We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

In many areas of the social and behavioral sciences, the nature of the experiments and theories that best capture the underlying constructs are themselves areas of active inquiry. Integrative experiment design risks being prematurely exploitative, hindering exploration of experimental paradigms and of diverse theoretical accounts for target phenomena.

Cognitive science has been traditionally organized around the individual as the basic unit of cognition. Despite developments in areas such as communication, human–machine interaction, group behavior, and community organization, the individual-centric approach heavily dominates both cognitive research and its application. A promising direction for cognitive science is the study of augmented intelligence, or the way social and technological systems interact with and extend individual cognition. The cognitive science of augmented intelligence holds promise in helping society tackle major real-world challenges that (...) can only be discovered and solved by teams made of individuals and machines with complementary skills who can productively collaborate with each other. (shrink)