1. Core Faculty for the Cognitive Science Program
Members of the cognitive science group publish widely and have secured grants from such programs as NSF and LEQSF to support their work. One of its members has recently received the prestigious Young Investigators Award from the National Science Foundation.
Below, we briefly profile the cognitive-science related work of core faculty:
Shalini Arehole (Communicative Disorders). Arehole has done extensive research using auditory evoked potentials. She has used animal models in much of her research. Recently, Arehole’s work has focused on central auditory processing in children with learning disabilities. Currently she is involved in evaluating children labeled as "gifted-learning disabled" using both behavioral and electrophysiological responses.
Lloyd Augustine (Communicative Disorders). Augustine’s major interest involves the communicative process, both normal and disordered. He teaches a graduate course in neurophysiology and is interested in the neurolinguistic processing of language and learning. He is interested in the relationship between cognition and language, especially as they develop in the infant.
Magdy Bayoumi (Computer Engineering). Bayoumi’s research involves developing microelectronic circuits and systems for neural computing. Recently, his team has developed a new neural chip set with built-in learning capabilities. It is based on hybrid technology (mixed analog and digital). They have also developed mapping methods for learning paradigms on commercial massive computers. Bayoumi has been active in developing algorithms and architectures for machine perception where sensing and computing are integrated. He is co-guest editor for a forthcoming special issue on Learning on Silicon for the Analog VLSI Signal Processing Journal, and he was the co-general and technical program chairman for the 1993 Workshop on Computer Architecture for Machine Perception.
István Berkeley (Philosophy). Berkeley’s research involves the interpretation of artificial neural network models as a means of investigating the representational requirements of high-level cognitive tasks. This work has relevance to empirical, methodological, and theoretical issues in the foundations of cognitive science. Berkeley has just earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta.
Robert K. Bothwell (Social Psychology). Bothwell is interested in information processing models in the courtroom, and in eyewitness memory. He has examined facial recognition, the relationship between eyewitness confidence and identification accuracy, and memory under hypnosis. Current work deals with juror decision making, and involves the relationship between counterfactual thinking and fault attribution in civil trials, contrast effects in witness evaluation, schema-based effects of opening statements and closing arguments on guilt attributions, and attitude change during jury deliberations.
Claude G. Cech (Cognitive Psychology). Cech specializes in information processing models of mental comparison. Recent work in this area examines online categorizations and the role played by attention and automatic processes. Cech also studies frequency knowledge and memory representations, and he has been involved in cross-disciplinary projects on perception and mental representation in primates, in discourse processes in computer-mediated conversations, in scaling coherence of software, and in modeling the processes involved in software revision.
Chee-Hung Henry Chu (Electrical Engineering). Chu’s primary research interest is in signal processing (especially data compression algorithms with applications in handling image and EEG data) and machine intelligence. Ongoing projects involving genetic algorithms include customizing the wavelet processing tree and optimizing neural network architecture. In the latter project, artificial neurons form groups that compete for survival and join together as a problem-solving neural architecture. This method was successful in classification problems, and it is currently being tested for functional approximation problems.
Sherri L. Condon (Linguistics). Condon studies linguistic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic process models of comprehension. She has developed a theoretical framework for coding discourse processes. She is currently developing an expectation-based model of discourse processing and a new methodology for testing that model using synchronous computer-mediated interactions. She has collaborated on several multidisciplinary projects, including discourse processes in electronic communication and in family interactions.
Jack Damico (Communicative Disorders & Curriculum and Instruction). Damico holds a doctorate in Linguistics and specializes in communicative interaction in individuals with aphasia, traumatic brain injury, and language disorders. Recent work in this area includes studies of the compensatory strategies employed by brain damaged individuals to re-establish and sustain their social and communicative interactions, development of more qualitative and descriptive methods of language assessment, and a focus on the conversational analysis of neurologically and communicatively impaired individuals. He has also been involved in the development of semiotic theory and its application to communicative disorders. He taught two seminars in semiotic theory at the Language Society of America’s Linguistics Institute in the Summer of 1995.
Subrata Dasgupta (Computer Science). Dasgupta, Eminent Scholar in Computer Science, has recently been investigating information processing models of creative processes in technological invention, design, and scientific discovery. This work has resulted in several papers and two books devoted to a cognitive theory of technological creativity. He is currently studying the cognitive nature of discovery in science. His earlier work on design theory led to an Air Force-sponsored project, in collaboration with industry, that produced a viable automated tool to help designers of satellite systems. Dasgupta is an invited founding member of the International Association for the Foundations of Science, Language and Cognition (AFOS), an invited board member of the International Society for the Computational Modeling of Creative Processes, and an elected member of the Newcomen Society.
