Study Exercises and Discussion Topics: Textbook

Study Exercises and Discussion Topics

"States of Mind: Those Who Go" (Umberto Boccioni) scanned by Mark Harden, at Artchive.

 

Use the exercises labeled "review" to guide your studying, and be prepared to address the discussion questions in class. Much of each class period will be devoted to reviewing the answers to these questions and exercises.

Questions for the textbook are adapted from the study questions provided on the Cambridge University Press website.

Chapter 1

Section 1.1

For review:
  1. Describe the experiment that led Tolman to postulate the existence of cognitive maps. Explain why the results of the experiment support this postulation.
  2. Explain the difference between linearly and hierarchically organized behavior. Give an example of a hierarchical behavior.
  3. Why do hierarchically organized behaviors pose a problem for behaviorists?
For discussion:
  1. Behaviorism is no longer the dominant paradigm in psychology, but what can we learn from it? Are parts of behaviorist thinking correct?

Section 1.2

For review:
  1. What is an algorithm?
  2. What is a Turing machine? What is the Church-Turing thesis?
For discussion:
  1. Is computation what minds do, as many cognitive scientists believe?

Section 1.3

For review:
  1. Explain the distinction between the deep (or phrase) and the surface structure of a sentence.
  2. In what way did the concept of a transformational grammar contribute to the development of cognitive science?

Section 1.4

For review:
  1. Explain what chunking is. Give an example. Why do we need to chunk information?
  2. Explain the phenomenon of selective attention. Give your own example.
For discussion:
  1. What are the limitations of applying the tools of information theory to psychology?
  2. Is Broadbent’s strategy of giving flowcharts a good model of explanation for cognitive science? Why or why not?

Section 1.5

For review:
  1. Explain how the concept of information runs through each of the topics discussed in Chapter 1.
For discussion:
  1. How would you define "information"?

Chapter 2

Section 2.1

For review:
  1. In what ways does SHRDLU go beyond a chatterbot such as ELIZA?
  2. Give three reasons why SHRDLU was important in the birth of cognitive science.
For discussion:
  1. Is it worthwhile for cognitive scientists to try to build machines that mimic cognition?
  2. Is it a concern that SHRDLU only deals with a micro-world and a restricted language?

Section 2.2

For review:
  1. What is the question at issue in the mental imagery debate?
  2. How do digital and analog representations differ from each other?
  3. What was the contribution of Kosslyn’s experiments and Shepard and Metzler’s experiments to the mental imagery debate?
For discussion:
  1. Is introspection a valid method in psychology? With respect to Shepard and Metzler’s experimental paradigm, is it significant that it seems to participants as if they are rotating one image to compare it with the other?

Section 2.3

For review:
  1. What are the critical differences between computational level analysis, algorithmic level analysis, and implementational level analysis?
  2. The lecture discussed other versions of the level-of-analysis concept, especially Stanovich's. How are Marr's and Stanovich's descriptions alike? How are they different?
  3. Does it make sense to ask for a particular behavior, which level of analysis is best? Why, or why not?
For discussion:
  1. How useful are Marr’s and Stanovich's approaches to the explanation of behavior?

Chapter 3

Section 3.1

For review:
  1. Explain the concept of multiple realizability. How does it figure into the argument that we can study cognition without studying the brain?
For discussion:
  1. Can you understand the mind without investigating the brain?

Section 3.2

For review:
  1. Explain Ungerleider and Mishkin’s distinction between the “what” and the “where” systems. Where is each system located?
  2. How does Mishkin and Ungerleider’s bottom-up approach to cognitive science differ from Marr’s top-down approach?
For discussion:
  1. Why do we need to take care when making inferences about cognitive function from neuropsychological evidence?

Section 3.3

For review:
  1. Describe the key features of artificial neural networks.
  2. For what type of tasks are neural networks particularly suited? Give your own example of such a task.
For discussion:
  1. Is neural network modeling a useful endeavor in cognitive science? Why or why not?

Section 3.4

For review:
  1. What are the main differences between the neurological and the cognitive models of single word reading?
  2. What were the conclusions of Petersen et al.’s study of single word reading?
For discussion:
  1. What role should neuroimaging play in cognitive science? Are there any criticisms of using it?

Chapter 4

Section 4.1

For discussion:
  1. What are the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach to cognitive science (or any other discipline)?
  2. Are there any dangers that come with an interdisciplinary approach? How can we avoid them?

Section 4.2

For review:
  1. Describe the difference between how psychology and neuroscience are organized.

