For questions about models and theoretical idealizations of cognitive processes in humans or other animals. Examples include computational, mathematical, and conceptual models.
5
votes
1answer
28 views
Is there any recent work on modeling how we rapidly acquire new knowledge?
I work with neural network models of human cognition a lot, and one thing that bugs me about them is the timescale: they learn over thousands of trials whereas humans seem to learn after a couple ...
2
votes
0answers
19 views
Does dream recall interfere with “reverse learning”? (Crick and Mitchison's theory of REM sleep)
I've recently became aware of the idea of "reverse learning" that might happen during REM sleep - the brain's attempt to eliminate pathological attractors that might appear in neural networks. The ...
2
votes
0answers
49 views
Predicting the Duration of Future Events
I am interested in the question of how people use/integrate previous experiences with instances of tasks or events to make predictions about the duration of future instances of tasks/events.
To ...
8
votes
1answer
216 views
What are the current suggested models for Primacy Effect in memory recall or personality impression?
What are the current suggested normative, mechanistic or phenomenological models for explaining primacy effect as was observed by Solomon Asch (1946) on personality impression, list-of-words memory ...
6
votes
1answer
51 views
Any research on how we use visual category information in visuomotor tasks?
So I've been reading up on the Two-streams Hypothesis*, and it bothers me that the explanations both sides give only extend to tasks involving one type of visual information. For example, an ...
7
votes
1answer
116 views
Any attempts at testing or modeling the 'cognitive conception' of language?
For those unfamiliar, the 'cognitive conception of language' refers to a claim made by some theorists that, in the words of Carruthers:
"besides its obvious communicative functions, language also ...
12
votes
2answers
231 views
Is there an R implementation of the linear ballistic accumulator model or Ratcliff's diffusion model for measuring response time and accuracy?
I am looking for an implementation of the linear ballistic accumulator model or Ratcliff's diffusion model (e.g. in R, MATLAB, or Python).
3
votes
0answers
37 views
Test-retest reliability of Iowa gambling task performance and Expectancy Valence Model parameters
I've just been learning about the Expectancy Valence Model of the Iowa Gambling Task (see Busemeyer & Stout, 2002; Yechiam et al 2005). The model includes three parameters: motivation, ...
5
votes
2answers
108 views
Do humans mentally discretize numbers?
It seems reasonable to me that humans discretize numbers: this number is bigger than than number, or when faced with a series of numbers that range from 0 - 100, 50 is "middling", 10 is "low" and 90 ...
2
votes
2answers
75 views
How to adjust SSE or RMSE for the number of free parameters in the model?
How do I adjust SSE (sum of squared errors) or RMSE (root-mean-square errors) for the number of free parameters in the model?
Is there an "adjusted" RMSD metric similar to the adjusted r-squared ...
2
votes
0answers
45 views
What are the most well-understood vocal animal languages?
There are many examples of animal language that involve vocal pattens or "grammar".
For example, there is the the Bee dance, bird songs, whale songs, dogs.
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls ...
7
votes
2answers
177 views
Best practice to handle double negatives when using the expectancy-value model?
My question is regarding the multiplicative combination rule in the Expectancy-value model developed by Fishbein and Ajzen, and the issues regarding the expectancy value-muddle, or the case of "double ...
2
votes
1answer
49 views
Are there already models for planning and goal-directed behaviour?
I'm interested in planning and how one is able to take action and plan ahead at the same time. I could imagine one could make observations and project these into the future using past experiences. The ...
0
votes
1answer
126 views
How does the brain process concurrent visual or sensory data?
I tried thinking about an apple and simultaneously an orange. (I was thinking about its appearance and taste). Despite my best efforts I was not able to do parallel processing to think about the apple ...
8
votes
1answer
219 views
Attention Theory: is it impossible to avoid distraction?
I remember reading at some point in the literature that humans are unable to avoid distraction from a certain primary task if this task isn't using up close to all available 'resources' - basically ...
4
votes
2answers
88 views
Are there any cognitive models for visual navigation?
I've seen a few neuroscience accounts of visual navigation and many A.I. projects, but no psychologically plausible accounts that actually solve the computational problem (i.e. produce a working ...
11
votes
11answers
331 views
Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games?
Call it a nerd crossover, but I've always been curious about how we play games on a mechanistic level. However, even coming from a rational viewpoint video games seem like a fruitful domain of study, ...
10
votes
3answers
164 views
Is there a random walk theory that can account for situations with more than two choices?
In the article "Two-stage Dynamic Signal Detection: A Theory of Choice, Decision Time, and Confidence" from 2010 by Pleskac and Busemeyer, a random walk model is presented for situations where a ...
8
votes
1answer
136 views
Origin of the SEEV Model of visual attention distribution
What's the original source of the SEEV (Salience Effort Expectancy Value) Model for predicting the distribution of visual attention? I've seen it mentioned in many papers and presentations but ...
2
votes
1answer
48 views
How can pain sensations appear to originate within the person's skull?
I've read that humans have some sort of a kinesthetic model of their body and muscles. This internal representation of the body is used to control and coordinate locomotion. I don't remember if ...
-3
votes
1answer
136 views
What kinds of maths to learn for understanding dynamical systems in cognitive science? [closed]
A current trend in cognitive science is to view the mind as a dynamical system (e.g., Continuity of Mind by Spivey, in which cognition is understood as a "continuous and often recurrent trajectory ...
