7.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book

Mon Oct 14 02:27:51 UTC 1996

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-7-1433. Sun Oct 13 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  205

Subject: 7.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book

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---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Sun, 13 Oct 1996 16:45:28 EDT
From:  BPEARSON at umiami.ir.miami.edu
Subject:  Summary: Cognitive science intro book

---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Sun, 13 Oct 1996 16:45:28 EDT
From:  BPEARSON at umiami.ir.miami.edu
Subject:  Summary: Cognitive science intro book

Dear Linguist List:

Last week I posted a request for references to and opinions
about books for a *very* introductory cognitive science
course called "Language and Mind" I am planning for our
Continuing Studies program.

Thank you to the following people for their helpful
responses: (in the order I heard from them)

     "Alan B. Cobo-Lewis" <acobolew at peds.med.miami.EDU>
     Michel Weenink <weenink at PSYCH.KUN.NL>
     Alan B Munn <amunn at pilot.msu.edu>
     jordan at ling.su.se (Jordan Zlatev)
     Valery Belyanin <fortuna at cc.nccu.edu.tw>
     PING at urvax.urich.edu
     Elizabeth Purnell <elpurnel at indiana.edu>
     "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport at cs.Buffalo.EDU>

I append below the list of books people suggested.  One
person seconded my impression that the Stillings et al., the
most well-known book, would be too hard for the
undergraduates, but for the most part, the statement that
someone uses the book as the main text is what I have to go
on to infer that he or she likes it.  I split the list into
"required" and "supplementary" books.

In addition to the book references, Purnell's syllabus lists
two films:  "The machine that changed the world" and
"Acquiring the human language" (which I have yet to follow
up on).

I will also put in the homepage suggestions I got.  Perhaps
because of the computational component, we might conclude
that CogSci courses are better mounted on the Internet than
other courses, especially in my department (English).

Thank you again.  This has been very useful for me and, I
hope, for others as well.

Barbara

Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Bilingualism Study Group
University of Miami
Psychology Annex, Rm 221
Coral Gables, FL 33124-0721
305-284-1760/ fax: 305-284-4795
bpearson at umiami.ir.miami.edu

BOOK SUGGESTIONS:
(Sorry for the motley citations.  I've filled in the facts
of publication for the ones available from our library.
This exercise reminds me of the recent plea from someone on
Linguist for a new "standard referencing style."  His
complaint hits home better after doing this!)

MAIN TEXTS:

     Gerald Edelman's _Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. On the
Matter of the Mind_, Basic Books, 1992.

     Garfield, J. (ed.). 1990  Foundations of cognitive
science: the essential readings.  NY: Paragon House.

     Komatsu, L. K. (1994). Experimenting with the mind:
Readings in cognitive psychology.

     Osherson and Lasnik 1990. _Language_ volume of the MIT
Press "An Invitation to Cognitive Science" series.
     has chapters on basic syntax and phonology and then
     chapters on various aspects of psycholinguistics
     including language acquistion, speech perception,
     aphasia etc.  I found that the chapters tie together
     well, and the amount of syntax and phonology presented
     in the introductory chapters is generally enough to be
     useful to understand the subsequent chapters.

     Reed, S. K. (1996) Cognition (4th ed.)

     Stillings, Neil A., Weisler, Steven, E. Chase, C. H.,
Feinstein, M. H., Garfield, J. L, & Fissland, E. L. 1995.
_Cognitive Science: An Introduction_ 2nd edition. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.

     Thagard, Paul. 1996. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive
Science.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

also:
     Valery P. Belyanin _Introduction to psychiatric
literary criticism_.- Frankfurt-am-Main, 1996, 281 p. (in
Russian!)

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS (for selected readings)

     Campbell, R. (1992). Mental lives: Case studies in
cognition.
     Cheney, D. & Seyfarth, R. 1990.  _How monkeys see the
world: inside the mind of another species_. Chicago: U of
Chic Press.
     Churchland, Patricia. 1986.  Neurophilosophy: toward a
unified science of the mind-brain.
     Paul Churchland. 1984. _Matter and Consciousness: A
contemporary introduction to the philosophy of mind_.  MIT
Press.
     Fodor, J. (1983). Modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA.:
The MIT Press.
     Gardner, Howard, 1987.  _The mind's new science: A
history of the cognitive revolution (with new epilogue
"Cognitive science after 1984") (our library has 1985).  NY:
Basic Books.
     Goldberg, D. 1989.  Genetic algorithms in search,
optimization, and machine learning.
     Haugeland, J. (1981). Mind design: philosophy,
psychology, and artificial intelligence. Bradford Books.
     John Haugeland, 1985.  _Artificial Intelligence: the
very idea_.  MIT Press.
     Johnson, M. H. (1993) Brain development and cognition:
a reader. Oxford: Blackwell. (The chapter by Bates & Elman
can be read on-line).
     Mayer, M.E. (1992) Thinking, problem solving,
cognition. 2nd Edition. NY.: W. H. Freeman.
     Pinker, S., & Mehler, J. (1988). Connections and
symbols. A ?Bates Cognition Special Issue. The MIT Press.
     Posner, M. (1989). Foundations of cognitive science.
Cambridge,MA.: The MIT Press.
     Rapaport, W.J. article on Cognitive Science in the
Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 3rd ed. (for Web address,
see below).
     Rock, I. (1990). The perceptual world.
     Rumelhart, D. & McClelland, J. & the PDP Research
Group. (1986).  Parallel distributed processing. Vol. 1.
Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
     Thelen, E. & Smith, L. 1994.  A dynamic systems
approach to the development of cognition and action.
     Varela, F. J., Tompson, E., & Rosch, E. 1991. _The
Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience_ MIT
Press 1991.

WEB resources

newsgroup sci.cognitive

LISTSERV discussion list called COGSCI. Listowner
     COGSCI at nic.SURFNET.nl and CHAETHIC at nic.SURFNET.nl

homepages (with links to other sources)

http://www.psych.kun.nl/~weenink/cogsci/index.html for more
info.

http://www.urich.edu/~pli/cogsci327.html  and
cogsci328.html.

http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~elpurnel/q300syll.html
     (It contains all readings, study questions, lecture
     notes, and other links.)

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bowers/psyc203.html
     (from surfing: home page for Jeffrey S. Bowers' Cog Psy
     203 at Rice)

http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/pub/WWW/faculty/rapaport/Papers/
     cogsci.ps
     (From Rapaport: WJR offered to email or snailmail the
     article, if my browser can't handle postscript files.
     It doesn't, but this sounds like a good motivation to
     find something that will.)

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