COGS 558
Thinking, Reasoning & Problem Solving
Fall 2014
Instructor: Murat Perit Cakir
Coordinates: Informatics Institute B-205
Lecture Hours: Fridays, 14:40-17:30, S03
Office Hours: By appointment
Contact: perit@metu.edu.tr, 7706
Course Overview
This course examines classical and contemporary work on thinking, reasoning, and problem solving in
Cognitive Science. Topics include nature of human concepts, inductive/deductive reasoning, creativity &
insight in problem solving, decision making, probabilistic reasoning, visuospatial reasoning, development
of thinking, scientific reasoning, practical/everyday reasoning, paradigms of cultural thought,
mathematical cognition, collective reasoning and neural correlates of reasoning and decision making.
Each topic will be discussed from several perspectives including psychology, cognitive neuroscience,
cognitive modeling and cognitive anthropology.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course students will be expected to develop a thorough understanding of thinking,
reasoning, problem solving and decision making concepts by reviewing both classical and contemporary
accounts on the subject matter from multiple perspectives within Cognitive Science. Students are also
expected to apply this theoretical knowledge to analysis of empirical data. The class will include an
empirical data analysis component where students will be asked to design and analyze small scale
experiments on related topics.
Background Requirements
No pre-requisite coursework is needed. Students are required to possess (1) some experience in
designing and running psychological experiments, and (2) skills for reading & writing in English language
about empirical and conceptual problems in cognitive science.
Course Outline
 Introduction
 The Nature of Human Concepts
o Similarity
o Concepts and Categories
o Approaches to Modeling Human Mental Representations
 Reasoning
o Induction
o Analogy
o Causal Learning
o Deductive Reasoning
o Visuospatial Reasoning
 Judgement & Decision Making
o Decision Making


o Heuristics
o Neuroeconomics
Problem Solving & Complex Learning
o Problem Solving
o Creativitiy & Insight
o Situated Reasoning
Developmental & Physiological Aspects of Thinking
o Development of Thinking
o Thinking in Working Memory
o Cognitive Neuroscience of Deductive Reasoning
o Thought Disorders
o Ocular & neural correlates of thinking
Course Conduct & Grading
This will be a reading intensive course. All students are expected to read the assigned chapters (and
supplementary papers) before the corresponding class. The course will have online collaborative
activities where we will together discuss the materials in the learning management system. The
participation to these activities will count towards your grade.
During the course of the semester there will be 4-5 take-home assignments. The assignments will
include questions/tasks related to the readings and class discussions.
Finally the course will include a project component where you should design/conduct an experiment by
using OpenSesame (http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/), analyze its data, and present your findings both in class and
in report format. You may consider using the functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) device or
the TOBII T120 eye tracker for your experiments.
Tentative Breakdown of Grades
20%: Participation into classroom, online discussion, group work (prerequisite: attendance!)
40%: Short paper assignments
40%: Project
 Project proposal – 1 page synopsis, including short literature review presenting the domain and
motivating the proposed study, your research question/hypothesis, and your plans for
experimental design and/or approach to model building. (due October 17th)
 Project presentation (last week of classes)
 Project report – in cog sci conference format – 6-8 pages. (due 2 weeks after the presentation)
Attendance and participation is mandatory to get a passing grade!
Textbook
You are not required to buy a textbook for this course. Reading materials for each week will be posted
to METU Online in advance. We will be mainly following the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and
Reasoning edited by Holyoak and Morrison (2005):
References
Anderson, J.R., Albert, M. V., & Fincham, J. M. (2005). Tracing problem solving in real time: fMRI analysis
of the subject-paced Towers of Hanoi. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17:8, pp. 1261-1274.
Baron, J. (1994). Thinking and Deciding. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowden, E. M., Jung-Beeman, M., Fleck, J. & Kounios, J. (2005). New approaches to demystifying insight.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(7):322-328.
Colvin, M. K., Dunbar, K., & Grafman, J. (2001). The effects of frontal lobe lesions on goal achievement in
the water jug task. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13:8, pp. 1129-1147.
Dehaene, S. (2011), The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, Revised & Expanded
Edition, NY: Oxford University Press.
Garnham, A., & Oakhill, J. (1994). Thinking and Reasoning. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Geary, D. C. (2006). Development of mathematical understanding. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series
Eds.) & D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Volume 2: Cognition,
perception, and language (6th ed., pp. 777-810). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Holyoak, K.J., & Morrison, R.G. (2012). Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. New York:
University Press
Holyoak, K.J., & Morrison, R.G. (Eds.) (2005). Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Macmillan
Kaplan, C., and H. A. Simon. (1990). In search of insight. Cognitive Psychology 22:374-419.
Krawczyk, D. C. (2002). Contributions of the prefrontal cortex to the neural basis of human decision
making. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 26: 631-664.
Netz, R. (2003). The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History. New York
,NY: Cambridge University Press.
Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Nisbett, R. E. (2003). The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and
Why. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Pfeifer, R. & Bongard, J. C. (2006). How the Body Shapes the Way We Think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ridderinkhof, K.R., van den Wildenberg, W., Segalowitz, S., Carter, C. (2004). Neurocognitive
mechanisms of cognitive control: The role of prefrontal cortex in action selection, response
inhibition, performance monitoring, and reward-based learning. Brain and Cognition, 56, 129-140.
Schulte-Mecklenbeck, M., Kühberger, A., & Ranyard, R. (Eds.). (2011). A handbook of process tracing
methods for decision research: A critical review and user’s guide. Psychology Press.
Shafir, E., and A. Tversky. (1995). Decision making. In E. E. Smith and D. N. Osherson, Eds., An Invitation
to Cognitive Science, 2nd ed. vol. 3: Thinking). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 77-100.
Siegler, R. S., Thompson, C. A., & Schneider, M. (2011). An integrated theory of whole number and
fractions development. Cognitive Psychology, 62, 273-296.
Simon, H. A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Smith, S.M., Ward, T.B., & Finke, R.A. (1995). The Creative Cognition Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.