PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
Instructor: Prof. Jordan Taylor
Office location: Green Hall 3-S-13
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 609-258-4648
Office hours: By appointment
Meeting time: Tuesdays, 2:00-4:50 PM
Meeting location: Green Hall 1-S-5
Course website: https://blackboard.princeton.edu/pucourse/PSY501_F2013
Registrar description: Introduction to graduate level cognitive psychology for first year
graduate students in psychology. Course serves as the basis for more advanced
graduate courses on specific topics in this area.
Goals: This is a diverse group with varying levels of expertise in cognitive psychology.
To benefit everybody, the course has been designed with several general goals in mind:
Goal 1: To give perspective and breadth to cognitive students and relevant background
for general comprehension to non-cognitive students. Broad knowledge outside of your
primary research area can help in many aspects of your academic life, such as in
getting the most out of departmental colloquia and conferences, in being able to talk to
colleagues in other fields, and in finding unseen connections to your research.
Goal 2: To highlight new and exciting findings and approaches in the study of cognition.
While the content is specific to particular sub-domains, the underlying trends and
debates may apply more generally.
Goal 3: To help you practice being an academic, including: reading papers efficiently,
writing scientific prose, giving presentations, asking questions in front of an audience,
and formulating research ideas. The intention is to focus on what you will be expected
to do over the next several years, and to help you develop transferrable and lasting
skills.
Format: Each week we’ll tackle one aspect of cognition in two parts. The first half of
each meeting will contain a mix of lecture and discussion about the background in a
specific subfield, often on the basis of a handful of seminal experiments. The second
half of each meeting will center on student ‘journal club’ presentations of recent papers
and will often be attended by a relevant expert from our department.
Readings: You will be responsible for two sets of readings per week, typically: 3-4
background papers and 2 journal club papers. The background papers will either be
historical (at the time groundbreaking) experiments or review articles. The journal club
papers will be recent advancements in the particular subfield. It is essential that you
carefully read and consider the background papers (even if some are already familiar).
Since your colleagues will be presenting the journal club papers in depth, it’s up to you
to decide how much time to spend reading them in advance. Note that this is an
extremely common situation in academia, and that ultimately your understanding and
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
ability to discuss these papers with the group will benefit greatly from reading them
thoroughly. I know that the primary literature can seem daunting, especially outside of
your field, so please come to see me if you are having trouble with the readings or
would like additional background material.
Evaluation:
Background Reading Responses (10%)
To encourage you to read the background papers, you will be required to turn in a
response for each of the background reading (in paper). You should write one short
paragraph for each background reading. This short paragraph can take on many forms
including, but not limited to: what you thought was interesting, uninteresting, confusing,
wrong, open questions, insightful connections to other papers or fields, what you think is
out-of-date or has been forgotten. This is not intended to be a lot of work, but rather to
encourage you to read the papers and provide some form of evidence that you actually
read them. The easiest way to generate such responses is to make inline notes as you
read the paper about passages that seem interesting or confusing. The length is
flexible, but your combined responses each week should never exceed one page. You
will receive the maximum credit each week if your responses exhibit clear and
thoughtful effort, half of the maximum for rushed or incomplete answers, and no credit if
you fail to turn something in on time.
Journal Club Paper Responses (10%)
You will need to turn in a response (in paper) for each of the journal club papers, even
during the weeks that you are presenting. These responses will be more structured than
the background reading responses and they should answer the following questions:
1. What was the purpose of the research? What open question did it address?
2. Could the authors have addressed the problem in a different way? Is this the best
approach?
3. How do the results support the author’s interpretation? Is it appropriate?
4. What is one problem with the paper or what don’t you understand about the paper?
5. If you were one of the author’s, what would be your next follow-up experiment?
6. If you were a reviewer, would you recommend the article for publication?
The point of this exercise is for you to think critically about these experimental papers
and by doing this exercise, you will have a number of questions to ask your fellow
students when they are presenting the paper. You will receive the maximum credit each
week if your responses exhibit clear and thoughtful effort, half of the maximum for
rushed or incomplete answers, and no credit if you fail to turn something in on time.
Journal club presentations (30%)
Presenting your work and others people’s work is a crucial part of your life as a
graduate student and academic. To practice this difficult task, each week we will assign
two people to present two different papers to present. You will be tasked with preparing
a well-designed slide presentation (PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.) that: summarizes the
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
motivation, methods, results, and interpretation in the paper (you can use their figures);
evaluates the experimental logic and methods; considers whether the conclusions are
supported by the data; and highlights open questions and future directions. Your
presentation should last approximately 30 minutes and, hopefully, you will be interrupted
with questions so that the presentation lasts between 30-45 minutes. You will be graded
based on the following criteria: design and visual interest of slides; clarity and accuracy
of summary; critiques, novel interpretations, future directions (i.e. some original and
creative contribution). You are expected to give four presentations during the semester.
