1. Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is an exciting enterprise that brings together practitioners and scholars from a variety of different fields, ranging from neurologists to computer scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and linguists. Their common goal involves understanding what it means to think, perceive, reason, solve problems, make decisions, and have ideas, and the principle that binds them together is the view of the mind as an information processing system.

Much of the impetus for the emergence of this new interdisciplinary field has come from developments in computer science. Spurred by the burgeoning communication and information industries, computer scientists are experimenting with systems that, more and more, are astonishingly human-like in their abilities. These projects challenge us to rethink our accepted definitions of mind and mental functioning, and in turn, the new theories and insights we develop influence the systems of computer scientists.

To learn more about how to build systems that can perceive, reason, and get about in the world, computer scientists consult the work of researchers in other disciplines. These researchers include philosophers concerned with the nature of human knowledge and logicians who have devised sophisticated descriptions of meaning and inference. They also include cognitive psychologists who have focused on the mental structures and processes required for perception, attention, categorization, memorization, reasoning, and predicting events. They have also included researchers in education, psychology, and related areas who study how human beings learn; linguists and psycholinguists who study language and the cognitive and neurophysiological structures that underlie it; and neurologists and biologists who are more generally concerned with the physiological bases of all cognitive functions and the genetic programs that prepare people to become thinking and speaking individuals.

Just as experience in another culture enables finer appreciation of our own, so work in artificial intelligence and animal cognition enhances the appreciation of human abilities among researchers concerned with human information processing. By examining the less complex behavior of machines and animals, scientists arrive at a better understanding of how the human brain might work, and what it is that makes it unique. Thus, work now ongoing at the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center has shown both striking parallels in cognitive development between young children and chimpanzees, and striking differences that illuminate the sophistication of human adaptation. Or to take another example, work in the university’s Center for Advanced Computer Studies has illuminated our ability to reason about time and temporal events by investigating how computers might be programmed to do so.

In an age when a high degree of specialization is necessary to advance scientific knowledge, cognitive science with its interdisciplinary roots provides opportunities for researchers with diverse backgrounds to learn from one another and to broaden their vision. The focus on human abilities also provides natural links to the humanities: Students and faculty in rhetoric, folklore, and literature attend the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s Cognitive Science Colloquium Series. They share cognitive scientists’ interest in how humans use their mental and cognitive capabilities in creating works of art, histories, and institutions. For example, a cognitive scientist at the University of Southwestern Louisiana is examining the nature of creativity in science and invention by applying theories of cognition to the histories of science and technology. Along with social scientists in anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, these scholars seek to understand the cognitive and linguistic foundations of human culture, beliefs, and values.

Therefore, cognitive science crosses traditional barriers among academic disciplines and methodologies. It has been able to cross these barriers because of a common concern with mind and mental functioning, and a shared set of tools with which to construct and test theories. It has captured the imagination of people far outside the field because of the extraordinary potential it promises for technologies and insights that elucidate and enrich our lives. It is not surprising, then, that cognitive science programs have emerged on many campuses, including the most prestigious institutions in the United States, or that employers are seeking people with a background in cognitive science. Both higher education and industry value personnel who will be able to guide them in the Information Age. In a fundamental sense, cognitive science is the science of information; cognitive science focuses on what information is, how we acquire it, how it influences our everyday functioning, and what we can do with it.
 

2. Infrastructure at the University of Southwestern Louisiana

The faculty at the University of Southwestern Louisiana have firsthand knowledge of the rich opportunities and consequences of cognitive science research. Over eight years ago, individuals in computer science, psychology, philosophy, communicative disorders, and English began to meet and introduce their research to one another. The impetus for this exchange was a realization that they all shared a common information processing or computational approach to cognition, and that they were engaged in research projects that bordered on the specializations of people in other departments. These meetings have resulted in cross-disciplinary grants and research projects, interdisciplinary courses, an undergraduate minor in cognitive science, and a cognitive science focus for computer science Ph.D. students. Most important, for over seven years, the Cognitive Science Colloquium Series of weekly presentations has provided a forum for the multidisciplinary contact that is essential to cognitive science research.

Today the group includes additional faculty from the departments of psychology, philosophy, and computer science, and the university’s New Iberia Research Center. The colloquium series has featured visitors who are among the most highly respected scholars in their research areas. Group members are collaborating on half a dozen interdisciplinary research projects, most of which have received or are being considered for external funding. Several Ph.D. students are pursuing the cognitive science focus in computer science, and others have indicated their readiness to pursue a degree in cognitive science.

