizing that your dog has been but a mere figment of your imagination the whole time – is unsurvivable (with the exception of the vehicular manslaughter and deathly nut allergy, perhaps).

Jackendoff (1994)
These 3 chapters (from an old introductory textbook) contain several different classic arguments for the innateness of various aspects of language. Which do you find the most convincing, and why? Which do you find the least convincing, and why? Explain each of your 'why' answers in a short paragraph, not just a single sentence...

Anonymous
I believe the most compelling argument is the genetic argument for language and grammar understanding, evidenced by the KE family and Turner/Williams syndrome. I am very convinced that there is a large innate or genetically determined component of language development if there seems to be such a strong relationship between genetic inheritance and different language ability in the examples given.

I believe the least compelling argument is the idea that children develop grammar without explicit instruction yet display the ability to construct grammar rules, as evidenced by errors like "other one spoon" and "goed." I believe this is not compelling because I strongly believe that being surrounded by people speaking with this grammar convention constitutes a base of 'learning'. Sure, parents are not breaking out grammar workbooks for their babies, but constantly hearing it is a form of learning. "goed" didn't come out of thin air, the "-ed" rule was learned by hearing everyone around them use it.

Buckholtz & Faigman (2014)
This article describes and evaluates how neuroscientific evidence might influence legal practices -- e.g. as they relate to determining people's intentions, or measuring their self-control. Some imagined legal applications seem plausible, and seem based on concrete discoveries that have already been made. Others are based on hazily imagined future neuroscientific advances, and seem sketchy and unlikely. Mention one such legal application that you think might fall into each category, and briefly explain why you put it in that category. Feel free to go beyond the applications explicitly discussed in this article when coming up with the examples you'd like to highlight. (Before answering this question, you might also want to check out the Nishimoto et al. paper -- as listed in the syllabus -- to get a sense of what is possible.)

Kalina Sabala Montes
The use of fMRI and other neuroimaging techniques to provide mitigating evidence in sentencing is a plausible legal application. For example showing that an adolescent defendant has a less developed prefrontal cortex, then that is linked to poorer impulse control and can provide the basis for certain actions or behaviors. This methodology has already been used in court, such as Supreme Court ruling Miller v. Alabama and is supported by developmental neuroscience research. It doesn't necessarily place guilt or innocence on the person being accused, but it can inform judgements about culpability and appropriate punishment.

However, using fMRI as a lie detecting tool in court to determine whether a defendant is being truthful about an event is a more sketchy form of legal application. Although studies show group-level differences in brain activity when lying versus telling the truth, there is high individual variability. The article states that some people actually show no difference or even the opposite pattern of activation. With a lack of reliable individual level biomarkers and ethical validity concerns, this legal application of fMRI remains speculative and problematic.

Churchland (2013)
Paul Churchland discusses many different '-isms', and runs through many different arguments for each. Mention one argument that you thought wasn't a good one (or at least wasn't as strong as some others), and explain why.

Anonymous
One argument for reductive materialism that I didn't find very strong was the analogy to past scientific reductions, like heat = molecular motion or light = electromagnetic waves. Churchland suggests that mental states being identical to brain states is just another case of this kind of scientific progress. But I don't think the analogy holds as tightly as he claims. Heat and light can be directly measured, quantified, and described in physical terms, whereas mental states involve subjective qualities – pain, color, meaning – that don't map as neatly onto physical descriptions. Saying "pain is just C-fiber firing" feels less satisfying than saying "heat is molecular motion" because the former leaves out the qualitative, first-person experience. So while the analogy makes reductive materialism sound simple and elegant, I think it downplays the hard problem of consciousness and doesn't fully convince me that reduction will work the same way here.

Nilsson & Pelger (1994)
This course is about the mind, but this paper is about a part of the body (i.e. the eye). Do you still think that these results are relevant to thinking about the evolution of the mind? Why or why not? In your answer, be sure to bring in at least some topics/themes discussed in class so far.

Heyon Choi
Even though Nilsson and Pelger's paper is about the eye, their results can be applied to thinking about the evolution of the mind. One theme we've already discussed in class is that the mind depends on information-processing systems, and that perception is a crucial source of that information. The eye provides raw visual input, but without sensory organs like it, other processes such as attention, memory, or pattern recognition wouldn't be able to operate. So showing that something as complex as an eye can evolve in only a limited number of generations counters the idea that the mind's building blocks are "too complex" to be affected by natural selection. If the mind is made up of specific parts to solve specific tasks, and if sensory organs like the eye can evolve gradually, then neural mechanisms should also be able to develop to interpret their input.