Mini-grant proposal (30%)
The most fun part of research is thinking up new experiments to answer some burning
question. As a final assignment for the course, you will prepare a mini-grant proposal
formatted in the same spirit as a real submission, including: specific aims, significance,
innovation, and approach (more details about each of these sections will follow). I will
give you an example grant so that you can get a sense of how your research paper
should be formatted. The proposed research must concern one of the topics we
discussed, and be strictly focused on an issue in cognitive psychology. You will need to
set up a meeting with me to seek approval for your topic before the Thanksgiving break.
However, I encourage you to discuss your proposal with me at all stages. You should
aim to find a niche of novel, important, and tractable big-picture questions that remain
unanswered and could constitute a research program. The research can take many
forms, including all relevant approaches in psychology (psychophysics, surveys, eyetracking, computational modeling, etc.) and neuroscience (e.g., fMRI, EEG, TMS,
neurophysiology, etc.), or any combination of converging approaches. While this could
in principle be a very convenient requirement for cognitive students (who may be doing
this anyway with their advisors), for the sake of fairness you must propose research
outside of your primary area. The ideas you develop may end up serving as the
foundation of a secondary research program or new collaboration. You will be graded
based on the following criteria: sophistication and importance of specific aims; breadth
and effectiveness of significance; novelty and excitement of innovation; plausibility and
conclusiveness of approach; and quality of writing and proofing.
Participation (20%)
The success and energy of the class depends on you! In particular, evaluating research
and developing ideas is inherently a collaborative process, and I want to encourage
such interactions. There will be opportunities to join the discussion during lectures and
journal club presentations. You should always feel free to ask questions, discuss
something related that you know about, state an opinion, etc. You are not supposed to
know or understand everything -- this is the point of graduate school! I think you will find
that questions/ideas start popping into your head and that your shyness will fade as you
participate more and more. I expect such discussions to happen organically, but to
emphasize the importance of this aspect of the course you will receive a grade for
participation in every class, ranging from maximum credit for frequent contributions
demonstrating thoughtful reading of the papers, to no credit for staying quiet and
providing no evidence that you read the papers.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
Missed class policy: Attendance is mandatory because of the nature of the course and
because the semester is short. You will not be penalized for missing one meeting. If you
know in advance that you will miss more than one meeting, please let me know.
Preliminary Weekly Schedule (subject to change):
Week 1: Historical Foundations! !
Week 2: Attention - Tim Buschman!
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Week 3: Perception - Nick Turk-Browne!!
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September 17
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September 24
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Week 4: Working Memory and Intelligence - Andy Conway
October 1
October 8
Week 5: Memory Systems - Ken Norman!
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October 15
Week 6: Learning - Yael Niv
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October 22
Week 7: Cognitive Control - Wouter Kool!
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November 5
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Week 8: Knowledge, Concepts, and Categories - Dan Osherson
November 19
Week 9: Judgment, Decision-Making, and Reasoning - Jon Cohen
November 26
Week 10: Language - Adele Golberg!
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December 3
Week 11: Cognitive Development - Asif Ghazanfar !
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December 10
Week 12: Embodied Cognition ! !
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December 13 (or TBD)
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Please note that we will not be meeting on the following Tuesdays: October 29 and
November 12.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
READING LIST
Week 1: Historical Foundations!!
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September 17, 2013
Background Readings
Watson JB. (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. Psychological Review.
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20:158-177
Tolman EC. (1948). Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men. Psychological Review. !
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55(4): 189-208.
Marr D. (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation
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and processing of visual information. Chapter 1. San Francisco: WH Freeman.
Week 2: Attention !!
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September 24, 2013
Background Readings
Treisman AM and Gelade, G. (1980). A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention.
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Cognitive Psychology. 12:97-136.
Posner MI and Petersen SE. (1990). The Attention System of the Human Brain.
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Annual Reviews Neuroscience. 13:25-42.
Petersen SE and Posner MI. (2012). The attention system of the human brain: 20
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years after. Annual Reviews Neuroscience. 35:73-89.
Pashler H. (1994). Dual-task interference in simple tasks: data and theory.
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Psychological Bulletin. 116(2): 220-244.
Student Presentations
Buschman TJ and Miller EK. (2007). Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Control of Attention
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in the Prefrontal and Posterior Parietal Cortices. Science. 315(5820):
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1860-1862.
