The CPATH Pedagogical Task

Develop the intellectual and reasoning skills needed to apply computational thinking to the problems and projects in their field, whether the field is in the arts, sciences, humanities, or social sciences.

HON 207 Introduction to Cognitive Science

Sophomore-level Liberal Studies course for University Honors Program Students.

Taught by CDM and LA&S Faculty from various departments.

Course design varies with the instructor’s discipline.

A linguistics approach was approved by the requirement committee in 2008.

This was the first offering of this version of the course.

Understanding Linguistics’ Scholarly Paradigms

Formal Linguistics: The study of the relationships between the parts of language that permit information to be encoded and decoded (“Regular Expressions,” “Classes, Objects and Properties,” “Generative Grammar,” and “Sound Patterns.”

Functional Linguistics: The study of language in use (pidgins, creoles and argots,” “discourse studies,” “studies of speech genres (i.e. conversation),” “dialect studies,” and “first and second language acquisition.”

Conversation StudiesSequences, Pre-sequences and Narration (turn-taking

behaviors, conventional exchanges and storytelling that creates the structure of conversation).

Deictics (context-specific particles that maintain or change the contexts of the exchanges, i.e. pronouns, verb tenses).

Pragmatics (conjoining others to react to the contexts you establish, i.e., question/answer, request/approval).

Metapragmatics (setting and achieving an agenda during interaction that communicates an identity to others).

MetapragmaticsThe “agendas” of the people participating in

the conversation (Searle’s intentionality) is discoverable from the patterns of the pragmatics of their utterances. For example: Who talks the most? Who interrupts whom? Who provides the preferred response to others? Who provides responses that are not preferred or

are distracting to others? Who dominates by telling stories? Who predominantly asks questions?

Conversation Analysis as algorithm

Each step below ‘Recording’ is recursive.

Communication: Transmission of information from one process or

object to another.

Communication here is understood meta, relating to the analytical process, rather than phenomenological, relating to the data

Coordination: the control of the timing of ‘computation’ in order to achieve a

certain goal.

Assessment: Did students develop the

skills to apply computational

techniques to the problems and

projects in functional linguistics?

Assessment of Computational Thinking

Turing Test: If you are in a conversation with a stranger through a chat program, how do you know you are conversing with a human?