On the Logic of Testing Models of Cognition Through the Analysis of Brain-Damaged Performance

在认知心理学中，认知能力背后的心理过程的理论模型被提出、测试和修订，其基础是在涉及不同程度脑损伤受试者的单例和组研究中，在一系列认知任务中的表现模式。认知理论是一个模块化的功能架构，它提供了一个计算明确的信息处理帐户，说明执行这些认知任务所需的心理表征是如何产生的。Bub教授正在继续他的研究，将Clark Glymour博士对相关证据的“引导”解释应用于认知神经心理学中当前的方法论争议，即关于脑损伤和正常受试者的单例和组研究的理论与证据之间的关系。Bub教授将原来的项目重新表述为如何从概率关系（表示正常和脑损伤受试者的表现数据）中可靠地推断因果关系（表示认知模型）这一一般问题的一个方面。这项新的调查涉及到一些假设的现状，这些假设保证了认知神经心理学可靠方法论的存在，以及单个案例与群体研究的问题，这些问题激发了最初的调查。

In cognitive psychology, theoretical models of the mental processes underlying cognitive abilities are proposed, tested and revised on the basis of patterns of performance over a range of cognitive tasks in single-case and group studies involving subjects with varying degrees of brain damage. A theory of cognition is a modular functional architecture that provides a computationally explicit, information-processing account of how the mental representations required to perform these cognitive tasks are produced. Professor Bub is continuing his research applying Dr. Clark Glymour's `bootstrapping' account of relevant evidence to a current methodological controversy in cognitive neuropsychology, concerning the relation between theory and evidence from single-case and group studies on brain-damaged and normal subjects. Professor Bub has reformulated the original project as an aspect of the general problem of how to reliably infer causal relations (representing a model of cognition) from probability relations (representing performance data from normal and brain-damaged subjects). This new investigation concerns the status of some of the assumptions that guarantee the existence of a reliable methodology for cognitive neuropsychology, as well as the single-case versus group studies problem that motivated the original inquiry.