Because of the cognition-oriented laboratory facilities, courses, and faculty now at USL, limited additional resources need be committed to develop a strong, competitive program in cognitive science. With few exceptions, the infrastructure for the program is now in place. We do require additional research strength in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and comparative cognition, but the required additional faculty will be provided through departmental positions that will soon be open, and for which there are already-existing committed funds. Consequently, with relatively little expense, it will be possible to establish the only cognitive science Ph.D. program in the Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi area.

The program will take advantage of the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s finest resources. The university’s Center for Advanced Computer Studies has been nationally recognized for many years and provides five laboratories for instructional and research purposes, including the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Laboratory, the Intelligent Robotics Systems Laboratory, and the Automated Reasoning Laboratory. In addition, the university is fortunate in maintaining, at the New Iberia Research Center, one of the few primate centers in the nation,. This state-of-the art facility for primate research includes fourteen buildings and seventy acres to provide complete facilities for producing and utilizing primates in biomedical, behavioral, and cognitive studies. A new 30,000 square-foot life sciences building includes classrooms, laboratories, and a vivarium support area.

Moreover, the laboratories described above in combination with the psychology department’s cognition laboratories and the USL Center for Child Studies will enable the university to offer a truly unique program among cognitive science programs. All of the resources are set up so that a major focus of the program will quite deliberately be comparative cognition. That is, the existing laboratories and research interests of cognitive scientists at the main campus of USL and at USL-NIRC allow for comparing the cognitive faculties of primates and humans, and comparing the latter two with the ‘cognitive’ functioning of systems and architectures developed on computers. By examining the similarities and differences among these three types of entities, we learn about the nature and limits of mind and knowledge.
 

3. Proposed Structure of the Program

The conjunction of resources at USL’s New Iberia Research Center with those in cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and computational modeling have led us to a program centered on three focal research areas. First among these is comparative cognition, which will build on current research at USL’s remarkable resource, the New Iberia Research Center. At USL-NIRC, scientists compare the cognitive abilities of primates and human beings. Both physiological and behavioral studies of human and non-human primates will be supported. A second area of cognitive processes will focus on psychological and computational models of cognitive abilities, building on current research in the Center for Advanced Computer Studies and in psychology. A third focal area of language and mind will combine philosophical and linguistic traditions to support research on the uniquely human creations in which language plays a role.

Students in the program will be required to achieve both depth and breadth in their selection of courses. They will be expected to become familiar with the methodologies and theories of at least two of the central disciplines contributing to cognitive science. All students will be required to satisfy a core curriculum that includes courses in History and Foundations of Cognitive Science, Cognitive Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, Computational Basis of Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Comparative Cognition. They will also be required to take courses that focus on research methodologies. Their dissertation committees will be composed of faculty from at least two different disciplines.

The program itself requires a novel administrative structure, given the several disciplines contributing to it. As a graduate-level program that involves faculty principally from two different colleges at the university, it will be administered by a Supervisory Council consisting of the Dean of Sciences, the Dean of Liberal Arts, and the Dean of the Graduate School; it will be chaired by the Dean of Sciences. The program will be directly administered by a Director of Cognitive Science in consultation with a Cognitive Science Steering Committee composed of members from the major concerned disciplines or academic units. Faculty centrally involved in the program will hold joint appointments in their home departments and in an Institute for Cognitive Science, and will be evaluated by both entities, with evaluations subject to review by the Supervisory Council.
 

4. Conclusion

The University of Southwestern Louisiana has the faculty and facilities to support a strong Ph.D. program in cognitive science. An independent program will capitalize on student demand for the degree and funds available for research. It will attract high quality students and faculty to the program. The result will be an exciting and unique program that prepares students for leadership roles in academia, education, and industry.

What benefits does this program provide the State of Louisiana? It will offer an exciting new speciality to Louisiana students. It will provide a center for consultation and training for a wide variety of professionals whose work requires applied knowledge of learning and cognition, whether in the classroom, the courtroom, or in building human-machine interfaces. It will also provide a nexus for people attacking some of our most pressing problems, such as the high illiteracy rate and the need for effective teaching techniques to overcome low standardized test scores. Above all, the cognitive science program at USL, with its unique focus on comparative cognition, will be a jewel in the crown of the State, a beacon that signals Louisiana's engagement with the leading edge of the major scientific frontier in the next decade.