The Cognition Project

Gordon Bower, a pioneering cognitive psychologist famous for work on memory, imagery, and hypothesis-testing models. He recounts shifts from behaviorism to computational approaches. He discusses animal-learning labs, associative memory projects, mental imagery and mnemonics, hypothesis-sampling models of concept learning, and how abrupt learning transitions shaped his methods and mentoring.

Richard Atkinson, cognitive psychologist and university leader who helped define human memory research. He recalls early computational and information-theory influences. He describes military computing and Monte Carlo simulations. He traces formal models of storage and retrieval and the founding of UC San Diego’s cognitive science efforts.

A journey through early cognitive science, tracing East Coast roots and West Coast transformations. Stories of formative encounters with Miller, Bruner, Chomsky, and Soviet psychology. Tales of child language recordings, cross-cultural fieldwork, and shifting focus from universals to typology. Reflections on building Berkeley’s program and interdisciplinary funding that shaped the field.

Tom Bever, influential psycholinguist who shaped early work on language acquisition and processing. He recounts childhood experiments and shifting from biology to linguistics. Conversations cover the Chomsky–Skinner clash, Project Nim and sign-learning in chimps, hemisphere timing differences in speech, and an epigenetic view of how language emerges from gene–environment interaction.

The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science.This episode is the story of Jean Berko Gleason, who was a student at Harvard just as new ideas about studying language and the mind were emerging. Her work revealed that even young children seem to internalize the rules of language, an idea that we are going to revisit when artificial neural networks come into the story. Those artificial neural networks power today’s AI chatbots, but Berko Gleason remains skeptical. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist and cognitive scientist who pioneered generative grammar. He discusses generative grammar and computation, the limits of data-only approaches, structural versus linear relations in language, poverty of the stimulus and innateness, and connections between linguistic puzzles and broader cognitive science questions.

Lila Gleitman, renowned psycholinguist who shaped research on how children acquire language. She recounts her shift from English to linguistics and debates with major figures. Listens to data from blind and deaf children, studies word-to-world mapping, and explains how syntax helps learn abstract meanings. She also describes building interdisciplinary research at Penn.

Introduction to a new book exploring the search for a mathematical theory of the mind. Traces historical attempts to formalize thought from Hobbes and Leibniz to Boole. Compares three cognitive frameworks: logic, neural networks, and Bayesian models. Discusses the rise of neural networks, limits of rule-based systems, and efforts to unify these approaches.

The Cognition Project is an oral history of cognitive science. Created and hosted by Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a professor of psychology and computer science.This episode is with Susan Carey, who worked with Jerome Bruner both as an undergraduate and a graduate student before going on to make her own deep contributions to our understanding of how children’s minds work. As a consequence, she had a front row seat to the earliest days of cognitive science and helped it grow through her interactions with psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Molly Potter, cognitive psychologist who pioneered methods for studying rapid visual perception and memory. She recounts developing rapid serial visual presentation and experiments on what a single glance captures. She reflects on early cognitive science culture, links between perception and design, and challenges for connecting cognitive theory with neuroscience.