Cognitive Architectures: Problem Solving and Comprehension Processes

Franz Schmalhofer (Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Science)

Ute Schmid

Computer Science Group , Institute of Cognitive Science, University Osnabrück

Seminar Course, Summer Term 2003

Master and Doctorate Program for Cognitive Science, Examination Field "Learning and Memory"

The course is also open for 4th or higher semester cognitive science undergradswho successfully passed the courses "Methods of AI" and "Cognitive Psychology" (examination field "AI" or "Psychology")

Course Language: English

Please note: This course is offered by the Institute of Cognitive Science and not by the Computer Science group and therefore is offered mainly for cognitive science students.

Topics: First we give an introduction to symbolic approaches to cognitive modeling and to cognitive architectures as frameworks for cognitive models. Then, we will discuss the new book by Gary Marcus, "The Algebraic Mind", which discusses symbolic and connectionist approaches with a special focus on structural representations. Afterwards we present cognitive models of text comprehension and inferences, and finally cognitive models of problem solving, analogy and induction.

Hours and Contact Schedule and Syllabus Links to Literature Credits

Hours and Contact

Class: WED 12:00-14:00 in 01/B01 (probably moved to 01/214)
Contact:
Franz Schmalhofer, Franz.Schmalhofer@uos.de
Ute Schmid, schmid@informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de

Schedule and Syllabus

This is a preliminary schedule which is continually updated. Here you will also find the slides and additional information.

Introduction

(01) 09.04.03 Introduction to Cognitive Modeling

The Algebraic Mind

(Franz) (02) 16.04.03 Cognitive Architectures (chap. 1) and Multilayer Preceptrons (chap. 2) (Jasmin Steinwender, Sebastian Bitzer) [Slides, pdf] [Handout, rtf]
(Ute) (03) 23.04.03 Relations between Variables (chap. 3) (Kalia Dogbevi, Tobias Kringe) [Slides, html]
(Ute) (04) 30.04.03 Structured Representations (chap. 4) (Melissa Libertus, Klaus Tichaceck, Sepideh Sadaghiani) [Slides, pdf]
(Franz) (05) 07.05.03 Individuals (chap. 5) (Jan Peters, Antje Petzold, Stefan Scherbaum) [Slides, pdf]
(Franz) (06) 14.05.03 Machinery of Symbol Manipulation (chap. 6) (Michael Elbers, Anne Lämmel, Jiayong Liu) [Slides, pdf]
(Ute) (07) 21.05.03 Conclusion (chap. 7) (Felix Molitor, Carsten Wittenberg) [Slides, pdf]

Text Comprehension and Inference (Franz)

(08) 28.05.03 Cognitiven and Representation (Frank Schumann, David Trill, Sebastian Zoesch) [Slides, pdf]
(09) 04.06.03 Comprehension (Nicolas Neubauer, Thomas Sieren, Yufan Zhao) [Slides, pdf]
(10) 11.06.03 holiday
(11) 18.06.03 Action Planning (Adnan Ghori, Andreas Bartel (AI planning), Larissa Zillner)

Problem Solving, Analogy, and Induction (Ute)

(12) 25.06.03 ACT-R and Goal Stacks (Christian Stößel, Christian Kaul, Jens Wissmann) [Slides, pdf]
(13) 02.07.03 Learning in Problem Solving (Isabell Dombrowe, Karin Pietruska)
(14) 09.07.03 Analogical Problem Solving and Learning (Julia Jira, Courtney Phillips, Sarah Irwin)

Final Discussion

(14) 16.07.03

Credits

Credits and examination field depend on whether you are a bachelor, master, or doctorate student.
For obtaining credits, you must
- weekly attend the class (for seminar courses, regular attendance is important because similar background is needed for fruitful discussions)
- give a seminar talk (probably 45 minutes)
- provide for a pdf-version of your slides

Links to Literature

Overview/General Information

MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
Cognitive Science Resources (University of Waterloo, CA)
Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling
Newell, A. (1973). You can't play 20 questions with nature and win: Projective comments on papers in this symposium. In W. G. Chase (Ed.), Visual Information Processing (pp. 283-310). New York: Academic Press.
Strube, G. (1996). Stichwörter "Kognition"/"Kognitionswissenschaft". In: G. Strube et al. (Hrsg.), Wörterbuch der Kognitionswissenschaft. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. [pdf]
Search for scientific papers: [The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies] [Citeseer]

The Algebraic Mind

Gary F. Marcus (2001). The Algebraic Mind Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science. MIT Press.

The papers given below are just some initial suggestions. Whether we will use basic or specific papers, focus mor on psychology or on AI depends on the participants of the course.

