A computer is something that computes, and since humans make computations when processing information, humans are computers. What kinds of computations do humans make when they learn languages? Answering this question requires the collaborative efforts of researchers in several different disciplines and sub-disciplines, including language science (e.g. theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics...

Introduction Cognitive science is a relatively young field. Its beginnings are typically dated in the 1950s, and it did not become a large-scale activity (with a society, meetings, and degree programs) until the late 1970s or early 1980s. As in most young fields, one of the salient features of cognitive science is its interdisciplinarity. All definitions of cognitive science make important ment...

If cognitive science does not exist then it is necessary to invent it. That slogan accommodates any reasonable attitude about the subject. One attitude-an optimistic one-is that cognitive science already exists and is alive and flourishing in academe: we have all in our different ways been doing it for years. The gentleman in Moliere’s play rejoiced to discover that he had been speaking prose f...

Crowdsourcing data collection from research participants recruited from online labor markets is now common in cognitive science. We review who is in the crowd and who can be reached by the average laboratory. We discuss reproducibility and review some recent methodological innovations for online experiments. We consider the design of research studies and arising ethical issues. We review how to...

kind, imposing constraints upon the possible organizations of intelligent systems rather than upon their material substrates. Intelligent systems, according to this argument, will necessarily be symbol systems, and at the level of goal-oriented activity, they will be serial in operation with, narrow attentional focus. Empirically Observed Invariants However adaptive are the intelligent systems ...

information may be more difficult to use without some concrete example. Abelson's script theory can not only cope with a lot of the nonformal vagaries of human reasoning but provides a handle on dealing with attitudes and cognitively mediated social behavior. Attitudes are simply the ensemble of scripts concerning some object, person or activity; cognitively mediated social behavior involves th...