Share
The Cognition Project
Taking a New Look at the Mind: Jerome Bruner
Ep. 1
•
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.
The first story in the series is that of Jerome Bruner, who was really the person who helped to launch the cognitive revolution. In the first half of the 20th century, psychologists decided that if they wanted to be scientists they should study behavior and its causes rather than subjective impressions and mental states. Bruner intentionally ran experiments that revealed the limits of this approach and started to show how mathematical ideas could be used to create a rigorous science of the mind.
More episodes
View all episodes
11. Seeking Universal Laws: Roger Shepard
01:16:58||Ep. 11The 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 about Roger Shepard, who created innovative methods to let us peek inside people’s heads. He ultimately used those tools to propose psychology’s first universal law.10. From Rats to Hypotheses: Gordon Bower
48:23||Ep. 10The 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.Continuing to trace the development of cognitive psychology, this episode tells the story of Gordon Bower. At a time when psychologists still had to demonstrate that this new approach to their science could offer insights that went beyond merely studying behavior, Bower devised clever methods for revealing the complexity of human minds.9. Computers and Memory: Richard Atkinson
18:13||Ep. 9The 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 Richard Atkinson, who did groundbreaking work exploring the structure of human memory before going on to be the Director of the National Science Foundation, Chancellor of UC San Diego, and ultimately President of the entire University of California.8. Heading West: Dan Slobin
01:07:19||Ep. 8The 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 Dan Slobin, who offers both a perspective on the East Coast origins of cognitive science and how it evolved on the West Coast.7. Chomsky, Chimpsky, and Beyond: Tom Bever
01:24:25||Ep. 7The 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 Tom Bever, who took a circuitous path that led him through several important events in the cognitive revolution. Bever ultimately became an influential psycholinguist in his own right.6. From Wugs to Chatbots: Jean Berko Gleason
01:02:00||Ep. 6The 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.4. Generating Grammars: Noam Chomsky
35:08||Ep. 4The 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 the story of Noam Chomsky, whose work on language was arguably one of the key components of the “cognitive revolution” that led to the creation of cognitive science. The interview took place in 2013. More recently, Chomsky has been in the news for his interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. If you would prefer to skip this interview you can hear a different perspective on the same period from the influential psycholinguist Lila Gleitman in the next episode.5. Listening to Babies: Lila Gleitman
55:17||Ep. 5The 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.In this episode, we get the chance to hear the story of Lila Gleitman – one of the researchers who did foundational work in understanding how young children come to acquire language.Book Excerpt: The Laws of Thought
13:19|This bonus episode of The Cognition Project features the introduction of The Laws of Thought, Tom Griffiths's new book. The interviews in The Cognition Project were used as part of the research for the book, which tells the story of the quest for a mathematical theory of the mind, from the cognitive revolution to modern AI.