Cognitive Science

New Developments in Science

• For centuries, science has made great strides in our understanding of the
external observable world.
• Physics revealed the motion of the planets
• Chemistry discovered the fundamental elements of matter
• Biology has told us how to understand and treat disease.
• There were still many unanswered questions about something perhaps even
more important to us-the human mind.
• Mind is the most complex entity in the known universe.
• Human brain is estimated to contain 10 billion to 100 billion individual nerve
cells or neurons. Each of these neurons can have as many as 10,000
connections to other neurons.
• These connection give rise to mental processes such as perception, memory,
language, problem solving etc.
• In past several decades have seen the introduction of new technologies and
methodologies for studying this intriguing organ.
• Rapid discovery has coincided with an increase in the number of different
disciplines-many of them entirely new-that study mind.
• Unlike the science that came before, which was focused on the world of
external, observable phenomena, or "outer space," this new endeavor now
turns its full attention to the discovery of our fascinating mental world, or
"inner space."
 Cognitive Science
• Cognitive science can be roughly summed up as the scientific
interdisciplinary study of the mind.
• It is a multidisciplinary approach which includes psychology, philosophy,
linguistics, artificial intelligence, robotics, anthropology and neuroscience.
• Term cognitive science refers not so much to the sum of all these disciplines but
to their intersection or converging work on specific problems.
• This perspective centers on the idea of computation, which may alternatively
be called information processing.
• Cognitive scientists view the mind as an information processor.
• Information processors (mind) represent and transform information.
• Cognitive science is often credited with being influenced by the rise of the
computer.
 Mind (Brain) as information processor
• Information is "input" into our minds through perception what we see or
hear.
• It is stored in our memories and processed in the form of thought.
• Our thoughts can then serve as the basis of "outputs," such as language or
physical behavior.
Constituent Disciplines
 Philosophy
• Philosophy is the study of thought concerning nature, metaphysics, ethics,
aesthetics, being, knowledge, logic, and all manner of theory.
• “Philosophy” comes from Greek words meaning “love of wisdom.”
• Philosophy uses the tools of logic and reason to analyze the ways in which
humans experience the world.
• It teaches critical thinking, close reading, clear writing, and logical analysis,
and uses these to understand the language we use to describe the world, and
our place within it
 What inference you can take out of theses two
following statements ?

Human factor: Study of Man-Machine Interface

“Strange coincidence, that every man whose skull has been opened had a
brain!” Ludwig Wittgenstein
 Psychology
• Psychology is the scientific study of the mind (mental processes) and
behavior.
• Psychology is a multifaceted discipline and includes many sub-fields of study
such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical, social behavior and
cognitive processes.
• Psychology is concerned with How mind (brain) is affected through behavior
and vice-versa ?
 Linguistic
• Language is a system of communication in which thoughts are transmitted by
means of sounds (as in speech and music) or symbols (as in written words and
gestures).
• Linguistics is the scientific study of language.
• It involves analyzing language form, language meaning, and language in context.
• The disciplines that explore the comprehension of language and mental processing
underlying is psycholinguistics.
• Medium of language can significantly facilitate or inhibit cognitive processes
 I love you (मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ )

Ten एकादश दस

Eleven द्वादश ग्यारह

Twenty one एकाव िंशवत इकीस

Thirty-one एकवरिंशत् इकतीस

 Anthropology
• Anthropology is the study of humans, early hominids and primates, such as
chimpanzees.
• Anthropologists study human language, culture, societies, biological and material
remains, the biology and behavior of primates, and even our own buying habits.
• They consider the past, through archaeology, to see how human groups lived
hundreds or thousands of years ago. (e.g. temple of khujaraho, or literature
Mahabharat)
• Anthropologists also compare humans with other animals to see what we have in
common with them and what makes us unique.
 Neuroscience
• Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary science that is
concerned with the study of the structure and
function of the nervous system.
• It encompasses the evolution, development, cellular
and molecular biology, physiology, anatomy and
pharmacology of the nervous system, as well as
computational, behavioural and cognitive
neuroscience.
 Artificial Intelligence
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human
intelligence processes by machines, especially
computer systems.
• These processes include learning (the acquisition of
information and rules for using the information),
reasoning (using rules to reach approximate or
definite conclusions) and self-correction.
Interdisciplinary Perspective
 The Philosophical Approach
• Philosophy is the oldest of all the disciplines in cognitive science
• Philosophers have been active throughout much of recorded human history,
attempting to formulate and answer basic questions about the universe.
• Philosophers of mind narrow their focus to specific problems concerning the
nature and characteristics of mind.
• What is mind?
• How do we come to know things?
• How is mental knowledge organized?
 Cont….
• The primary method of philosophical inquiry is reasoning
1. Deductive reasoning involves the application of the rules of logic to
statements about the world. (General to specific).
2. Inductive reasoning: make observations about specific instances in the
world, notice commonalities among them, and draw conclusions (Specific
to General).
 The Psychological Approach
• Psychologists apply the scientific method to both mind and behavior.
• This approach attempt to understand not just internal mental phenomena,
such as thoughts, but also the external behaviors that these internal
phenomena can give rise to.
• Through this approach we makes observations under a set of controlled
conditions. The resulting data then either support or fail to support the
hypothesis.
 Cont.…..
• The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our
Capacity for Processing Information :- George Miller
• Theories of Human Attention Systems:
 The Cognitive Approach
• Starting in the 1960s, a new form of psychology arrived on the scene.
Known as cognitive psychology.
• It came into being in part as a backlash against the behaviorist movement
and its profound emphasis on behavior.
• Cognitive psychologists placed renewed emphasis on the study of internal
mental operations.
• This approach adopted the computer as a metaphor for mind (Brain) and
described mental functioning in terms of representation and computation.
 Cont.…
• Mind, like a computer, could be understood in terms of information processing.
• The techniques used in this approach are the experimental method and
computational modeling.
• Cognitive psychologists have studied a wide variety of mental processes,
including pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagery, and problem solving.
Neuroscience Approach & Network Approach

• The study of the brain and endocrine system and how these account for
mental states and behavior is called neuroscience.
• The attempt to explain cognitive processes in terms of underlying brain
mechanisms is known as cognitive neuroscience.
• It attempts to describe the biological "hardware" on which mental "software"
supposedly runs.
• The network approach is at least partially derived from neuroscience.
 Cont.…..
• In this perspective, mind is seen as a collection of computing units.
• These units are connected to one another and mutually influence one
another's activity via their connections.
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
 The Evolutionary Approach
• Evolutionary approach can be considered in a quite general way and used to
explain phenomena outside biology.
• Evolutionary psychology applies selection theory to account for human
mental processes.
• It attempts to elucidate the selection forces that acted on our ancestors and
how those forces gave rise to the cognitive structures we now possess.
• Evolutionary psychologists also adopt a modular approach to mind.
• People who came from carpentered environments—characterized by wood
or other materials arranged in straight lines, rectangular shapes, and other
such geometric relationships—would be relatively more susceptible to the
Muller- Lyer illusion (Rivers, 1905)
• People from cultures where the horizon is a part of the everyday landscape
(such as desert or plains dwellers) would be more susceptible to the
horizontal–vertical illusion than would people (such as jungle dwellers) from
cultures where the environment does not afford opportunities to view vast
distances (Segall et al., 1966)
Flynn effect graph
 Linguistic Approach
• It is concerned with all questions concerning language ability, such as,
What is language?
How do we acquire language?
What parts of the brain underlie language use?
How language give rise to thoughts?
 Emotion Approach
• Our conscious experience consists of emotions, such as happiness, sadness,
and anger and these emotions affects our thoughts.
• Emotion is an agent that significantly affects our cognitive processes (i.e.
attention, perception, memory, and decision making).
• We look at the neuroscience underlying emotions and the role that
evolutionary forces played in their formation.
 Social Approach
• Cognition happens inside individuals, but those individuals are strongly
influenced by their social environment.
• The field of social cognition explores how people make sense of both
themselves and others.
• Thinking about people often differs from thinking about objects and that
different parts of our brains are used when thinking socially.
• Neuroscience has revealed that in laboratory animals there are specialized
cells, called mirror neurons, that are active both when an animal performs
some action and when it watches another animal or person perform that
same action.
Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Approach

• Researchers in AI are concerned with getting computers to perform tasks

that have heretofore required human intelligence.
• AI programs have been developed that can diagnose medical disorders, use
language, and play chess.
• The robotics approach has much to contribute to cognitive science and to
theories of mind.
• Robots, like people and animals, must demonstrate successful goal-oriented
behaviors under complex, changing, and uncertain environmental conditions.