William R. Edwards (Mathematics & Computer Science). His cognitive science research involves modeling and measurement of software conceptual complexity. He has developed probabilistic models of software structure and design, and corresponding information theoretic complexity measures. He studies the ability of such measures to predict errors and future changes in software. He also studies the common foundations of different programming models and paradigms.
Steve Giambrone (Philosophy). A member of the review staff of Zentralblatt für Mathematik, and peer reviewer for a number of international logic journals, Giambrone studies automated reasoning. He has worked extensively on models and proof theory of logic, especially relevant and substructural logics. He is best known in logic for his development of Gentzen systems and decision procedures for various logics, and the development of alternative semilattice models. Current research includes investigation of causal theories of reference and the general issue of naturalizing mind, meaning and knowing.
Arun Lakhotia (Computer Science). Lakhotia is interested in the cognitive processes involved in understanding computer programs during software maintenance. In an ongoing project he is examining the effect a programming task has on what a programmer understands from a program. The project is motivated by his broader research interest in developing methods and tools for software maintenance.
Rasiah Loganantharaj (Computer Science). He has worked extensively on knowledge representation and reasoning, and he has secured a research grant from NSF to investigate parallel connection graph deduction. In 1992, he set up an automated reasoning research laboratory at USL through a grant from LEQSF. He is currently a co-principal investigator with Steve Giambrone on a research grant involving Temporal Reasoning and Problem Solving.
Cheryl S. Lynch (née Menard) (Psychobiology). Lynch’s research efforts have focused on the identification of biochemical and neuroanatomical processes in various behaviors and cognitive processing. She was awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to continue her research on anabolic-steroid regulation of central nervous-system mechanisms that may be responsible for behavioral deficits. Lynch conducts her psychoneuroendocrinological research efforts at NIRC.
Val MacGyvers (Developmental Psychology). MacGyvers is interested in developmental social cognition and the effect of cognitive states such as beliefs on people’s cognitive performance, persistence, and emotions. Her current studies deal with the relationship between social cognitive motivational processes and concept formation or problem solving. MacGyvers has been involved in several national and multinational projects examining the role of cognition in real-world settings.
Anthony S. Maida (Cognitive Psychology & Computer Science). Maida was a postdoctoral fellow in cognitive science at Brown University and at UC Berkeley and has taught computer science at The Pennsylvania State University. Maida has done extensive work on computer models and implementations of introspective systems and belief attribution systems. His current work falls into the areas of: (a) computational studies of multi-agent communication; and (b) computational neural science.
Bill Z. Manaris (Computer Science). Manaris specializes in natural language processing and human-computer interaction. His work focuses on the development of user interfaces that handle natural language input. He is studying formal models for representing subsets of natural language (in written and spoken form) and methodologies for identifying such subsets for given domains of discourse. Past work includes the development of the NALIGE user interface management system -- an environment that supports rapid prototyping, evaluation, revision, and maintenance of natural language interfaces.
Robert M. McFatter (Experimental-Social and Quantitative Psychology). McFatter’s research is in three areas: (a) Cognition and information processing in criminal sentencing judgments made by district judges and the public; (b) methodological issues in the statistical modeling of psychological data, including work on statistical models for detecting employment discrimination; and (c) individual differences in personality, mood, and cognition.
Daniel Povinelli (Physical Anthropology & Developmental Psychology). Povinelli, recent recipient of prestigious awards by the American Psychological Association and NSF, specializes in theory of mind development in human and non-human primates. His major findings concern striking phyletic similarities and differences in mental-state attribution in the great ape/human clade (strong similarities in joint visual-attention mechanisms between human infants and chimpanzees, but dissociations of mental representations of attention). He has used nonverbal paradigms to explore primates’ understanding of attention, empathy, intentional action, and perceptually-based knowledge acquisition. He has also conducted extensive research on self-recognition in chimpanzees and in young children.
Todd Preuss (Biological Anthropology). His research focuses on the structure, function, and evolution of mammalian cerebral cortex. Using comparative neuroanatomical and neurophysiological techniques, Preuss and his collaborators have identified a number of frontal cortical areas and systems unique to primates. He is exploring the contribution of evolutionary changes in frontal-lobe organization to the evolution of metacognition in apes and humans. Preuss writes extensively on neural and cognitive evolution.
Eric Saidel (Philosophy). Saidel’s work, invoking evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology, focuses on discovering how brains may have mental properties. Saidel studies animal cognition to learn more about human cognition, and he investigates computer models of the mind. His major contributions concern the compatibility of common-sense psychological explanations of behavior and ‘connectionist’ approaches to modeling the mind.