Cohen MR and Maunsell JHR. (2010). A Neuronal Population Measure of Attention
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Predicts Behavioral Performance on Individual Trials. The Journal of
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Neuroscience. 30(45):15241-15253.
Week 3: Perception !
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October 1, 2013
Background Readings
Biederman I. (1987). Recognition by components. Psychological Review.
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94:115-147.
Goodale MA and Milner AD. (1992) Separate Visual Pathways for Perception and
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Action. Trends in Neurosciences. 15: 20-25.
Haxby JV, Hoffman EA, and Gobbini M. (2000). The Distributed Human Neural System
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for Face Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 4(6) 223-233.
Student Presentations
Girshick AR, Landy MS, and Simoncelli EP. (2011). Cardinal rules: visual orientation
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perception reflects knowledge of environmental statistics. Nature Neuroscience
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14(7):926-932.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
Schapiro AC, Kustner LV, and Turk-Browne NB. (2012). Shaping of Object
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Representations in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe Based on Temporal
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Regularities. Current Biology. 22:1622-1627
Week 4: Working Memory and Intelligence ! !
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October 8, 2013
Background Readings
Miller GA. (1956). The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our
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Capacity for Processing Information. The Psychological Review. 63(2):81-97
Baddeley, A. D. & Hitch, G. (1974). Working Memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The
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Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory.
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47-89.
Shipstead Z, Redick TS, and Engle RW. (2012). Is Working Memory Training
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Effective? Psychological Bulletin. 138(4):628-654.
Student Presentations
Keshvari, van den Berg R, and Ma WJ. (2013). No Evidence for an Item Limit in
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Change Detection. PLoS Computational Biology. 9(2):e1002927.
Thorton MA and Conway ARA. (2013). Working Memory for Social Information:
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Chunking or Domain-specific Buffer? Neuroimage. 70:233-239.
Week 5: Memory Systems !
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October 15, 2013
Background Readings
McClelland JL, McNaughton BL, and O'Reilly RC. (1995). Why There Are
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Complementary Learning Systems in the Hippocampus and Neocortex: Insights
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From The Successes and Failures of Connectionist Models of Learning and
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Memory. The Psychological Review. 102, 419-457.
Schacter DL, Norman KA, and Koutstaal W. (1998). The Cognitive Neuroscience of
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Constructive Memory. Annual Review of Psychology. 49:289-318.
Tulving E. (2002). Episodic Memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology.
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53:1-25.
Student Presentations
Duncan, K., Sadanand, A., & Davachi, L. (2012). Memory’s Penumbra: Episodic
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Memory Decisions Induce Lingering Mnemonic Biases. Science. 337, 485-487.
Gershman SJ, Schapiro AC, Hupbach A, and Norman KA. (2013). Neural Context
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Reinstatement Predicts Memory Misattribution. The Journal of Neuroscience.
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33(20):8590-8595.
Week 6: Learning ! !
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October 22, 2013
Background Readings
Rescorla, R. A. & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in
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the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In A. H. Black & W. F.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
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Prokasy (Eds.), Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory. (pp.
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64-99). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Reber AS. (1989). Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge. Journal of Experimental
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Psychology: !General. 118(3):219-235
Saffran, JR, Aslin RN, & Newport, EL. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old
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infants. Science. 274: 1926-1928.
Courville AC, Daw ND, and Touretzky DS. (2006). Bayesian Theories of Conditioning in
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a Changing World. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 10(7):294-300.
Student Presentations
Braun DA, Aertsen A, Wolpert DM, and Mehring C. (2009). Motor Task Variant Induces
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Structural Learning. Current Biology. 19(4):352-357.
Niv Y, Edlund JA, Dayan P, and O’Doherty JP. (2012). Neural Prediction Errors Reveal
a Risk !
Sensitive Reinforcement-Learning Process in the Human Brain. The
Journal of ! Neuroscience. 32(2):551-562.
Week 7: Cognitive Control !
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November 5, 2013
Background Readings
Botvinick MM, Braver TS, Barch DM, Carter CS, and Cohen JD. (2001). Conflict
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Monitoring and Cognitive Control. Psychological Review. 108: 624-652.
Miller EK and Cohen JD. (2001). An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function.
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Annual Review of Neuroscience. 24:167-202.
Monsell S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7:134-140.
Student Presentations
Kool W, McGuire JT, Rosen ZB, and Botvinick MM. (2010). Decision Making and the
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Avoidance of Cognitive Demand. Journal of Experiment Psychology: General.
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139(4):665-682.
Kim C, Johnson NF, Cilles SE, and Gold BT. (2011). Common and Distinct
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Mechanisms of Cognitive Flexibility in Prefrontal Cortex. The Journal of
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Neuroscience. 31:4771-4779.
