Cognitive Systems

A concise introduction to a complex field, bringing together recent work in cognitive science and cognitive robotics to offer a solid grounding on key issues. This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to the emerging field of artificial cognitive systems. Cognition, both natural and artificial, is about anticipating the need for action and developing the capacity to predict the outcome of those actions. Drawing on artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, the field of artificial cognitive systems has as its ultimate goal the creation of computer-based systems that can interact with humans and serve society in a variety of ways. This primer brings together recent work in cognitive science and cognitive robotics to offer readers a solid grounding on key issues. The book first develops a working definition of cognitive systems—broad enough to encompass multiple views of the subject and deep enough to help in the formulation of theories and models. It surveys the cognitivist, emergent, and hybrid paradigms of cognitive science and discusses cognitive architectures derived from them. It then turns to the key issues, with chapters devoted to autonomy, embodiment, learning and development, memory and prospection, knowledge and representation, and social cognition. Ideas are introduced in an intuitive, natural order, with an emphasis on the relationships among ideas and building to an overview of the field. The main text is straightforward and succinct; sidenotes drill deeper on specific topics and provide contextual links to further reading.

This volume provides an exceptional perspective on the nature, evolution, contributions and future of the field of Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE). It is a resource to support both the teaching and practice of CSE. It accomplishes this through its organization into two complementary approaches to the topic. The first is an historical perspective: In the retrospections of leaders of the field, what have been the seminal achievements of cognitive human factors? What are the "lessons learned" that became foundational to CSE, and how did that foundation evolve into a broader systems view of cognitive work? The second perspective is both pedagogical and future-looking: What are the major conceptual issues that have to be addressed by CSE and how can a new generation of researchers be prepared to further advance CSE? Topics include studies of expertise, cognitive work analysis, cognitive task analysis, human performance, system design, cognitive modeling, decision making, human-computer interaction, trust in automation, teamwork and ecological interface design. A thematic focus will be on systems-level analysis, and such notions as resilience engineering and systems-level measurement. The book features broad coverage of many of the domains to which CSE is being applied, among them industrial process control, health care, decision aiding and aviation human factors. The book’s contributions are provided by an extraordinary group of leaders and pathfinders in applied psychology, cognitive science, systems analysis and system design. In combination these chapters present invaluable insights, experiences and continuing uncertainties on the subject of the field of CSE, and in doing so honor the career and achievements of Professor David D. Woods of Ohio State University.

The past 15 years have witnessed an increasing interest in the comparative study of language and music as cognitive systems. Language and music are uniquely human traits, so it is not surprising that this interest spans practically all branches of cognitive science, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and education. Underlying the study of language and music is the assumption that the comparison of these two domains can shed light on the structural and functional properties of each, while also serving as a test case for theories of how the mind and, ultimately, the brain work. This book presents an interdisciplinary study of language and music, bringing together a team of leading specialists across these fields. The volume is structured around four core areas in which the study of music and language has been particularly fruitful: (i) structural comparisons, (ii) evolution, (iii) learning and processing, and (iv) neuroscience. As such it provides a snapshot of the different research strands that have focused on language and music, identifying current trends and methodologies that have been (or could be) applied to the study of both domains, and outlining future research directions. This volume is valuable in promoting the investigation of language and music by fostering interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration. With an ever increasing interest in both music cognition and language, this book will be valuable for students and researchers of psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and musicology.

Nothing has been more prolific over the past century than human/machine interaction. Automobiles, telephones, computers, manufacturing machines, robots, office equipment, machines large and small; all affect the very essence of our daily lives. However, this interaction has not always been efficient or easy and has at times turned fairly hazardous.

Powerful information technologies and the complex support systems they engender are evolving faster than people’s ability to adjust to them. In the workplace, this leads to troublesome task performance, added stress on users, increased organizational inefficiency, and, in some cases, a heightened risk of wide-scale .disaster. In the marketplace, it makes for consumer dissatisfaction. Clearly, traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) and system design (SD) solutions to this dilemma have proven woefully inadequate. What is needed is a fresh multidisciplinary approach offering a broader, more dynamic framework for assessing needs and designing usable, efficient systems. Taking modeling concepts from engineering, psychology, cognitive science, information science, and computer science, cognitive systems engineering (CSE) provides such a framework. This book is the first comprehensive guide to the emerging new field of CSE. Providing equal parts theory and practice, it is based on the authors’ many years of experience with work systems in a wide range of work domains, including process control, manufacturing, hospitals, and libraries. Throughout, the emphasis is on powerful analytical techniques that enhance the systems designer’s ability to see the "big picture," and to design for all crucial aspects of human-work interaction. Applicable to highly structured technical systems such as process plants, as well as less structured user-driven systems like libraries, these analytical techniques form the basis for the evaluation and design guidelines that make up the bulk of this book. And since the proof is in the pudding, the authors provide a chapter-length case history in which they demonstrate the success of their approach when applied to a full-scale software design project. The project, a retrieval system for public libraries, is described in detail, from field studies to concept validation experiments, and, of course, the empirical evaluation of the system while in use by the library users and personnel. Computer-based information systems are rapidly becoming a fundamental part of the human landscape. How that landscape evolves over the next decade or so, whether it becomes a hostile one or one that generously supports the needs of future generations, is in the hands of all those involved with the study and design of information systems.

An introduction to the application of dynamical systems science to the cognitive sciences. Dynamical Cognitive Science makes available to the cognitive science community the analytical tools and techniques of dynamical systems science, adding the variables of change and time to the study of human cognition. The unifying theme is that human behavior is an "unfolding in time" whose study should be augmented by the application of time-sensitive tools from disciplines such as physics, mathematics, and economics, where change over time is of central importance. The book provides a fast-paced, comprehensive introduction to the application of dynamical systems science to the cognitive sciences. Topics include linear and nonlinear time series analysis, chaos theory, complexity theory, relaxation oscillators, and metatheoretical issues of modeling and theory building. Tools and techniques are discussed in the context of their application to basic cognitive science problems, including perception, memory, psychophysics, judgment and decision making, and consciousness. The final chapter summarizes the contemporary study of consciousness and suggests how dynamical approaches to cognitive science can help to advance our understanding of this central concept.

Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind surveys philosophical issues raised by the situated movement in cognitive science, that is, the treatment of cognitive phenomena as the joint products of brain, body, and environment.

"This book presents recent research efforts in Artificial Intelligence about building artificial systems capable of performing cognitive tasks. A fundamental issue addressed in this book is if these cognitive processes can have any meaningfulness to the artificial system being built"--Provided by publisher.

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

An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics—some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science.