8
votes
2answers
167 views
How can the success of Bayesian models be reconciled with demonstrations of heuristic and biased reasoning?
In recent years, Bayesian models of cognition have been used - with considerable success - to explain human reasoning in a variety of inferential tasks (Chater, Tenenbaum, & Yuille, 2006). These ...
2
votes
2answers
241 views
What skills are required to build simulations of the human brain? [closed]
I want to build a system that has the ability to gather data from the internet in order to build a cognitive model of the human brain. The model should be able to answer the questions required by a ...
-3
votes
1answer
132 views
Using natural language processing for traffic monitoring from video
I am stuck trying to learn how to use video processing as explained in the linked papers in the area of human behavior detection or traffic surveillance (any kind of monitoring activity). In ...
0
votes
0answers
66 views
Theories of the human mind and/or intelligence [closed]
As Jeff Hawkins writes in "On Intelligence":
When I first became interested in brains many years ago, I went
to my local library to look for a good book that would explain how
brains ...
17
votes
3answers
910 views
What are some of the drawbacks to probabilistic models of cognition?
Probabilistic approaches to modelling cognition are increasing in popularity and being encouraged within the field (Chater, Tanenbaum, & Yuille, 2006).
What are some of the arguments against or ...
4
votes
0answers
106 views
'Model-free' learning in humans
In reinforcement learning, there is a stark distinction between model-based and model-free learning algorithms, where model-free methods don't make use any explicit information about the dynamics of ...
7
votes
1answer
196 views
References for biologically plausible models of knowledge representation?
I'm looking for references that deal with the issue of how various kinds of semantic knowledge is (or might be) neurally represented. Most of the discussion of this topic seems skewed by social ...
9
votes
1answer
187 views
Are there any connectionist models that integrate reinforcement and fully supervised learning?
I've been working on modeling some phenomena involving real-time control in an environment with inherent rewards (specifically, playing a 'pong'-like game), and it's increasingly looking like ...
10
votes
2answers
397 views
What are current neuronal explanations and models of 'consciousness'?
I would like to understand more about consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. I have a limited understanding of it in the philosophical/psychological sense through lectures.
Although it is ...
8
votes
1answer
106 views
Computational Model Linking Neural Activity to Behavior
A big question in neuroscience is how neural activity represents knowledge. We can use modelling to explore how different levels of neural activity- subthreshold currents, action potentials, local ...
15
votes
5answers
556 views
What are good examples of applying dynamical systems in cognitive science?
I'm a mathematics and physics student very much interested in cognitive science. Recently I've been hearing about "a new approach" in cognitive science via dynamical system theory.
What are some ...
7
votes
0answers
68 views
Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?
Background
I have been checking out various personality typing assessments lately when I came across a Personality typing system known as Socionics which aims at explaining relationships between ...
7
votes
1answer
99 views
Judgments of similarity between samples of writing
I was thinking last night about the possibility of an experiment that investigates the factors contributing to peoples' judgments of 'stylistic similarity' between two samples of writing.
For example, ...
5
votes
1answer
81 views
Need good example of two domains involving different procedural knowledge yet sharing same high-level strategies
Working in the domain of intelligent tutoring systems, I have to prove (or disprove) that explicit teaching of high-level strategies will allow students to use learned strategies across different ...
7
votes
1answer
83 views
Are there shapes defined by 3 (or more) generative parameters whose mapping to psychological similarity space is known?
I am trying to generate 4 shapes that are equidistant in psychological similarity space - meaning that they are all equally discriminable from one another - which differ in 3 parameters, such that ...
6
votes
2answers
99 views
How to computationally model the Wisconsin Card Sorting task? [closed]
The Wisconsin Card Sorting task is rather famous but appears to be quite difficult to model computationally.
To respond to @Artem's question, I work in RL and I am interested in how people learn the ...
7
votes
1answer
125 views
What research has modelled the difficulty of mental mathematical calculation?
I posted this also on mathoverflow.
What research has modelled the difficulty of evaluating a formula mentally (for your average, numerate, person, not a trained mental calculator)?
For instance, ...
10
votes
5answers
252 views
Visual search: complexity of positive vs negative search tasks
Thinking about experiments where participants perform visual search tasks, I remember hearing in a Cog Psych lecture that if the instructions of the task were of the form "find the element that has ...
5
votes
1answer
102 views
Perceptual flicker when rotating my face
Informal Experiment:
I look up at a wooden beam on the ceiling, or I look at the office door; both the door and the ceiling are about 2 meters from my face.
I rotate my face 90 degrees left or right ...
8
votes
3answers
261 views
Introductory resources on bayesian modeling for cognitive sciences
On Cross Validated there is a great question about best introductory books for bayesian statistics. Also, Jeromy Anglim blogged recently about use of JAGS, rjags, and Bayesian Modelling, with some ...
2
votes
1answer
102 views
Combinatorial woes
I am interested in the creation of chunks (aka configural nodes) from smaller chunks and input features (only interested in System 1 cognition).
Unitization studies (e.g. Goldstone (pdf)), suggest ...
5
votes
2answers
202 views
What can cognitive psychology tell us about the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment?
One of the experiments that are always taught as prime examples of social psychology in action is the Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, Zimbardo accepted a tenured position as professor of ...