Week 8: Knowledge, Concepts, and Categories !
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November 19, 2013
Background Readings
Collins AM and Quillian MR. (1969). Retrieval Time from Semantic Memory. Journal of
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Verbal Learning and Behavior. 8(2):240-247.
Tversky A. Features of Similarity. (1977). Psychological Review. 84(4): 327-353.
Medin DL and Rips LJ. (2005). Concepts and categories: Memory, meaning, and
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metaphysics. In K. J. Holyoak & R. G. Morrison (Eds.), The Cambridge
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Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. (pp. 37-72). Cambridge: Cambridge
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University Press.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2013
Tenenbaum JB and Griffiths TL. (2001). Generalization, similarity, and Bayesian
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inference. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 24:629-640.
Student Presentations
Smith JD, Beran MJ, Crossley MJ, Boomer J, and Ashby FG. (2010). Implicit and
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Explicit Category Learning by Macaques (Macaca mulatta) and Humans (Homo
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sapiens). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.
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36(1):54-65.
Monti MM, Parsons LM, and Osherson DN. (2012). Thought Beyond Language :
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Neural Dissociation of Algebra and Natural Language. Psychological Science.
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23(8):914-922.
Week 9: Judgment, Decision-Making, and Reasoning !
November 26, 2013
Background Readings
Kahneman D and Tversky A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under
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Risk. Econometrica, 47(2):263-291.
Shafir E, Simonson I, and Tversky A. (1993). Reason-based choice. Cognition, 49,
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11-36.
Loewenstein G, Rick S, and Cohen JD. (2008). Neuroeconomics. Annual Review of
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Psychology, 59, 647-672.
Student Presentations
Eppinger B, Nystrom LE, and Cohen JD. (2012). Reduced Sensitivity to Immediate
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Reward during Decision-Making in Older than Younger Adults. PLoS One.
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7(5):e36953
Rand DG, Green JD, and Nowak MA. (2012). Spontaneous Giving and Calculated
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Greed. Nature. 489:427-430.
Week 10: Language !
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December 3, 2013
Background Readings
Elman J. (1990). Finding Structure in Time. Cognitive Science. 14:179-211.
Levelt WJM. (1999). Models of Word Production. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
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3(6):! 223-232.
Goldberg, A. E. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends
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in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 219-224.
Student Presentations
Conway CM, Bauernschmidt A, Huang SS, and Pisoni DB. (2010). Implicit Statistical
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Learning in Language Processing: Word Predictability is the Key. Cognition.
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114:356-371.
Johnson MA and Golberg AE. (2012). Evidence for AutomaticAccessing of
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Constructional Meaning: Jabberwocky Sentences Prime Associated Verbs.
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Language and Cognitive Processes. iFirst: 1-14.
PSY501
Proseminar: Cognitive Psychology
Week 11: Cognitive Development !
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Fall 2013
December 10, 2013
Background Readings
Flavell JH. (1999). Cognitive Development: Children’s Knowledge about the Mind.
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Annual Review of Psychology. 50:21-45.
Feigneson L, Dehaene S, Spelke E. (2004). Core Systems of Number. Trends in
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Cognitive Sciences. 8(7):307-314.
Aslin RN and Fiser J. (2005). Methodological Challenges for Understanding Cognitive
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Development in Infants. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9(3):92-98.
Gelman SA. (2009). Learning from Others: Children’s Construction of Concepts.
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Annual Review of Psychology. 60:115-140
Student Presentations
Wass S, Porayska-Pomsta K, Johnson MH. (2011). Training Attentional Control in
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Infancy. Current Biology. 21:5143-1547.
Lewkowicz DJ and Ghazanfar AA. (2012). The Development of the Uncanny Valley in
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Infants. Developmental Psychobiology. 54(2):124-132.
Week 12: Embodied Cognition ! !
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December 13, 2013
Background Readings
Profitt DR. (2006). Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action. Perspectives on
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Psychological Science. 1(2):110-122.
Casasanto D and Boroditsky L. (2008). Time in the Mind: Using Space to Think about
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Time. Cognition. 106:579-593
Barsalou LW. (2008). Grounded Cognition. Annual Review of Psychology.
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59:617-645.
Journal Club
Lee C, Linkenauger SA, Bakdash JZ, Joy-Gaba JA, and Profitt DR. (2011). Putting
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Like a Pro: The Role of Positive Contagion in Golf Performance and Perception.
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PLoS One. 6(10):e26016.
Firestone C and Scholl BJ. (2013). “Top-down” effects where none should be found:
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The El Greco Fallacy in Perception Research. Psychological Science. In Press.