Tag
Cognitive Science
6 posts tagged Cognitive Science, newest first.
Functional correspondence without isomorphism: evaluating the brain-ANN analogy
A term essay: the brain does not run backpropagation, and language models still out-predict neuroscientists on their own literature. Marr's levels let both be true; the brain-ANN analogy lives at the computational level.
Language as a cognitive scaffold: inner speech and chain-of-thought
A term essay: inner speech in humans and chain-of-thought prompting in LLMs do the same job, using language to break hard problems into steps. The differences a well-known comparison found are mostly methodology.
Dynamical Systems Theory is efficient, not sufficient
An exam essay: the Watt governor buys intelligent behaviour at near-zero representational cost, and that same thrift is why Dynamical Systems Theory cannot account for language, logic, or planning.
Upgrading the Turing Test beyond imitation
A term essay: the Turing Test rewards convincing conversation, and Eugene Goostman showed convincing is cheap. Telling imitation from understanding means looking inside the model, at its attention and activations.
A warm-up phase for the mental rotation task
A term essay: the linear relation between rotation angle and response time may be part practice effect, and a distinctive shape may hint at which axis to turn. A redesign that spends the learning before anything is measured.
Cognitive load decides whether you multitask or switch
A term essay: multi-object tracking says we attend to several things at once, and the psychological refractory period says we take turns. Both results hold, and the cognitive load of the task is what selects between them.