Rational Models of Cognition

This book explores a new approach to understanding the human mind - rational analysis - that regards thinking as a facility adapted to the structure of the world. This approach is most closely associated with the work of John R Anderson, who published the original book on rational analysis in 1990. Since then, a great deal of work has been carried out in a number of laboratories around the world, and the aim of this book is to bring this work together for the benefit of the general psychological audience. The book contains chapters by some of the world's leading researchers in memory, categorisation, reasoning, and search, who show how the power of rational analysis can be applied to the central question of how humans think. It will be of interest to students and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and animal behaviour.

1 - An introduction to rational models of cognition
2 - Connectionist models and Bayesian inference
3 - Normative and descriptive models of decision making: time discounting and risk sensitivity
4 - The effectiveness of retrieval from memory
5 - Predictions of a Bayesian recognition memory model (and a class of mdels including it)
6 - Cueing for context: an alternative to global matching models of recognition memory
7 - Sorting out core memory processes
8 - Rational and non-rational aspects of forgetting
9 - Adaptive analysis of sequential behaviour: oscillators as rational mechanisms
10 - The rational analysis of categorization and the ACT-R architecture
11 - Optimum performance and exemplar models of classificaiton
12 - A Bayesian analysis of some forms of inductive reasoning
13 - Dynamics of dimension weight distribution and flexibility in categorization
14 - Causal mechanism and probability: a normative approach
15 - The rational analysis of human contingency judgement
16 - Rationality assumption of game theory and the backward induction paradox
17 - A revised rational analysis of the selection task: exceptions and sequential sampling
18 - Rational analysis of causal conditionals and the selection task
19 - The practice of mathematics and science: from calculus to the clothesline problem
20 - The rational analysis of inquiry: the case of parsing
21 - Rational analysis of exploratory choice
22 - Rationality as optimised cognitive self-regulation