Chapter Thirteen

1
Chapter Thirteen

• Conclusion Where We Go From Here

2
The benefits of cognitive science

• Brings together diverse theoretical perspectives.
• Widespread influence of cognitive theory on other
  disciplines and in education.
• Practical applications in medicine, engineering,
  and robotics.
• Advances in diagnosis and treatment of disease
  and disorders.

3
Working together on working memory
Cross-disciplinary integration can help us to
better understand the relationship between a
given mental Process such as working memory and
other mental processes.
4
Working together on working memory

• Philosophy. Asks critical questions about the
  process.
• Psychology. Application of different theoretical
  lenses to the process.
• Cognitive. Formulation of information- processing
  models of the process.
• Neuroscience. Anatomy and physiology of process.

5
Working together on working memory

• Networks. Create ANNs to simulate the process
  and/or semantic networks to study how knowledge
  is represented in the process.
• Evolution. Focus on the problem the process is
  designed to solve and how it originated.
  Implement evolutionary algorithms.
• Linguistics. What is the role of language in the
  process? How does the process interface with
  language?
• Artificial Intelligence. Design and run computer
  algorithms that will perform the process.

6
Working together on working memory

• Robotics. Design and test robots that will
  implement the process and use it in a real- world
  environment.

7
Issues in cognitive science

• Lack of a unified theory.
• The nature of mental representation and
  computation still debated.
• Classic information processing vs. connectionism.

8
Cognitive science and the real world

• Cognitive science has a hard time accounting for
  processes that must interact with the complexity
  of the physical world. This is just one of the
  issues it must confront.

9
Issues in cognitive science

• Emotions. There is no adequate account of
  emotions or of how they interact with cognition.
• Consciousness. A fundamental mystery. No
  agreement on what it is or how to understand it.
• Physical environments. Most cognitive science is
  done in simple controlled scenarios instead of
  complex real-word situations.
• Social environments. Most cognitive processes are
  individualized instead of in social or ecological
  environments.

10
Issues in cognitive science

• Individual and cultural differences. Greater
  consideration and study of these needed.

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Evaluating cognitive science theories

• Five considerations (Thagard, 2000)
• Representational power.
• Computational power.
• Psychological plausibility.
• Neurological plausibility.
• Practical applicability.

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Integration in cognitive science

1. Integration across levels of description. The
   need for theories and models that specify the
   implementation, algorithmic, and computational
   levels.
2. Integration across disciplines. Need for
   collaborative interdisciplinary work.
3. Integration across methodology. Need for
   synergistic use of multiple methods.