PSY 394U (43283) --- Categories and Concepts

M 2:00-5:00 PM, SEA 5.106

Spring 2006 Syllabus

homepage: http://love.psy.utexas.edu/concepts/grad.html
Click here for a week by week class schedule.

Who Office Office Hours email

Bradley Love SEA 5.202 W 4-6 PM
love@psy.utexas.edu

Who	Office	Office Hours	email
Bradley Love	SEA 5.202	W 4-6 PM	love@psy.utexas.edu

Prerequisite: None.

Enrollment limitations:

None.

General Course Description:

How do we order our experiences and generalize from them to predict future outcomes? What is the nature of our mental representations? What algorithms do we use in reasoning and learning? Can machines replicate the aforementioned phenomena? These are the questions we are going to consider in this seminar.

Readings will largely consist of journal articles and book chapters written by leading researchers. These readings will be distributed through a web page as pdf files available for downloading.

Format of Classes:

Class will be discussion oriented. As in most seminars, class participation is important. Students are expected to do the readings before each class and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings.

Requirements:

Each class (see schedule below), students will turn in 2 or 3 questions inspired by the readings assigned for that day, along with a paragraph detailing the motivation for each question. You should bring in two copies of your questions (one for me, one for you). It is very important that you turn in your questions at the beginning of class. Questions can't be emailed or turned in after class. The point is for questions to shape the class discussion.

Participation will make up 50% of your class grade. Participation includes attending class, speaking in class, and turning in your questions. If you are sick or going to be out of town, you can email your questions. I understand that you might miss one class due to conference or illness, but if it looks like you will miss more than one class and grades are important to you, please talk with me.

Students will write a grant proposal for a research project in categories and concepts. You will propose a series of studies that address an important and novel research problem in categories and concepts. Like any proposal, you should cover the relevant research on the topic, motivate a key problem, offer a solution or hypothesis, and describe a series of coherent studies that bear on the problem. The proposal should be 15-25 pages long. Here's an example proposal. Here's an example proposal from a grad student. Here is a skeleton outline of a grant proposal.

Prior to writing your paper, you will hand in a pre-proposal. At the end of the semester, students will submit a revised copy and the class will convene a grant panel meeting in which we will evaluate all of the proposals. It should be fun to see what everyone ends up doing. This whole project will account for 50% of your class grade.

Another requirement of class is to check your email somewhat frequently for course announcements. Email me if your preferred address is not your UT address or if you would like course emails directed to another account.

Policy on incompletes.

No incompletes will be given.

Textbook

none

Additional Materials

Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files. .

Class Schedule

Date	Readings
January 23	Welcome
January 30	Collins, A. M. and Quillan, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time form semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 241-248. Smith, E.E., Shoben, E.J. & Rips, L.J. (1974). Structure and process in semantic memory: A featural model for semantic decisions. Psychological Review, 81, 214-241. Rosch, E. and Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblance: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573-605. Corter, J.E. and Gluck, M.A. (1992). Explaining basic categories: Feature predictability and information. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 291-303.
February 6	Tanaka, J. W. and Taylor, M. E. (1991). Object categories and expertise: Is the basic level in the eye of the beholder? Cognitive Psychology, 15, 121-149. Tanaka, J. W. and Gauthier, I. (1997). Expertise in object and face recognition. Psychology of learning and motivation, 36, 83- 125. Barsalou, L. W. (1985). Ideals, central tendency, and frequency of instantiation as determinants of graded structure of categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 629-654. Lynch, E. B., Coley, J. B., and Medin, D. L. (2000). Tall is typical: Central tendency, ideal dimensions, and graded category structure among tree experts and novices. Memory & Cognition, 28, 41-50.
February 13	Medin, D. L. and Schaffer, M. M. (1978). Context theory of classification learning. Psychological Review, 85, 207-238. Nosofsky, R. M., and Palmeri, T. J., and Mckinley, S. C. (1994). Rule-plus-exception model of classification learning. Psychological Review, 104, 266-300. Love, B.C., Medin, D.L, & Gureckis, T.M (2004). SUSTAIN: A Network Model of Category Learning. Psychological Review, 111, 309-332. Smith, J. D. and Minda, J. P. (1998). Prototypes in the mist: The early epochs of category learning. Smith, J. David; Minda, John Paul; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1411-1436.
February 20	Waldmann, M. R. (2000). Competition among causes but not effects in predictive and diagnostic learning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 53-76. Sloman, S. A., Love, B. C., & Ahn, W. K. (1998). Feature Centrality and Conceptual Coherence. Cognitive Science, 22, 189-228. Steyvers, M and Tenenbaum, J. B. (2005). The Large-Scale Structure of Semantic Networks: Statistical Analyses and a Model of Semantic Growth, Cognitive Science, 29, 41-78.
February 27	Anderson, J. R., & Schooler, L. J. (1991). Reflections of the environment in memory. Psychological Science, 2, 396-408. Stewart, N. Brown, G. D. A., & Chater, N. (2002). Sequence effects in categorization of simple perceptual stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 3-11. Jones, M., Love, B.C., & Maddox, W.T.E. (in press). Recency as a window to generalization: Separating decisional and perceptual sequential effects in category learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
March 6 Pre-Proposal Due	Murphy, G. I. and Medin, D. L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coherence. Psychological Review, 92. 289-316. Wisniewski, E. J. and Medin, D. L. (1994). On the interaction of theory and data in concept learning. Cognitive Science, 18, 221- 281. Heit, E. (2001). Background knowledge and models of categorization. In Similarity and Categorization (eds. Hahn and Ramscar), 155-178. Oxford University Press.
March 13	Spring Break
March 20	Sloman, S. A. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3-22. Erickson, M. A. and Kruschke, J. R. (1998). Rules and exemplars in category learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 107-140. Johansen, M.K., & Palmeri, T.J. 2002). Are there representational shifts during category learning? Cognitive Psychology, 45, 482-553.
March 27	Ashby, F. G., & Ell, S. W. (2001). The neurobiology of category learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 204-210 Nosofsky, R. M., and Zaki, S. R. (1998). Dissociations between categorization and recognition in amnesic and normal individuals: An exemplar-based interpretation. Psychological Science, 9, 247-255. Smith, E. E., Patalano, A. L., and Jonides, J. (1998). Alternative strategies of categorization. Cognition, 65, 167-196.
April 3	Osherson, D. N., Smith, E. E., Wilkie, O., Lopez, A., and Shafir, E. (1990). Category-based induction. Psychological Review, 97, 185-200. Proffitt, J. B., Coley, J. D., and Medin, D. L. (2000). Expertise and category-based induction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 811-828. Sloman, S. A. (1993). Feature-based induction. Cognitive Psychology, 25, 231-280. Heit, E. and Rubinstein, J. (1994). Similarity and property effects in inductive reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 411- 422.
April 10	Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84, 327-352. Markman, A. B. and Gentner, D. (1993). Structural alignment during similarity comparisons. Cognitive Psychology, 25, 431- 467. Goldstone, R. L. (1994). The role of similarity in categorization: providing a groundwork, Cognition, 52, 125-157.
April 17 Grant Due	Markman, A. B. and Ross, B. H. (2003). Category Learning and Category Use. Psychological Bulletin Schyns, P. G., Goldstone, R. L., and Thibaut, J. (1998). The development of features in object concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 1-54.
April 24	Panel
May 1	Panel