Complex Cognition


Book Description

The other, a contrasting and more contemporary approach, is the model of "bounded rationality," according to which people are surprisingly irrational, or at best arational, in their thinking, often deriving ill-conceived shortcuts that lead them to wrong conclusions. This text is a synthesis of these two approaches, combining the best elements of each to offer a radically inclusive new theory. It emphasizes multiple points of view, including the objective, but also the subjective views of the self and others.




Complexity, Cognition and the City


Book Description

Complexity, Cognition and the City aims at a deeper understanding of urbanism, while invoking, on an equal footing, the contributions both the hard and soft sciences have made, and are still making, when grappling with the many issues and facets of regional planning and dynamics. In this work, the author goes beyond merely seeing the city as a self-organized, emerging pattern of some collective interaction between many stylized urban "agents" – he makes the crucial step of attributing cognition to his agents and thus raises, for the first time, the question on how to deal with a complex system composed of many interacting complex agents in clearly defined settings. Accordingly, the author eventually addresses issues of practical relevance for urban planners and decision makers. The book unfolds its message in a largely nontechnical manner, so as to provide a broad interdisciplinary readership with insights, ideas, and other stimuli to encourage further research – with the twofold aim of further pushing back the boundaries of complexity science and emphasizing the all-important interrelation of hard and soft sciences in recognizing the cognitive sciences as another necessary ingredient for meaningful urban studies.




Cognition in the Wild


Book Description

Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation—its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory—"in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science—cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm)—to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book




Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness


Book Description

Experimental evidence in humans and other mammalians indicates that complex neurodynamics is crucial for the emergence of higher-level intelligence. Dynamical neural systems with encoding in limit cycle and non-convergent attractors have gained increasing popularity in the past decade. The role of synchronization, desynchronization, and intermittent synchronization on cognition has been studied extensively by various authors, in particular by authors contributing to the present volume. This book addresses dynamical aspects of brain functions and cognition.




The Evolution of Cognition


Book Description

In the last decade, "evolutionary psychology" has come to refer exclusively to research on human mentality and behavior, motivated by a nativist interpretation of how evolution operates. This book encompasses the behavior and mentality of nonhuman as well as human animals and a full range of evolutionary approaches. Rather than a collection by and for the like-minded, it is a debate about how evolutionary processes have shaped cognition. The debate is divided into five sections: Orientations, on the phylogenetic, ecological, and psychological/comparative approaches to the evolution of cognition; Categorization, on how various animals parse their environments, how they represent objects and events and the relations among them; Causality, on whether and in what ways nonhuman animals represent cause and effect relationships; Consciousness, on whether it makes sense to talk about the evolution of consciousness and whether the phenomenon can be investigated empirically in nonhuman animals; and Culture, on the cognitive requirements for nongenetic transmission of information and the evolutionary consequences of such cultural exchange. ContributorsBernard Balleine, Patrick Bateson, Michael J. Beran, M. E. Bitterman, Robert Boyd, Nicola Clayton, Juan Delius, Anthony Dickinson, Robin Dunbar, D.P. Griffiths, Bernd Heinrich, Cecilia Heyes, William A. Hillix, Ludwig Huber, Nicholas Humphrey, Masako Jitsumori, Louis Lefebvre, Nicholas Mackintosh, Euan M. Macphail, Peter Richerson, Duane M. Rumbaugh, Sara Shettleworth, Martina Siemann, Kim Sterelny, Michael Tomasello, Laura Weiser, Alexandra Wells, Carolyn Wilczynski, David Sloan Wilson