Section 4.4

For review:
  1. Why are logic and probability theory considered to be domain-general?
  2. Describe the original Wason selection task.
  3. What is a deontic conditional? Give your own example of one.
  4. Reconstruct Cosmides and Tooby’s argument for the cheater detection module.
  5. Describe a prisoner’s dilemma.
  6. What is the TIT FOR TAT strategy? Why do evolutionary psychologists think it might provide a way of explaining the emergence of cooperative behavior?
  7. Outline the local integration presented in Section 4.4.
For discussion:
  1. Do Cosmides and Tooby give a successful explanation of the experimental results from versions of the Wason selection task? Have they made a good case for the cheater detection module?
  2. Human beings are not always good at conditional reasoning. Does it show that people are irrational? (to be covered in a later Special Topics section)

Section 4.5

For review:
  1. Briefly describe how fMRI works. Compare it with PET.
  2. Why do we need the local integration between neural activity and the BOLD signal?
  3. What are some hypotheses about the source of the BOLD signal?
  4. Outline the local integration presented in Section 4.5.

Chapter 5

Section 5.1

For review:
  1. Describe the logical positivists’ model of intertheoretic reduction. Why is the model likely to be unsuccessful in cognitive science?
  2. Describe Cummins’s model of functional decomposition.
  3. Why do cognitive scientists believe that short-term and long-term memory are different systems?
  4. Describe Baddeley’s functional decomposition of the short-term memory system.
For discussion:
  1. Why does cognitive science tend to lack laws?
  2. Is Cummins right that functional decomposition is the main methodology of psychology? Should it be the main methodology?

Section 5.2

For review:
  1. Why does Marr's (or Stanovich's) approach represent a possible solution to the integration challenge?
  2. Explain the modular/non-modular distinction. Why is it important in thinking about levels of analysis?
  3. What is the "frame problem"? Why does it present a problem for the levels of analysis approach?
For discussion:
  1. Is it convincing that Marr’s approach works only for modular systems, and hence cannot represent a global solution to the integration challenge?

Section 5.3

For review:
  1. Describe the mental architectures approach to the integration challenge. What are its three important questions?

Chapter 6

Section 6.1

For review:
  1. What is a physical symbol system? Explain the four key ideas.
  2. According to Newell and Simon, which ability lies at the heart of intelligence?
  3. What is a search space? How do computer scientists often represent them?
  4. Explain the notion of a heuristic search technique.
  5. What is a universal Turing machine? Why does it help to illustrate the fourth requirement of a physical symbol system?
For discussion:
  1. Is the physical symbol system hypothesis correct?
  2. Does problem solving lie at the heart of intelligence, as Newell and Simon suggest?

Section 6.2

For review:
  1. What is a propositional attitude? How does a consideration of propositional attitudes lead to the Intentional Realism hypothesis?
  2. Explain the difference between formal and semantic properties of information processing systems. Why does this distinction lead to the puzzle of causation by content?
  3. How does Fodor's language of thought hypothesis solve the puzzle of causation by content?
For discussion:
  1. Is intentional realism the correct approach to thinking about propositional attitudes? What are some other options?
  2. Is causation by content a puzzling phenomenon? What do you think of Fodor’s proposed solution to it?

Section 6.3

For review:
  1. Describe the Chinese room thought experiment.
  2. What claim does the Chinese room argument challenge?
  3. Describe the Turing test.
  4. Explain the systems reply to the Chinese room argument.
For discussion:
  1. Is Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment a convincing argument?
  2. In general, what do you think of the use of thought experiments?

Chapter 7

Section 7.1

For review:
  1. What is the goal of expert systems research and machine learning research?
  2. In what way do expert systems research and machine learning research instantiate physical symbol systems?

Section 7.3

For review:
  1. Explain the basics of how WHISPER works.
  2. How does WHISPER differ from other physical symbol systems?

Section 7.4

For review:
  1. What sort of knowledge does SHAKEY have about its environment and itself?
  2. What are the levels of SHAKEY’s software?
For discussion:
  1. Is it significant that SHAKEY inhabits a real world rather than a virtual one?
  2. After seeing the illustrations of physical symbol systems given in Chapter 7, what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the physical symbol system approach?

Chapter 8

Section 8.1

For review:
  1. Explain the basic structure and functioning of an artificial neuron. Compare it with the structure and functioning of a real neuron.
For discussion:
  1. Are artificial neural networks a good enough approximation of real neural networks to be useful to cognitive scientists?

Section 8.2

For review:
  1. Explain what Hebbian learning is.
  2. What is a major difference between Hebbian learning and learning via the perceptron convergence rule?
  3. Explain the concept of linear separability of functions. How does it pertain to perceptrons?
For discussion:
  1. Why is training such an integral part of neural network modeling?

