Ideals and reality often diverge. If we have made such strides in the last fifty years in many source disciplines of cognitive science individually (computer science, linguistics, mathematics, neuroscience, psychology), why has this not manifested as massive progress in fundamental understanding of the mind? Where is the glorious cognitive utopia promised by our large advances in empirical methods, the scale and availability of data, and the unreasonable effectiveness of engineering tools?
The root of this tension must, at least partially, reside in a distinction between prediction and explanation. It should be obvious to a reasoned thinker that an observation and its cause are two very different objects: this is echoed in the theoretical study of language in the divide between a speaker's i(nternal)-language —the system for generating and interpreting sentences — from their e(xternalized)-language; the utterances and texts that we can actually record. Here i-language is the intended object of scientific study despite e-language being the paradigmatic (and perhaps necessary) locus of measurement.
Attempts to collapse this distinction are endemic. This has, perhaps, been brought to a head by modern so-called AI systems whose application draws no such distinction between predicting external behavior and explaining its internal cause. This "collapsed" view, in fact, has a long history, as Celsus described a prominent school of Greek physicians nearly two thousand years ago: "[this group does] indeed accept evident causes as necessary; but they contend that inquiry about obscure causes and natural actions is superfluous, because nature is not to be comprehended." But if messy, stochastic observations are all we have, then why bother?
In this seminar we take an optimistic view: in order to treat the study of cognition as a mature science we must re-emphasize a commitment to the idea that the world (mind included) has a mechanistic basis that can be understood as such. This seminar will cover a mechanistic understanding of mental representations in language. We will explore how factors such as perception, memory, learning, categorization, and conceptual development interact with and constrain the properties of human language and inference, including its acquisition, processing, and variation.
There is no official textbook for the course as we will almost exclusively read primary papers from the relevant literature. All readings assigned throughout the term (both required and supplementary) will be posted to the course schedule/Dropbox (Ask Spencer or Eric for access!)
With the goal of fostering focus, discussion, and the exchange of ideas, the use of screens (laptops, phones, etc.) will not be permitted during class. Any visual aids will be provided via physical materials (e.g. printouts or projections).
As a paper/discussion-centric seminar, the primary component of course grades (50%) will be calculated based on active participation and attendance.
Students will also be required to submit a short document (less than a page) each week before class with notes/reflections from the assigned readings (20% of the overall grade).
Finally, students will write a term paper (a research squib), which will make up the remaining 30% of the grade. There will be no HWs, quizzes, or tests.
The instructor will attempt to provide all reasonable accommodations to students upon request. If you believe you are covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act, please direct accommodations requests to Vice President for Student Affairs Matthew G. Schoengood.
The course takes place (in person) at the Graduate Center, and students are expected to attend all classes (in person). However, students who have reason to believe they may be contagious with an infectious disease should contact the instructor and stay home. Other absences will not be excused, and the instructor reserves the right to tie grades to attendance records.
We're all trying to do a good job in life. I want to call out here that I, a human being, wrote this. It is not boilerplate or a template. We have put a lot of time and effort into creating a positive, rigorous course and environment for intellectual pursuit. Please try to uphold that goal as well.
In line with the Student Handbook policies on plagiarism, students are expected to complete their own work. The general ethos of the integrity policy is that actions which shortcut the learning process are forbidden while actions which promote learning are encouraged. Studying and discussing notes, papers, and ideas together provides a fruitful avenue for learning and is encouraged. Using a classmate’s solution or AI slop in your submitted notes or your term paper, however, is prohibited because it circumvents the learning process. If you have any questions about what is or is not permissible, please contact your instructors.
The instructors reserve the right to refer violations to the Academic Integrity Officer.
January 27th: On Descriptive vs Explanatory adequacy; Performance vs Competence; Marr's level of analysis
Required reading:
Aspects. Chapter 1.
Supplementary readings:
February 3rd: Explanations vis-à-vis phenomenological laws: the case of frequency and lexical access
Required reading:
Murray, W. S., & Forster, K. I. (2004). Serial mechanisms in lexical access: the rank hypothesis. Psychological Review, 111(3), 721.
Supplementary readings:
February 10th: On "binning" and belief fragmentation
Required reading:
Bendaña, J., & Mandelbaum, E. (2021). The fragmentation of belief.