The Multicontext Approach to Cognitive Rehabilitation


Book Description

This text provides practical information, tools and resources for implementation of the Multicontext Approach (MC) in cognitive rehabilitation. The Multicontext approach is uniquely designed to promote and enhance cognitive strategy use, self-awareness and self-monitoring skills across everyday activities in a way that maximizes functional outcomes for people with cognitive impairments due to acquired brain injury and other health conditions. Assembled by a leading worldwide expert in cognitive rehabilitation, this is the first comprehensive volume that integrates Multicontext treatment principles, evidence and guidelines all in one place and provides "how to" information to guide clinical practice and research. Organized into 3 sections, the first part provides foundational knowledge and clinical examples of the impact of cognitive impairments on functional performance and includes tools for observing, analyzing, and interpreting cognitive performance within daily life activities. The second part provides in-depth coverage of the Multicontext approach including theoretical concepts, strategies to address different cognitive performance problems, and detailed guidelines for using a structured metacognitive framework, guided learning techniques, and structuring treatment activities along a transfer continuum to optimize generalization or carryover of learning. The final part of the book provides additional clinical scenarios and case examples to illustrate how the Multicontext approach can be tailored to meet individual needs across a wide range of clinical problems and settings as well as within interprofessional teams. This landmark publication is an essential resource for occupational therapy practitioners, students, clinical neuropsychologists, researchers, and other healthcare professionals who work within the field of cognitive rehabilitation in inpatient, outpatient or community-based settings. In a large-size format for easy photocopying, this invaluable book features an extensive appendix with a full of a range of learning exercises and reflective activities, summaries, observational tools, training guides, clinical examples, treatment forms and worksheets that can be reproduced for clinical practice to enable readers to carry out these methods with their clients. Purchasers obtain access to a Web page where they can download and print reproducible materials from appendices.




Complex Information Processing


Book Description

Here, several leading experts in the area of cognitive science summarize their current research programs, tracing Herbert A. Simon's influence on their own work -- and on the field of information processing at large. Topics covered include problem- solving, imagery, reading, writing, memory, expertise, instruction, and learning. Collectively, the chapters reveal a high degree of coherence across the various specialized disciplines within cognition -- a coherence largely attributable to the initial unity in Simon's seminal and pioneering contributions.




Cephalopod Cognition


Book Description

Focusing on comparative cognition in cephalopods, this book illuminates the wide range of mental function in this often overlooked group.




Understanding Literacy and Cognition


Book Description

What does it me an to be literate? What does it mean to be a cognizing individual? What is the nature of cognizing? These are not new questions. They have been treated as "philosophical puzzles" to be pondered systema tically in the hope of some eventual solution. They have also been viewed as sets of "language games" with their own rules to enable the individual to understand the world. These age-old and significant issues gain renewed meaning with our advances in technology and neurosciences. Psychologists and educators would need to be aware of the explicit knowledge needed to prepare their students to be literate individuals. These were some of the questions that a small number of psychologists, educators, and computer scientists attempted to answer when they gathered for the Symposium Literacy and Cognition, which was held at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada from 29th to 31st October, 1987. The occasion also marked the sixtieth anniversary of the College of Education of the University, which had as its beginning the Normal School for the Province of Saskatchewan. We are grateful to the presenters for their presentations and their written papers, and also to our other colleagues from the United States and Sweden for their contributions to the multi faceted theme of literacy and cognition. There are many other people whom we would like to thank. These include: Dr. Sylvia Fedoruk, Chancellor of the University and Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, for her opening remarks at the Symposium; Dr.




Second Language Task Complexity


Book Description

Understanding how task complexity affects second language learning, interaction and spoken and written performance is essential to informed decisions about task design and sequencing in TBLT programs. The chapters in this volume all examine evidence for claims of the Cognition Hypothesis that complex tasks should promote greater accuracy and complexity of speech and writing, as well as more interaction, and learning of information provided in the input to task performance, than simpler tasks. Implications are drawn concerning the basic pedagogic claim of the Cognition Hypothesis, that tasks should be sequenced for learners from simple to complex during syllabus design. Containing theoretical discussion of the Cognition Hypothesis, and cutting-edge empirical studies of the effects of task complexity on second language learning and performance, this book will be important reading for language teachers, graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and cognitive and educational psychology.