Section 8.3

For review:
  1. Describe the basic structure and functioning of a multi-layer network.
  2. Explain how the backpropagation algorithm works.
  3. Describe the worries about the biological plausibility of artificial neural networks.
  4. What is a local learning algorithm? Does it represent supervised or unsupervised learning?
  5. Explain what a competitive network is. How does it differ from a standard artificial neural network?

Section 8.4

For review:

  1. Explain the key features of information processing in artificial neural networks.
  2. Explain how artificial neural networks differ from physical symbol systems.
For discussion:
  1. Are there any reasons to be skeptical whether artificial neural networks represent a new way to think about information processing?

Chapter 9

Section 9.1

For review:
  1. Explain the default hypothesis about what it is to understand a language.
  2. Explain Fodor’s argument from language learning for the language of thought hypothesis.

Section 9.2

For review:

  1. Describe the three stages in learning the tenses of verbs.
  2. How do Pinker and Prince explain the trajectory of tense learning?
  3. Describe the structure and operation of Rumelhart and McClelland’s network for past tense acquisition.
  4. What is Pinker and Prince’s criticism of the way that Rumelhart and McClelland model the over-regularization phenomenon?
  5. How did Plunkett and Marchman improve on Rumelhart and McClelland’s network?
For discussion:
  1. Is there any way to reconcile the neural network models of tense learning and the rule-based models?

Section 9.3

For review:
  1. Describe the dishabituation paradigm. What did it demonstrate?
  2. What is folk physics?
  3. Describe Spelke’s four principles of folk physics.
For discussion:
  1. Is the dishabituation paradigm a useful and valid methodology?

Section 9.4

For review:
  1. Describe how Munakata uses a recurrent network to model the phenomenon of object permanence.
  2. Describe the four stages children that go through with respect to the balance beam problem.
  3. Describe how McClelland and Jenkins model the stages of reasoning about the balance beam problem, and how they train their network?
  4. Outline the different ways in which physical symbol systems and neural networks supporters would view the information processing underlying infants’ physical reasoning.
For discussion:
  1. What kind of explanations do the models described in Section 9.4 provide for the phenomena that they target?

Section 9.5

For review:
  1. Describe the question of levels and explain why it is important.
  2. Reconstruct Fodor and Pylyshyn’s argument concerning artificial neural networks.
For discussion:
  1. Is Fodor and Pylyshyn’s argument convincing?

Chapter 10

Section 10.1

For review:
  1. What is an agent? What is an agent architecture? What are the distinguishing features of an agent architecture?
  2. Describe a simple reflex agent. What are production (condition-action) rules?
  3. What is a goal-based agent? How does it operate?
  4. What is a learning agent?

Section 10.2

For review:
  1. What is a cognitive module? What are the characteristics of modular processing? Give some examples of candidates for cognitive modules.
  2. What is central processing? What does Fodor mean when he calls central processing Quinean and isotropic?
  3. Where do Fodor’s cognitive modules tend to fall in agent architectures?
  4. Explain Fodor’s First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science. What is the tension between the language of thought hypothesis and central processing?
  5. What are some ways of responding to Fodor’s argument for Fodor’s First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science?
For discussion:
  1. Should we abandon horizontal faculty psychology?
  2. How successful is Fodor’s argument for Fodor’s First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science?

Section 10.3

For review:
  1. What is the massive modularity hypothesis? What arguments have been offered to support the hypothesis?
  2. Compare and contrast Fodorian and Darwinian modules.
  3. Explain the “domain-specific bodies of knowledge” objection to the massive modularity hypothesis.
  4. Reconstruct the two arguments purporting to show that there must be domain-general processing.
For discussion:
  1. How good is Cosmides and Tooby’s case for the massive modularity hypothesis?

Section 10.4

For review:
  1. Explain the basic setup and functioning of ACT-R/PM.
  2. How does ACT-R/PM represent declarative and procedural knowledge, respectively?
  3. How does ACT-R/PM select which production rule should be active if there is a conflict?
  4. Which parts of ACT-R/PM are symbolic? Which are subsymbolic? Explain why.

Chapter 12

Section 12.1

For review:
  1. Describe the stages of development in pretend play. What is common to all types of pretend play?
  2. Explain the three basic observations from which Leslie’s model of the pretense system begins. What does Leslie conclude from them?
  3. Describe Leslie’s model of the pretense system. How does he think it relates to the mindreading system?
For discussion:
  1. Are there other, perhaps simpler ways to explain pretend play?