The paper also connects to other cognitive science themes discussed in class such as modularity. The eye illustrates how small quantitative changes can accumulate to produce a specialized module for spatial resolution. Similarly in cognitive science, we look into how mental functions like language or emotion might have adapted to evolving needs over time. Furthermore, the authors emphasize that looking just into the eye alone is not enough; it only makes sense when paired with neural processing that can use visual information. This highlights the point that the mind isn't separate from the body but comes from the interaction of multiple systems like sensory systems, neural structures, and behavior. In that sense, studying eye evolution helps us understand not just how we see, but how the mind itself could have taken shape through evolution.

Marcus & Davis (2021)
What is another theme or lesson from cognitive science that we have discussed so far in class that could be useful to integrate into AI systems? (Note that there is no right or wrong answer to this question; we're just interested in your thoughts!)

Anonymous
As we discussed in the context of Balint's syndrome, the mind has a strong capacity to understand groupings, taking visual information and sorting it into what is unified/whole. With Balint's syndrome, we discussed how the mind automatically understands that if lines are connected, they become a shape that can be seen even by those with Balint's syndrome. This ability to identify where one object begins and ends is something that machines have become increasingly capable of doing—as seen in Apple Intelligence's ability to erase background objects, or Adobe Lightroom's automatic masking features.

This is similar to the ability to abstract/generalize, as Marcus and Davis discuss. I wonder how this is combined with our understanding of object permanence and spatial awareness. I can see these skills being particularly important in our imagination, and I would be curious to know if AI generally uses these modular skills or just generates images based on what is most likely given its database (or some third thing I don't know of).

Pylyshyn (1996)
According to Pylyshyn, in what ways is the mind like and unlike a computer?

Sophie Gao
According to Pylyshyn, the mind is like a computer in its most fundamental function: it is a symbol-manipulating system. This means that our thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs are represented and processed as internal "symbols" or codes, much like how a computer uses software to manipulate data. The power of this system is that these physical symbols can be processed based on their form (their "syntax") to generate intelligent behavior and reasoning, even though the system itself doesn't understand their meaning. This explains how we can think about things that don't exist, like unicorns or a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, that we are manipulating symbols that represent those concepts.

However, Pylyshyn is very clear that the mind is not like any computer we currently build. The mind's underlying "hardware" (its biological, neural wetware) and its innate "operating system" (what he calls its cognitive architecture) are completely different and largely unknown. It doesn't process information one step at a time like a classic serial computer, and its internal symbolic language is far richer and more complex than any programming language we've invented. Ultimately, while the computer provides a powerful metaphor for understanding the functional level of the mind (how it manipulates representations), the biological brain that accomplishes this is a unique and mysterious engine of thought.

Carston (1996)
In 1-2 paragraphs, consider the ways in which the emotions seem to be modular and non-modular (being sure to bring up features discussed in this reading). Note that emotions were not discussed directly in the reading -- so again, we are asking for your considered thoughts here, not for you to do any other reading or research.

Anonymous
Emotions can be seen as modular because many of them appear to operate like specialized, automatic subsystems. For example, fear responses to sudden threats or disgust at foul smells arise quickly, without deliberate reasoning, and are difficult to override once triggered. These features, like speed, automaticity, and domain-specificity, make emotions look similar to the modular input systems described in the reading. They process a narrow range of inputs and produce stereotyped behavioral and physiological outputs, suggesting an underlying architecture that is at least partly encapsulated from broader cognition.

At the same time, emotions resist full modularity because their expression and regulation are heavily shaped by beliefs and cultural context. For instance, anger may flare differently depending on whether one interprets an action as intentional or accidental, while sadness may deepen or subside with changing appraisals of a loss. This flexibility reflects the kind of cognitive penetrability associated with non-modular systems. Emotions, then, likely combine modular triggers and responses with non-modular, belief-rich appraisals and reappraisals.

Gandhi et al. (2015)
This article reports a way of investigating nature vs. nurture in visual perception by exploring what and how previously blind individuals see as soon as they gain sight. What is another visual ability that you suspect might not require much visual experience (i.e. so that the newly sighted children might immediately experience the relevant percept)? What is a visual ability that you suspect might actually require a significant degree of visual experience (i.e. so that the newly sighted children might not experience the relevant percept)? Why? Note that this question, like most others, is asking for your own considered thoughts, not for you to do any other reading or research.

Ryan Wang
I can think that the recognition of danger/fear might not require much visual experience as well. Like for example, say a blurry picture of a spider, humans are usually able to immediately react to it and sense danger from a black moving thing in the corner of their room. I believe this ability to recognize potential danger doesn't need any previous learning cues of "spider is bad," but a product of evolution. On the contrary, I think predicting the movement of free-falling objects (such as fighting for rebounds in basketball) require a lot of training. The physics simulation is quite complex and I don't expect newly sighted children to be able to accurately position themselves so they are at the best spot to gain rebounds in basketball. From my personal experience, at least, getting rebounds is really something you need to train for and it gets more intuitive over time, no shortcuts.

