The DOI matches its Crossref record; 127 of the 127 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Tractable Cognition Thesis
Open accessAbstract
The recognition that human minds/brains are finite systems with limited resources for computation has led some researchers to advance the Tractable Cognition thesis: Human cognitive capacities are constrained by computational tractability. This thesis, if true, serves cognitive psychology by constraining the space of computational‐level theories of cognition. To utilize this constraint, a precise and workable definition of “computational tractability” is needed. Following computer science tradition, many cognitive scientists and psychologists define computational tractability as polynomial‐time computability, leading to the P‐Cognition thesis. This article explains how and why the P‐Cognition thesis may be overly restrictive, risking the exclusion of veridical computational‐level theories from scientific investigation. An argument is made to replace the P‐Cognition thesis by the FPT‐Cognition thesis as an alternative formalization of the Tractable Cognition thesis (here, FPT stands for fixed‐parameter tractable). Possible objections to the Tractable Cognition thesis, and its proposed formalization, are discussed, and existing misconceptions are clarified.
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Rahnev, D., & Denison, R. N. (2018) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x18000936 · Cited by 342
The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources
Lieder, F., Griffiths, T. L., M. Huys, Q. J., & Goodman, N. D. (2018) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-017-1286-8 · Cited by 230
Bayesian intractability is not an ailment that approximation can cure
Kwisthout, J., Wareham, T., & van Rooij, I. (2011) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01182.x · Cited by 122
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Metadata
- Authors
- Van Rooij, I.
- Venue
- Cognitive Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2008-09
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 939-984
- ISSN
- 0364-0213 (ISSN-L)
- 1551-6709
- OpenAlex
- W2149852414
- Cited by
- 285
- References
- 127
- FWCI
- 6.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