Robert Sidman (Mathematics). Sidman, a Fellow of the American EEG Society, has studied what one can infer about the underlying sources in the brain from noninvasively recorded scalp voltages (the EEG). In collaboration with cognitive psychologists and psychiatrists, he has developed mathematical techniques for analyzing evoked potentials to elucidate such diverse problems as identifying skilled sonar operators, locating subtle changes in the EEG in schizophrenia, and aiding the diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury. In collaboration with neurologists he has been developing ways of localizing epileptic foci.
Harold Szu (Computer Science). Szu has had first-hand experience
in interdisciplinary education at Rockefeller University. Internationally
known for his contribution and leadership in artificial neural network
research and development, he has published about 300 papers and owns seven
patents. His relationships with federal agencies in Washington DC, arising
in part from two decades at the Navy Research Labs and Naval Surface Warfare
Center, will greatly aid the visibility of -- and attract financial resources
to -- the cognitive science program. He is a recognized Fellow in many
professional societies, and Director of and Lamson Professor at CACS.
2. Student-Faculty Ratios in the Cognitive Science Program
Calculating the student-faculty ratio in the area is difficult because faculty involved in the proposed program come from a variety of different disciplines with diverse student-faculty ratios. To give some estimate of the ratio in cognitive science, we have surveyed cognitive science-related courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in the Fall, 1994 and Spring, 1995 semesters.
The table on the next page presents average number of students per cognitive science-related course in the four disciplines of computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology:
_______________________________________________ Table 1: Students per Cognitive Science Related Course _______________________________________________ Discipline Average per Course Computer Science 7 Linguistics 24 Philosophy 32 Psychology 28 _______________________________________________
3. Overview of Faculty Strengths for the Cognitive Science Program
Listed below are current and anticipated faculty with research and teaching interests in the three proposed focal areas in cognitive science. We have included faculty interested in neurophysiological structures for cognition and behavior in the comparative cognition area, as they will generally avail themselves of the research facilities at NIRC:
Comparative Cognition
4. Projected New Faculty for the Cognitive Science Program
With a notable exception in the third to fourth years of the program, no additional monies for new faculty are required to start the program. But in order to make this program viable, four additional personnel will be hired whose positions will be funded via already-dedicated or existing funds. Three of these will be entry-level positions involving lines already in existence in the relevant departments. The positions will add research and teaching competencies in the areas of comparative cognition, language, and cognitive processes.
The first position is a joint University-NIRC tenure-track appointment in comparative cognition. With a focus centered on NIRC, it is important that we maintain a group of at least three high-profile tenure-track scientists whose primary research affiliation will involve this specialization. The position brings on board a third scientist (in addition to Povinelli and Preuss) in the Division of Behavioral Biology at NIRC. Recruitment for this position is anticipated to begin in the Spring 1997 semester, although actual funding of the appointment will be contingent on approval of the cognitive science program by the Board of Regents.
A second position will be used to broaden the presence of cognitive research in psychology. An impending retirement in psychology within the next three years will enable hiring this person without need of new funds. There are now two people at the university with degrees in cognitive psychology, although a number of other psychology faculty do apply information processing models to their research areas (developmental psychology; social psychology; etc.). A third cognitive psychologist is essential to provide requisite strength in mainstream cognition, a necessary facet of any cognitive science program. Additionally, a retirement shortly thereafter will involve a faculty member now teaching the graduate-level course in perception. This will facilitate hiring someone with strong research in perceptual processes and information processing.
The third position, now being filled, provides indispensable strength in the area of philosophy, which has played a leading role in the development of cognitive science. This position in philosophy has been committed to a philosopher in mind and cognition without new expenditures. Given the specialties and competences of current philosophy faculty, the appointment will be made without detriment to traditional courses in the department.
The fourth position (for which applications are now being accepted) involves the addition of another linguist. Computational linguistics and psycholinguistics have also played a major role in cognitive science programs. Such programs are, on occasion, housed in linguistics departments. The addition of another linguist enhances the proposed focal area of Language and Mind.
Together, these four positions provide the strength needed across departments to enable an interdisciplinary program based and balanced on interlocking research specialities.
Finally, within the next several years, the university hopes to recruit another senior faculty member of national stature and repute in the field. The presence of such a scholar (who may also wish to serve as director of the program) will help to provide national visibility for the program, and in subsequent years will be of immense benefit in attracting faculty and students of the highest caliber. Following the establishment of an Eminent Scholar Chair in Francophone Studies, the university will place high priority on establishing an Eminent Scholar Chair in Cognitive Science to accomplish this goal.
As the program grows and obtains funds, we anticipate bringing in faculty
with research interests of value to the program. However, while future
hiring will strengthen and expand the program, the additional personnel
are not required to start or to continue a strong program. Given
the broad research areas of interest to cognitive scientists, no program
can cover everything. What our program can offer is a unique comparative
approach arising from a combination of facilities and research specializations
at USL-NIRC and on the main campus of USL.