Materials listed under each topic are either Mandatory or Optional. Mandatory readings serve to reinforce the content of the lecture, adding some depth ot the treatment of the topics. Optional readings and resources serve to go beyond the treatment of topics in lectures, and provide footholds for further reading in your own time and on your own terms.
Please let me know if any links below go stale. That happens every now and then.
Topic 1: The History of Cognitive Science
Mandatory
- Watch this 3 minute sound bite about Heraclitus and
Parmenides.
This is, of course, entirely lighthearted and comical, and not a good way to learn about these philosophers. But it serves to drive home these points:- The principle themes with which cognitive science is concerned have been discussed as long as there has been philosophy.
- In discussing such matters as metaphysics and free will, we frequently find ourselves contrasting a presentist perspective (here and now) with an eternalist one.
- Read Skinner
on "Superstition
in the pigeon".
This gives you a flavour of behaviourist language. Behaviourism was much more varied and rich than it might appear. The simplistic talk of stimulus and response may appear old-fashioned, but Skinner was also very sensitive to the role of context in determining behaviour, something which cognitive psychology often lacks in its characterisation of the causes of behaviour as lying almost exclusively within the head. - Watch a brief
YouTube video on John Watson and Little Albert.
This short video gives you a perspective of another classic behaviourist, with concerns very different from Skinner. The simplistic juxtaposition of nature and nurture should not be accepted uncritically. - Watch this lecture by me on the history of how computers and brains came to be so closely associated. (48 minutes)
- A succinct overview of the 4E approach is
provided on this page of
Tom Froese's research group.
4E usually refers to "extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive."
Optional
- John Watson, founder of the behaviorist school of psychology: Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158.
- An interesting review of some of behaviorism's greatest hits is here.
- Read Dewey on the emerging concept of the reflex arc (from 1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. Dewey provides a surprisingly contemporary sounding critique of the emerging concept of the reflex arc, that went on to underpin both behaviorist and cognitivist theories within psychology. We will return to this paper repeatedly. I recommend that you read it.
- Browse the rather long entry on Embodied Cognition from the influential Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Topic 2: Language and Languaging
Mandatory
- Linguistic theory claims that all languages are of equal complexity. This claim has often been misunderstood. What, then, is the argument made by Dalrymple in this article?
- The relation between speech and music is discussed here: Cummins, F. (2013). Joint speech: The missing link between speech and music? Percepta: Journal of Musical Cognition. V1(1), pp. 17-32
Optional
- Here is a provocative recent attempt to re-think how we think about language. Its emphasis on the voice, rather than text, is telling. Thibault, P. J. (2011). First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: the distributed language view. Ecological Psychology, 23(3), 210-245.
- You can get a flavour of some of the discussion around Chomsky's recent claims from this article: Pinker, S., & Jackendoff, R. (2005). The faculty of language: what's special about it?. Cognition, 95(2), 201-236.
Topic 3: Development
Mandatory
- From Scientific American, a brief article on The advantages of being helpless.
- Roy, B. C., Frank, M. C., DeCamp, P., Miller, M. and Roy, D. (2015). Predicting the birth of a spoken word, PNAS, Published online Sept 21, 2015.
- Reddy, V., & Trevarthen, C. (2004). What we learn about babies from engaging their emotions. Zero to Three, 24(3), 9-15.
- Developmental Plasticity and the "Hard-Wired" Problem A blog post from 2014 by Patrick Clarkin
Optional
- Cole, M., & Wertsch, J. V. (1996). Beyond the individual-social antinomy in discussions of Piaget and Vygotsky. Human development, 39(5), 250-256.
- Kan, K. J., Wicherts, J. M., Dolan, C. V., & van der Maas, H. L. (2013). On the nature and nurture of intelligence and specific cognitive abilities the more heritable, the more culture dependent. Psychological Science, 0956797613493292.
Topic 4: Perception
Mandatory
- A representational approach to vision: Cavanagh, P. (2011). Visual cognition. Vision research, 51(13), 1538-1551.
- A non-representational approach to vision: Goldstein, E. B. (1981). The Ecology of JJ Gibson's Perception. Leonardo, 191-195.
Optional
- Are there olfactory illusions? Batty, C. (2014). The illusion confusion. Frontiers in psychology, 5.
- A consideration of the old sensation/perception divide from a more modern enactive/embodied stance: McGann, M. (2010). Perceptual Modalities: Modes of Presentation or Modes of Interaction? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17(1-2), 1-2.
Topic 5: Social Cognition
Mandatory
- Cummins, F. (2014). Voice,(Inter-) Subjectivity, and Real Time Recurrent Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(760). (From this special issue on Embodied Intersubjectivity)
- Schilbach, L., Timmermans, B., Reddy, V., Costall, A., Bente, G., Schlicht, T., & Vogeley, K. (2013). Toward a second-person neuroscience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(04), 393-414.
- Read about the famous Milgram Obedience experiment here
- A recent re-interpretation and re-imagination of the classic experiment is described in this Scientific American article, or alternatively in this Nature article.
- What do you think? Are far reaching consequences being drawn on the basis of appropriately solid evidence? Is it clear what the researchers are measuring?
Optional
- Tomasello, M., Hare, B., Lehmann, H., & Call, J. (2007). Reliance on head versus eyes in the gaze following of great apes and human infants: the cooperative eye hypothesis. Journal of Human Evolution, 52(3), 314-320.
- De Jaegher, H., Di Paolo, E., & Gallagher, S. (2010). Can social interaction constitute social cognition?. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 441-447.
- Here is a first hand report from a guard in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- Milgram's obedience study: A contentious classic reinterpreted - an up to date overview of recent reconsideration of the original experiment.
Topic 6: Brains
Mandatory
- The argument about the neuron doctrine seemed to be settled 100 years ago. Now we are not so sure. Fields, R. D. (2006). Beyond the neuron doctrine. Scientific American Mind, 17(3), 20-27.
- We tend to regard the brain as a highly abstract and magical thing. It is worth reminding ourselves how it looks physically. If you don't mind a bit of explicit anatomy, here is a worthwhile video from the Wellcome Foundation showing how brains are dissected.
- A comparison of modern and older phrenology by the excellent Neurocritic blogger.
Optional
- Kay, Lily E. From
logical neurons to poetic embodiments of mind:
Warren S. McCulloch's project in neuroscience. Science in Context
14.4 (2001): 591-614.
This article provides some societal context to the emergence of cognitivism, the role of logic in the origins of neural networks, the links between neural networks, information theory, and the military during and after the Second World War, and the driving passions of Warren McCulloch, described as "psychiatrist, experimental epistemologist, poet, militarist, and theological engineer". A good read. - BrainTutor is a wonderful programme for interactively looking at and learning the macroscopic anatomy of the brain. Works on Mac and Windows.
- Hari et al., (2015) Centrality of Social Interaction in Human Brain Function Recent article reviewing need for hyperscanning techniques in studying social interaction.
Topic 7: Movement
Mandatory
- An article in Scholarpedia by Scott Kelso on the notion of a Synergy, or Coordinative Structure
Optional
- A representationalist account of movement is provided here: Wolpert, D. M., & Ghahramani, Z. (2000). Computational principles of movement neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 1212-1217.
- In the same vein, an account of Why can't you tickle yourself?. Blakemore, S. J., Wolpert, D., & Frith, C. (2000)., Neuroreport, 11(11), R11-R16.