Note: Do not attempt to answer all these questions. Rather, write
a 1-page reflection on the readings for this week based on 1 or
more of the questions. Your reflections could describe questions
concerning aspect of the readings that you do not understand.
1. What is gained by approaching the
study of brain function computationally?
2. How do single neurons contribute to brain computation?
3. What is the role of models in cognitive neuroscience?
4. Is the brain really a computer? Are there non-computational
brain functions?
5. What is the relation between cognitive neuroscience and experimental
psychology?
1. What model of communication do you
find most plausible?
2. How is inference used in verbal comprehension?
3. How is relevance relevant to communication?
4. What is the relation between communication processes involving
decoding and ones involving inference?
5. What is the relation between thinking and communicating?
1. What is the nature of the problem
to be solved by designers of high-rise buildings?
2. How do genetic algorithms help to suggest solutions that human
designers might miss?
3. What information is required to apply a genetic algorithm to
a problem?
4. Does human thinking use the kind of genetic algorithm procedure
shown in figure 3?
5. How can human and computer problem solving support each other?
1. What is fuzziness?
2. Is the world fuzzy?
3. Is human thinking fuzzy?
4. How is fuzziness useful for processing images?
5. Is human image processing like fuzzy image processing?
1. What is rhetoric?
2. Why have some thinkers such as Plato seen rhetoric as antagonistic
to knowing?
3. Is the role of rhetoric and figuration in scientific discourse
consistent with there being scientific knowledge?
4. What is antimetabole and what is its role in discourse?
5. Do you accept Randy's 4 claims? Why or why not?
1. How is human memory different from
a computer file?
2. How does memory contribute to the self?
3. When do people not value personal consistency?
4. How does motivation affect our representations of ourselves?
5. What are the social functions of autobiographical memory?
1. How has the Web aided human thinking?
2. How does graphic design affect the usability of the Web?
3. What are the cognitive costs and benefits of links?
4. How is language on the Web different from language in books
and articles?
5. Is the Web contributing to world dominance of English?
1. What is the nature of the problems
to be solved by accounting judgments?
2. What kind of expertise do accounting experts need to have?
3. How is decision making in accounting similar to that in other
fields?
4. How does company performance benefit from organizational memory?
5. How is problem solving a social as well as an individual activity?
1. What is a mental model?
2. How are mental models important for understanding text?
3. What other cognitive functions depend on mental models.?
4. Are mental models and situation models the same?
5. How do situation models aid memory?
1. What is neural constructivism?
2. How does it differ from selectionism and evolutionary psychology?
3. What is the evidence that brains develop greater flexibility
as they learn?
4. What are the computational advantages of representational
change?
5. What are the implications of neural constructivism for child
rearing and education?
Page updated Nov. 11, 2002