Computational modeling is playing an increasingly important role in the language sciences. The goal of this talk is to survey computational models in phonology, with a focus on what they can and can't tell us about language acquisition. The talk will open with an empirical survey of phonological acquisition, from the rudiments of rhythm to the production of morphological alternations. The central section of the talk will focus on the problem of phonotactic acquisition, and how it can be modeled computationally using a formalism known as maximum entropy harmonic grammar.

Superior perception, peaks of ability, and savant skills are often observed in the autistic phenotype. The enhanced perceptual functioning model emphasizes the increased role and autonomy of perceptual information processing in autistic cognition. Autistic abilities also involve enhanced pattern detection (Mottron et al., 2006, 2009). In this presentation, we elaborate Veridical mapping a specific mechanism which can explain the higher incidence of savant abilities, as well as other related phenomena in autism.

The evolutionary foundations of fairness is one of the most hotly debated questions in evolutionary anthropology. Reciprocate cooperation (in a large sense) generates collective benefits and, beyond explaining its mere existence, it is also essential to understand how evolution has shaped the way these benefits are divided. Fairness is the fact that, among the many ways to distribute collective benefits, we tend to favor impartial distributions and request our partners to do the same (e.g. 50/50 divisions in symmetric interactions).

The notion of general intelligence arises from the observation that performance across a large array of cognitive tests is correlated, such that a factor analysis yields one factor explaining a substantial part of the variance. This statistical observation has led Spearman (1904) to postulate that a single biological or psychological property ("g" for general intelligence) underlies the performance in all intelligence tests and subtests. Although this hypothesis has been debated for a whole century, it has become widely accepted, both within intelligence research and in related fields.

Looking for a friend in the crowd or avoiding a sudden danger are two actions based on the quality of our visuo-spatial attention. Behavioural tests and brain imaging technology demonstrated that visuo-spatial attention is a specialized function of the right hemisphere of the brain. However, anatomical features supporting this specialization have remained elusive. We scanned volunteers with a novel brain imaging technology that can depict the white matter connections, and we measured the degree of specialization of the right hemisphere for visuo-spatial attention with behavioural tests.

We all appreciate substantial differences among our friends and colleagues in their cognitive ability and style. Such variability introduces a rich diversity of culture and lifestyle into our society.

"Core cognition" is typically studied in the context of infancy research on early emerging physical or social knowledge (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007) . This work emphasizes the bootstrapping function that innate knowledge serves in guiding early learning. However, core cognition also continues to operate automatically and often tacitly into adulthood and in ways that can be at odds with other aspects of adult cognition.