Cognitive Science group researchers are concerned with higher mental processes and how humans represent knowledge and process information. The research activities are focused specifically on two mental functions: learning and language.
Group Leader: Gary S. Dell
Administrative Support Staff: Judith C. Allen
The research in learning extends from studies of the very young to fully mature adults. Studies of infants and children investigate the emergence of symbolic functioning. How and when during development do children acquire the capacity for representational thought, the ability to connect a picture, or model to the real thing? How do children come to understand the operations of basic physical laws, or the fact that the world is round and moves about the sun? How do children's early experiences with numbers and measurement affect development of basic quantitative competence? For example, the Chinese and Western systems of naming numbers differ; there is evidence that this difference affects learning the names of numbers in the two cultures.
Other research is concerned with the use of memory in learning and how older children and adults use examples in learning problem-solving skills. Research in advanced knowledge acquisition is directed toward instructional strategies that allow people to master complex concepts and transfer their knowledge from formal schooling to real-world cases.
Research on language is concerned with the formal structures of languages, with the constraints that operate in language production and comprehension, and with how the various subsystems that make up human linguistic abilities interact. Related to this research is active work in the development of computational models for language, including connectionist or neural net models and models of discourse interaction; and in computer-based implementations of language systems.