Links

From the book

Link Details
Ethnologue (p.18) Find information about where languages are spoken, how many speakers they have and what family they belong to.
Kanizsa Triangle (p.22) You do not see a triangle only when looking at Fig. 2.1 from a single angle under one set of lighting conditions from a particular distance. Try moving the page around or visit this site to explore the visual grammar that lets you construct the edges of a triangle.
Perceptual continuation of a gliding tone through a noise burst (p.31) A gap in a tone that rises in frequency can be restored by our perceptual system if it is masked by noise. A demonstration and further discussion of this phenomenon is accessible from the web page of Al Bregman, whose work inspired much of the discussion in this section.
Praat (p.34) Praat: doing Phonetics by Computer. Free software for acoustic analysis.
Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena (p.37) (Exercise 2.6.3). More construction: Visit and find examples of illusions that demonstrate construction of color, motion, and shape.
Chomsky Hierarchy (p. 109) A useful overview of the Chomsky Hierarchy on Wikipedia.
On Some Axioms about Sentence Length (p. 113) A short paper by D. L. Olmsted, discussing Chomsky's (1957) assumption that there is no upper limit in the length of a sentence.
writer vs. rider (p. 128)
Plato's Meno (p. 281) Plato's Meno on The Project Gutenberg.
Writings on the "Ebonics" issue (p. 297) Various articles by John Rickford on the Ebonics Controversy.
Bad Grammar in Context (p. 364) Article by Malcom D. Hyman published in New England Classical Journal 29.2 (2002).

Some of our influences

Link Details
Zenon Pylyshyn
Noam Chomsky Chomsky's page at MIT.
Chomsky.Info General Chomsky info page, including his political works.
Ray Jackendoff Jackendoff's page at Tufts Uiversity.
Donald Hoffman Hoffman's page at UC Irvine.
Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University Scholars such as Susan Carey and Elizabeth Spelke are leading researchers on infant knowledge of the physical world and related topics.

Additional resources

Link Details
Law professor John Mikhail's webpage Prof. Mikhail's papers discuss notions like UG and Poverty of the Stimulus in law and morality.
Alhazen Wikipedia entry on Alhazen, the medieval mathematician and scientist who wrote on vision and optics.
"The Itch" by Atul Gawande A New Yorker article on the tactile sensation.
Smoke on the Water (Japanese style) Ray Jackendoff asks how we can identify two performances as tokens of the same song if the key, tempo, arrangement, instruments and language can all vary. Ponder this question with respect to equivalence classes and the mind's construction of experience while you rock out to this Japanese version of a Deep Purple classic.
Julian Beever, pavement artist Julian Beever's anamorphic drawings create illusiory 3D world on the streets.

Popular books on Cognitive Science

Book title and link Book author and blurb
Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould. An excellent source for discussion of mental representations and innate knowledge in non-humans—including spiders who build nets and toss them onto their prey!
What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life by Avery Gilbert. "Odor space is an imaginary mathematical realm containing all possible odors" (p.10). Plus Proust exposed, Odorama, smell DJs and more.
Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith. Includes tips for cognitive scientists on how to talk to both physicists and lit crit types.
The Computer and the Mind: An introduction to Cognitive Science by Philip Johnson-Laird. Old but good.