Section 12.2

For review:
  1. Why does the phenomenon of autism seem to support Leslie’s basic claim that pretend play involves metarepresentation?
  2. Describe the false belief task.
  3. What observation threatens Leslie’s claim that pretend play and mindreading depend on a common system?
For discussion:
  1. Is the false belief task a good test of mindreading abilities?

Section 12.3

For review:
  1. Describe Baron-Cohen’s model of the mindreading system. How does it develop? What are the functions of its components?
  2. What is joint visual attention? How is it related to the theoretical concepts of Shared Attention Mechanism, Empathy System, and Theory of Mind Mechanism?

Section 12.4

For review:
  1. How does Leslie explain the time lag between the capacity for metarepresentation and the ability to pass the false belief task?
  2. How has Leslie’s selection processor hypothesis been tested experimentally?
  3. In what way is Perner’s explanation for the time lag different from Leslie's?

Section 12.5

For review:
  1. What is the difference between simulationist accounts of mindreading and the accounts of researchers such as Leslie and Perner?
  2. What is standard simulationism? How does introspection figure into the account?
  3. What is radical simulationism? How is it different from standard simulationism?
For discussion:
  1. Which is the more plausible version of simulationism? Why?

Section 12.6

For review:
  1. Describe the false photograph task. Why is it used for studying cognitive development?
  2. Describe the experiments that led Saxe and Kanwisher to believe that there is a neural system dedicated to mindreading.
  3. Explain the evidence that seems to show that low-level mindreading abilities depend on co-opted systems.
  4. What is a mirror neuron? Why might mirror neurons be relevant when discussing simulationism?

 

Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology

Confer et al build their paper around the following questions. What are their answers to these questions? Would your answers be any different?

  1. Can evolutionary psychological hypotheses be empirically tested or falsified?
  2. Don’t people just solve problems using rationality? Wouldn’t one domain-general rationality mechanism be more parsimonious than postulating many domain-specific mechanisms?
  3. Aren’t human behaviors the result of learning and socialization, not evolution?
  4. How does evolutionary psychology take culture into account?
  5. How do recent novel environmental phenomena affect human evolutionary psychology?
  6. What role do genes play in the framework of evolutionary psychology?
  7. What is the practical value of evolutionary psychology?
  8. What are the limitations of evolutionary psychology?
Also,
  1. What contributions to cognitive science does evolutionary psychological offer?
  2. Are there issues in cognitive science that can only be addressed adequately by taking an evolutionary approach?

 

Rationality and Human Reasoning

Study Questions:

  1. What are the two systems of reasoning that Evans describes? How do they differ from each other?
  2. What evidence exists to support the idea of two separate systems in human reasoning?
  3. How are individual differences treated in the dual process model of reasoning?
  4. How is the dual process model related to evolutionary theories?
  5. How did De Neys test the dual process model? Why did he choose the experimental methods that he used?
  6. How do De Neys's results bear on the theoretical points made by Evans?

 

Social Dilemmas

Study Questions:

  1. What is the "rational" strategy for each player in the ultimatum game? Why is this a rational strategy (what does it achieve)?
  2. How do people actually behave in this game? Would you behave the same way?
  3. How would you account for people's deviations from rationality? What role does a sense of "fairness" play in the game?
  4. According to Nowak et al, how might evolution theory account for the development of fairness?
  5. Chimps behave differently from people. What does this imply?
  6. Compare the ultimatum game with the prisoner's dilemma. How are they alike? How do they differ?

 

Moral Reasoning

Study Questions:

  1. Haidt contrasts the approaches of Piaget and Kohlberg with his own view of morality. What is the most important difference?
  2. Haidt claims that cross-cultural studies of morality suggest that there is a fundamental conflict between individuals and society. Do you agree with Haidt's conclusions in this regard?
  3. How does the topic of moral reasoning illustrate the conflict between reasoning and intuition?
  4. In what way do Krebs and Haidt agree in their arguments? How do they differ?
  5. How would you describe Kreb's account of a "sense of morality"?
  6. What connections do you see between theories of moral reasoning, theories of rationality, and other topics we have studied?

 

Consciousness

Study Questions:

  1. Why has the question "What is it like to be a bat?" become so famous?
  2. What are qualia? Why does Dennett think there are no such things?
  3. What are the alternative positions that have been taken on Frank Jackson's hypothetical Mary?
  4. Do zombies exist (philosophical zombies, that is)? Does it matter?
  5. What is Chalmer's "hard problem" of consciousness? Is it really a problem?