Provides a detailed, technical introduction to the state of cognitive science research, in particular the rise of the "new cognitive science," especially artificial neural net (ANN) models. Explains one influential ANN model and describes diverse applications and their implications for education. (EV)

Gaming is discussed against a background of rationalist and historicist traditions of reality; trivial and nontrivial machine models of problem solving; and rigid-rule and free-form games. (JKP)

Discusses the basic elements of a global cognitive theory for information retrieval (IR) interaction from a cognitive point of view. Within this framework are outlined the principles underlying the concept of polyrepresentation applied simultaneously to the user's cognitive space and the information space of IR systems. Contains 95 references.…

Examines some of the basic tenets that managers and researchers alike hold dear about how people work and communicate about their work. Proposes a new model of how communication brings two types of knowledge into play in organizations and suggests that these insights may open intriguing possibilities both for managing and for organizational…

In the "Ant World" project, items to be retrieved are "quests" represented by entire collections of judged documents. To save space and time, methods were developed for representing these complex entities in a short string of about 1,000 bytes, called a Digital Information Pheromone (DIP). Principles are presented for…

This case study examines the validity of 1 measure of representation and employs multiple measures to examine whether they provide mutually informative or independent pieces of information. These measures include (a) concept maps, which measure how individuals represent their content knowledge of a domain as a whole; (b) problem sorts, which…

Participants acquired spatial knowledge of a fictitious island by studying either (a) a complete physical map, (b) a sequence of part maps each showing the outline of the island and a subset of the landmarks, or (c) a sequence of sentences each describing a part map. During test, they verified the direction between 2 landmarks. Spatial knowledge…

Wernicke (1900, as cited in G. H. Eggert, 1977) suggested that semantic knowledge arises from the interaction of perceptual representations of objects and words. The authors present a parallel distributed processing implementation of this theory, in which semantic representations emerge from mechanisms that acquire the mappings between visual…

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are a problem solving strategy that uses stochastic search. Since their introduction (Holland, 1975), GAs have proven to be particularly useful for solving problems that are "intractable" using classical methods. The language of genetic algorithms (GAs) is heavily laced with biological metaphors from evolutionary…

This paper focuses on the different ways in which students in lower secondary school (14-16 year olds) experience compound random events, presented to them in the form of combined junctions. A carefully designed ICT environment was developed enabling the students to interact with different representations of such structures. Data for the analysis…

This study investigated the representations that readers construct for narratives describing a sequence of events. Participants read narratives describing 4 successive events in chronological order (Event 1, Event 2, Event 3, Event 4 [E1, E2, E3, E4] Experiment 1) or in nonchronological order with E1 being mentioned in a flashback (E2, E3, E1,…

As engineers gain experience and become experts in their domain, the structure and content of their knowledge changes. Two studies are presented that examine differences in knowledge representation among freshman and senior engineering students. The first study examines recall of mechanical devices and chunking of components, and the second…

Place cells of the rat hippocampus are a dominant model system for understanding the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory at the level of single-unit and neural ensemble responses. A complete understanding of the information processing and computations performed by the hippocampus requires detailed knowledge about the properties of the…

An empirically-based theory is proposed that relates media's most essential modes of presentation--their symbol systems--to modes of cognitive representation and to the acquisition of knowledge. This book draws upon scholarship in such areas as the study of symbol systems, cognition, cognitive development, psycholinguistics, and mass…

This paper explores the nature and structure of scientific models by taking the position that representations are not models themselves. Representations of models are essential tools for communicating and conversing about the scientific models underlying them. A scientific model is considered to be a set of ideas that describe a natural process. A…