A multidisciplinary approach to the study of the mind combining approached from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, and artificial intelligence. Logic, rules, concepts, and other mental representations used to generate thought and behaviour. Implementation of computational and cognitive models of mental processes.
NOTE Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.

Introduction to the computational aspects of the mind. Implementation of computer programs for reasoning, decision making, and problem solving to understand these mental processes. Information theory and behaviourism; computational models of cognition, perception and memory processes demonstrating modeling approaches, and cognitive architectures.

Importance and challenges of building cognitive models; steps of model building, programming simple models using computational and statistical techniques and tools such as Matlab. Recent models from research publications.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) for problem solving and prediction tasks such as classification, clustering, optimization and data reduction and modeling human cognition, with application to real world problems. Ongoing research in this area in various application domains.

Topic selected under the supervision of a faculty member from CISC, LING, PHIL, or PSYC. Emphasis may be on experimental, theoretical, or computer implementation. Independent research, an oral presentation, and a written report are required. The student must make a project proposal and secure a supervisor prior to enrolling in the course.