About Cognitive Science at UH

About Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is changing the fundamental explanatory models needed to understand the human mind, and cognitive processing more generally. The rich resources of cognitive science are already transforming many aspects of our society. The Cognitive Science Initiative (CSI) at the University of Houston is engaged in exploring and extending the transforming implications of cognitive science.

CSI is committed to communicating these implications to the UH community, through courses, student research, workshops and distinguished guest lectures. Using the latest information technology, CSI is making the implications of cognitive science accessible to a broader audience than cognitive science programs have often addressed. We believe that the engagement of a wide audience, with its critical responses, is imperative in this new science of the self.

CSI is composed of members from Business, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Optometry, Philosophy and Psychology. Founded in 1996 with a Deans' Council Grant, it is chaired by Dr. Anne Jaap Jacobson, Department of Philosophy. Its collaborative programs include innovative research by faculty on perception and language. It has a component on cognitive science and culture, which investigates interactions between cognitive science and humanities and the fine arts.

Research Faculty Graduate Certificate New Directions
Courses Visiting Lectures Dissemination

 

Research

Collaborative research among members of CSI predates the formation of the Initiative, and has been strengthened in the following years. CSI faculty investigate overlapping research issues that include the following: perceptual processing (Bedell, Breitmeyer, Hiscock, Levi, Ogmen Stevenson); pattern recognition in computer vision (Leiss) and electrophysiological signals (Jansen); epilepsy (Jansen); vision-training of astronauts (Bedell); cognitive processing between vision and emotion (Hiscock); cognition during sleep (Ktonas); technology transfer (Cooper); emotions (Jacobson, Naus), creativity and innovation (Cooper, Freeland Jacobson, Ogmen,); neural networks (Garson, Jansen, Ogmen); language evolution (Leiber); and learning disabilities (Breitmeyer, Hiscock); cognitive science and the humanities (Freeland and Jacobson).

CSI has three focus areas: Perception, Language, and Cognition, Community and Culture.

Current Work on Perception: Members of CSI from Electrical Engineering, Optometry, Philosophy and Psychology are involved in work on perceptual processing that is leading to a series of proposals to NSF and NIH. The work concerns one of the fundamental puzzles in cognitive science, which is to understand how sensory data are analyzed and bound into meaningful representations of the world. The broad objective of this research is to examine systemtically the interactive relationship between individual feature synthesis and the grouping of these features into coherent wholes.

Language: CSI research in language includes a summer project (1997) in the Electrical Engineering Department on oral processing of language, and projects in the Department of Philosophy on language and connectionism, and on language and evolution. Researchers in psychology are also working on language perception and dyslexia, among other related topics. CSI recently received a PEER grant from UH to develop an initial stage of a language project for the web (see "Dissemination" below). The site was developed through a summer workshop involving students and faculty.

Cognition, Community and Culture: CSI is committed to investigating the wider implications of cognitive science and disseminating these to the local and more general communities. CSI maintains a bibliography of cognitive science and the humanities on the web, along with other aids to the researcher (see "Dissemination" below). Members of the Department of Philosophy have presented related papers at the American Society for Aesthetics, the American Psychiatric Society, and a conference "Cognitive Science and the Study of Religion" at the University of Vermont. CSI also recently hosted a community symposium on new frontiers in the cognitive and neuro-sciences in conjunction with another UH research group, BRAIN.

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Faculty

The Graduate Certificate

CSI received a Program for Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development (PICD) grant in the Spring of 1997 to develop a graduate certificate in cognitive science. The Certificate Program will be the only graduate program in cognitive science in the Houston area. The certificate will have both course and research components, with a stress on a multi-disciplinary approach to the concepts and problems studied. The aim of the program will be to enable students to engage successfully in the increasing research and employment opportunities that challenge traditional academic divisions.

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New Directions

The President and the Provost of the University of Houston will sponsor a proposal from the Cognitive Science Initiative and the Department of Communication Disorders to go before the Texas State Legislature. The proposal is for one million dollars to found a center for cognitive science and communication disorders. If funded, the resulting center will become a university line-item and will start up in January, 2000.

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Courses

CSI has sponsored four courses, two undergraduate courses and two graduate courses. The undergraduate courses, both "Introduction to Cognitive Science," were taught by Prof. James Garson, Philosophy, with lectures from other members of CSI. They were given in the Spring of 1997 and 1998. The first graduate course was taught in the Spring of 1997, and it was a multi-disciplinary, team taught course, organized by Dr. Haluk Ogmen of Electrical Engineering. The second graduate course was taught by Dr. Anne Jaap Jacobson in the Fall of 1997, and it was on cognitive science and the humanities.

Another introductory course at the graduate level is planned for the Spring of 1998. This course will be a pilot course for CSI's planned Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Science.

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Visiting Lectures

Since the Fall of 1996, CSI has had a distinguished series of lecturers, including leading cognitive scientists such as Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Steven Pinker (MIT), Patricia Churchland (UC San Diego), and George Sperling (UC Irvine). On a grant from the Franklin J. Matchette Foundation, CSI hosted a week long visit from Hubert Dreyfus (UC Berkeley); his visit included two public lectures, which are the subject matter of a first issue of a proposed web journal to be edited by CSI. CSI's audiences have included scientists from a variety of Houston institutions, including NASA, UTH, Baylor and Rice, and faculty and students from disciplines as diverse as normally as outside of cognitive science as Religion and Fine Arts.

CSI has also hosted lectures from distinguished Houston researchers, including members of the Texas Medical Center and Rice University. In addition, lectures have been given by younger visiting scientists and scholars who have recently graduated from premier cognitive science programs.

In the Spring of 1998, CSI was pleased to be able to share in the support for a lecture by Jaron Lanier, a founding figure in virtural reality technology and concepts, and an artist and author.

Lectures in the academic year 1998-1999 will be given by Anne Marie Treismann (Princeton) and Brian McLaughlin (Rutgers), among others.

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Dissemination

Houston Studies in Cognitive Science (tentative title) is currently being developed for the web. The inaugural issue is in preparation; it will contain the Matchette Lectures by Hurbert Dreyfus and comments by over fifteen distinguished figures in the field. Dreyfus will respond to the comments, and viewers will be provided with a monitored forum. The Dreyfus lectures are at http://www.hfac.uh.edu/cogsci/dreyfus.html.

The Cognitive Science Initiative owns three email lists:

  • COGSCI-HOUSTON is an email list that distributes information about cognitive science in the Houston area. Lectures, classes, conferences and other oportunities and events are announced.
  • COGSCI-HUM is an email list that distributes information about cognitive science and the humanities. Lectures, conferences, new books and calls-for-papers are announced on this list. This list has an international membership of approximately 400 people.
  • COGSCI-Hum2 provides a forum for discussions about cognitive science and the humanities.

TO JOIN any of these lists, send "Sub listname" to Listserv@listserv.uh.edu

CSI maintains a number of information rich web sites, including:

For Further Information, Contact:

Prof. Anne Jaap Jacobson
Department of Philosophy
University of Houston,
Houston, TX 77204-3785
Tel: 713-743-3204
Fax: 713-743-2990
Email: ajjacobson@uh.edu

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