Ebbinghaus Empire

Reasoning, memory, and cognitive architecture
 
Our understanding of human cognitive abilities rests primarily on correlational analyses of psychometric tests. How cognitive abilities relate to elementary cognitive processes and why they exhibit observed correlations are open questions. In this talk, I discuss some recent and ongoing work addressing these questions through the lens of cognitive architectures, focusing specifically on cognitive processes involved in fluid and deductive reasoning. I begin by introducing an integrative cognitive architectural model of fluid reasoning on the Raven's Matrices test. Then, I present a recent experimental study, informed by cognitive architectural theory, shedding light on possible mechanisms behind so-called 'logical intuitions' in deductive reasoning. I close by highlighting common theoretical themes across the two studies and argue that higher cognitive abilities may largely be enabled by the elementary cognitive processes that support long-term memory.

Alternate locations:

Or online: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/83635437592