Modularity of mind. Ch 4.
Supplementary readings:
February 17th: No class today
February 24th
Required reading:
Carey, S., Zaitchik, D., & Bascandziev, I. (2015). Theories of development: In dialog with Jean Piaget. Developmental Review, 38, 36-54.
March 3rd: Making sense of gradience and discreteness in perception and categorization
(if you read only one thing it should be Caplan & Durvasula. But if you're willing to read two :), then I would strongly recommend starting with McMurray (2022). Sit with those arguments for a day or so, and *then* try reading Caplan & Durvasula)
Required reading:
McMurray, B. (2022). The myth of categorical perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(6), 3819-3842.
Caplan, S., & Durvasula, K. The discrete perception of continuous speech.
Supplementary readings:
March 10th: Optimization(?) for the grammar: generation vs. evaluation as bottlenecks
(if you read only one thing do X&T (2007). But, again, if you have the bandwidith to engage to two then also read Yang (2017)
Required reading:
Xu, F., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2007). Word learning as Bayesian inference. Psychological review, 114(2), 245.
Yang, C. (2017). Rage against the machine: Evaluation metrics in the 21st century. Language Acquisition, 24(2), 100-125.
Supplementary readings:
March 17th: On effects and causes (diachronic and synchronic) of properties of the lexicon
Required reading:
Piantadosi, S. T., Tily, H., & Gibson, E. (2012). The communicative function of ambiguity in language. Cognition, 122(3), 280-291.
Caplan, S., Kodner, J., & Yang, C. (2020). Miller's monkey updated: Communicative efficiency and the statistics of words in natural language. Cognition, 205, 104466.
Supplementary readings:
March 24th: On distributions and individuals, what and where are we to understand representations? AND: the return of the lightbulb/chandelier problem
(with guest star Jordan Kodner)
Required reading:
Hayes, B., & Londe, Z. C. (2006). Stochastic phonological knowledge: The case of Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonology, 23(1), 59-104.
Ito, C., & Feldman, N. H. (2022). Iterated Learning Models of Language Change: A Case Study of Sino‐Korean Accent. Cognitive Science, 46(4), e13115.
Supplementary readings:
March 31st: An honest to god model of categorical productivity
Required reading:
Yang, C. (2018). A user’s guide to the tolerance principle. Unpublished manuscript.
Schuler, K. D. (2017). The acquisition of productive rules in child and adult language learners. Georgetown University. (Chapters 1 through 4)
April 7th: No class today (Spring Break)
April 14th: How domain general is the TP? Generalization and productivity outside of language acquisition
Required reading:
Guilbeault, D., Caplan, S., & Yang, C. (in press). A simple threshold captures the social learning of conventions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Supplementary readings:
April 21st:
Required reading:
Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system. Mind & Language, 34(2), 141-157.
Mandelbaum, E., Won, I., Gross, S., & Firestone, C. (2020). Can resources save rationality? "Anti-Bayesian" updating in cognition and perception. The Behavioral and brain sciences, 43, e16.
Supplementary readings:
April 28th: Wrapping up belief and discussions on counting, discreteness, the successor function, and infinity.
Required reading:
Carey, S., & Barner, D. (2019). Ontogenetic origins of human integer representations. Trends in cognitive sciences, 23(10), 823-835.
Yang, C. (2016). The linguistic origin of the next number. [Unpublished manuscript]
May 5th: How and when we choose between alternatives when building structure and deriving meaning.
Required reading:
Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1990). Taking on semantic commitments: Processing multiple meanings vs. multiple senses. Journal of memory and language, 29(2), 181-200.
Schwartz, E., Pion, G., Quilty-Dunn, J., Mandelbaum, E., & Caplan, S. The Uncommon Sense Effect: experimental evidence for underspecification as the mental basis of logical inference. [Unpublished manuscript]
Supplementary readings:
May 12th: The course themes rear their head again.
Required reading:
Pickering, M. J., & Van Gompel, R. P. (2006). Syntactic parsing. In Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 455-503). Academic Press.
Levy, R. (2008). Expectation-based syntactic comprehension. Cognition, 106(3), 1126-1177.
Supplementary readings:
Monday May 18th: (Details forthcoming / in process)