Text Comprehension and Inferences

Albrecht, J. E., & Myers, J. L. (1998). Accessing distant text information during reading: Effects of contextual cues. Discourse Processes, 26, 87-107.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1997). Two decades of structure building. Discourse Processes, 23, 265-304.
Graesser, A. C., Millis, K. K., & Zwaan, R. A. (1997). Discourse Comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 163-189. Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kintsch, W. (2002) Predication. Cognitive Science
Klin, C. M. (1995). Causal inferences in reading: From immediate activation to long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 21, 1483-1494.
Klin, C. M., Guzman, A. E., & Levine, W. H. (1999). Prevalence and persistence of predictive inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 593-604.
Long, D. L., & De Ley, L. (2000). Implicit causality and discourse focus: The interaction of text and reader characteristics in pronoun resolution.
McDaniel, M. A., Schmalhofer, F., & Keefe, D. (2001). What is minimal about predictive inferences? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R. (1998). Memory-based language processing: Psycholinguistic research in the 1990s. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 25-42.
Myers, J. L., Shinjo, M., & Duffy, S. A. (1987). Degree of causal relatedness and memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 453-465.
O'Brien, E. J., Rizzella, M. L., Albrecht, J. E., & Halleran, J. G. (1998). Updating a situation model: A memory-based text processing view. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1200-1210.
Perfetti, C. A. (1999). Comprehending written language: A blueprint of the reader. In C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language processing (pp. 167-208). Oxford University Press.
Schmalhofer, F., McDaniel, M. A., & Keefe, D. (2002). A unified model for predictive and bridging inferences. Discourse Processes.
Singer, M. (1996). Comprehending consistent and inconsistent causal text sequences: A construction-integration analysis. Discourse Processes, 21, 1-21.
Singer, M., Graesser, A. C., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Minimal or global inferences during reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 421-441.
Singer, M., & Kintsch, W. (2001). Text retrieval: A theoretical exploration. Discourse Processes, 31, 27-59.
Zwaan, R. A., Kaup, B., Stanfield, R. A., & Madden C. J. (2001). Language comprehension as guided experience. [paper]
Zwaan, R. A., & Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162-185.

Problem Solving, Analogy, and Induction

Problem Solving and Learning:
- [ACT-R]
- Anderson, J. R. & Douglass, S. (2001). Tower of Hanoi: Evidence for the Cost of Goal Retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(6). (12)
- Altmann, E. M. & Trafton, J. G. (2002). Memory for goals: An activation-based model. Cognitive Science, 26, 39-83. (12)
- Schmid, U. and Wysotzki, F. (2000). A Unifying Approach to Learning by Doing and Learning by Analogy. The 4th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics SCI 2000, July 23 - 26, 2000, Orlando, Florida. N. Callaos et al. (Eds.), Vol. I (Information Systems), pp. 379-384. [Postscript] (13)
- Schmid, U. and Wysotzki, F. (2000). Applying inductive program synthesis to macro learning. In S. Chien, S. Kambhampati, and C.A. Knoblock (Eds.), Proceedings of the AIPS 2000, Breckenridge, CO, April 2000, (pages 371-378), AAAI Press. [Postscript] (13) -- acquisition. In M. L. Posner, Ed., Foundations of Cognitive --> -- Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -->
- VanLehn, K. (1996). Cognitive skill acquisition. In J. Spence, J. Darly & D. J. Foss (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 42. Annual Reviews: Palo Alto, CA. pp. 513-539. [online preprint] (13)
- Wallach, D., & Lebiere, C. (2002). On the role of instances in complex skill acquisition. In Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the German Psychological Association.
Analogy and Generalization:
- K. Forbus, D. Gentner and the QR-Group [Papers] (14)
- Hofstadter, D. R., and M. Mitchell. (1994). The Copycat project: A model of mental fluidity and analogy-making. In K. J. Holyoak and J. A. Barnden, Eds., Advances in Connectionist and Neural Computation Theory, vol. 2, Analogical Connections. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 31-112.
- Hummel, J. E., and K. J. Holyoak. (1997). Distributed representations of structure: A theory of analogical access and mapping. Psychological Review 104:427-466.
- Mitchell, T. M., R. M. Keller, and S. T. Kedar-Cabelli. (1986). Example-based generalization: a unifying view. Machine Learning 1(1):47-80.
- O'Hara, S. (1992). A model of the 'redescription' process in the context of geometric proportional analogy problems. In K.P. Jantke (Ed.), AII'92 - Analogical and Inductive Inference, Springer. (14) (no online version, get copy from Julia)
- Schmid, U., Wirth, J., and Polkehn, K. (in press). A Closer Look at Structural Similarity in Analogical Transfer. Cognitive Science Quareterly. [PDF, 30 pages]
- Winston, P. H. (1982). Learning new principles from precedents and exercises. Artificial Intelligence 19:321-350.

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