Bouchard (2008)
This is a fairly dense and detailed chapter! Imagine that a classmate saw the article sitting next to you at dinner, and asked: "So, do genes really determine our behavior?" How might you summarize the main points of this chapter in just a few sentences? (Please summarize this yourself; don't rely on ChatGPT or any of its friends!)

Muhammad Nuliadi
That's a good question, and the short answer is: to a moderately large extent! However, heritability does not explain all of human behavior, and environmental factors still have an effect. Bouchard starts off by talking about Quantitative Genetic Models and how they are useful in how they are "impartial" on whether something is environmental or genetic. Most psychological traits have moderate to high hereditability—whether it's religiousness, intelligence, social attitudes, or personality traits. This basically is the "First Law of Quantitative Genetics", in which everything has a genetic component to it. Bouchard then talks about critics and how some say, "how can we find genes for behavior?" He responds by talking about circadian rhythms under the influence of "clockwork" genes that have been studied. He ends by talking about how molecular and quantitative genetics are both necessary, but he stressed the importance of not thinking of quantitative genetics as obsolete. So all this to say, genes strongly influence, but do not determine fully what our behavior is like.

Sacks (2004)
This New Yorker article gives a nice initial sense of how wonderfully strange the mind (and especially the scientific study of the mind!) can be. While the distortions of temporal perception experienced by the patients described here are extreme (and extremely fascinating), we all have the experience of time passing (or seeming to pass?) quickly in some situations, but slowly in others. Just based on your own experience, identify (and briefly discuss) one or two factors that you think might be responsible for those different "speeds" of experience.

Anonymous
From my own experience, two powerful factors that warp our perception of time's passage are focused attention and emotional arousal. When I am deeply engrossed in an engaging activity (such as reading a great book or playing basketball, personally), I am in a state of flow. This means that my attention is fully absorbed in the task and time seems to fly by. I believe that time feels like it passes faster during these flow states because my cognitive resources are entirely dedicated to the activity in which I am presently engaged, and so I am completely unaware of external signals that would usually indicate the passage of time.

On the contrary, when I am in a state of high anxiety or anticipation (such as watching the end of a close game), time seems to slow down significatnly. I believe that this slowage likely occurs because the brain's amygdala becomes highly active and alert, therby enhancing the density of memory formation. In these moments, I become hyper-aware of every second, causing the event to feel longer in retrospect.

Marcus et al. (2014) and Carandini (2012)
According to these articles, what would we be missing out on if, when trying to understand how the mind works, all we studied were the low-level details of neural circuitry?

Tabs Collier
According to both, we would be missing out on a LOT. Both emphasize the importance of not interpreting data in a vacuum, and one way to do so is to more closely link experimentalists and theorists. Marcus et al. (2014) points out that the basis of science is hypotheses - the emphasis on abstract theories and models needs to be more focused on in order to then empirically test and understand our brain circuits. Thus, gathering thought from psychology and behavior (components that are said to be talked about too infrequently with regards to the brain) can give us clues and point us in the direction of plausible hypotheses. Marcus et al. (2014) urges researchers to embrace "intellectual interactions" and look beyond just experimentation. Similarly, Carandini (2012) argues we need more theories, which will act as "metaphors" for us to understand computationally how large neural networks work. This article focuses more on computation being the intermediate level we need to bridge the gap between neural circuits and behavior. It is this level of theory that will help us obtain a better understanding of the brain, and thus this is an example of Marcu et al. (2014)'s push to not study the brian in an isolated, vacuum-like manner.

Bisson (1991)
Why do you suppose we're reading this short SciFi story for our class? That is, what potential connection(s) might it have the study of the mind, and what do you suppose the point of it might be for cognitive science?

Thomas Duckenfield
Bisson's short story relates to the problem of how sentience and consciousness arose from what is, essentially, a collection of atoms (or meat). The story alludes to the almost ridiculosity of simple biological matter being able to think and act in the complex ways humans do. In cognitive science, we tackle the question of "how and why does the mind work in the way it does." The answer to this question can't simply be found by studying the "meat" itself (the implementation level), because that only offers one perspective on how the mind works. Instead, we also need to study the computational and algorithmic levels to discover what happens and how it happens. The aliens in the short story only take a surface-level look at the "meat" and aren't willing to delve into the wonderful nuances of how the human brain works. Thus, they are teaching us an important lesson about how each of Marr's 3 levels are crucial to understanding the brain, and how studying only one can lead to blindness to subtleties that help put the whole picture together.