The Psychological Approach

Sponsored by Purdue University, this is an online visual perception laboratory. It contains a number of demonstrations including illusions and Gestalt phenomenon.

http://www.psych.purdue.edu/~coglab/VisLab/demos.html

A gallery of various visual illusions at a University of Massachusetts at Lowell site, this contains color contrast, subjective contour, and impossible figures as well as links to other sites.

http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/illusion.html

This site includes 47 optical illusions and visual phenomena presented by category. The categories include motion and time, luminance and contrast, color, geometric and angle illusions, size constancy, cognitive and Gestalt effects, and faces.

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html

Behaviorism:

This site has an animation of an imaginary creature called "Fuzzy." Fuzzy is in a room and engages in various behaviors such as walking and resting. The user can operantly condition Fuzzy's behavior using punishment and reinforcement through keyboard presses.

http://epsych.msstate.edu/adaptive/Fuzz/index.html

The Cognitive Approach I

Experiments in Cognitive Psychology:

This site is sponsored by Hanover College and contains a large number of links to online experiments in different areas of psychology including Biological Psychology, Cognition, Human Factors, and Sensation and Perception.

http://psych.hanover.edu/research/exponnet.html

The Cognitive Approach II

Try your hand at solving these logic puzzles. A description of each problem is given as well as links to the solutions.

http://rec-puzzles.org/logic.html

This site allows you to work on the four-disc Tower of Hanoi problem. Drag discs from one peg to another. A counter keeps track of the number of moves. The solution can be viewed in fast or slow motion.

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/recurrence/hanoi.shtml

The Neuroscience Approach

Gross Brain Anatomy and Physiology:

An online study guide provided by the Psychology Department at the University of Alberta, this site has descriptions and pictures of major brain areas viewed from a midsagittal section.

http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~iwinship/studyguide/brain_study.htm

This site has mpeg movies of brain anatomy. In addition there are 3-D animations reconstructed from MRI patient data.

http://splweb.bwh.harvard.edu:8000/pagimages_movies.html#b

The whole brain atlas is a popular site with information on neuroimaging. It also shows interactive MRI brain images from different sections for healthy and diseased brain states.

http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html

The Network Approach

Interactive Network Programs:

A Java applet that simulates how a perceptron network categorizes stimulus input, this is part of a larger site called Serendip that focuses on issues in science and biology. It was founded by Bryn Mawr College.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/complexity/perceptron/learning1.html

This site includes simulations of many different neural networks—competitive learning, backpropagation, constraint satisfaction, and optimization. It also contains other applets on related topics.

http://staff.aist.go.jp/utsugi-a/Lab/Links.html

Included here is a neural networks tutorial using Java Applets that allows simulations of single neurons. Other categories include supervised learning in single and multilayer networks, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and explorations of network dynamics.

http://diwww.epfl.ch/mantra/tutorial/english/

The Evolutionary Approach

Evolutionary Biology:

A computer simulation of biological evolution, this site requires a free public license software package called "Altruist." This is by Agner Fog.

http://www.agner.org/evolution/

Artificial Life:

Darwin Pond is an artificial life simulation of swimming creatures. Download the free software to build scenarios and design experiments where the creatures change their anatomy and behavior over successive generations.

http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/darwin.html

A freeware program called "gLife" wherein parameters regarding societal growth (e.g., rules of reproduction, movement, death, environment, age, sex, and cultural elements) are specified, the user can observe trends such as how animals on the terrain move or how wealth is distributed.

http://glife.sourceforge.net/

The Linguistic Approach

Animals and Language:

This site has three videos of the chimpanzee Viki learning by observation. Watch Viki open a lid with a screwdriver, hammer a stake into the ground, and use sandpaper on a bar. The site requires QuickTime or Windows Media Player.

http://epsych.msstate.edu/adaptive/learningByObservation/index.html

Artificial Intelligence I

Turing Test:

This is a comprehensive page on the Turing Test with references, background reading, information on the Loebner Prize, links to people and other interesting places. Of particular note is the section with links to bots that you can communicate with.

http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html#hi

ELIZA is a simple program that provides conversational responses to statements typed in by the user. It is designed to emulate a Rogerian psychotherapist. ELIZA is one of the earliest examples of a chatbot or conversational software program. This site will allow you to converse with ELIZA.

http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3

Artificial Intelligence II

Turing Machines:

A Turing machine simulator, this site has associated pages describing a Turing Machine and how to use the simulator.

http://www.igs.net/~tril/tm/

This site also has a virtual Turing machine and simulator along with examples and descriptive information.

http://www.nmia.com/~soki/turing/

Robotics

This link contains information on the Penn State Abington Fire-Fighting Robot Contest. View rules of the contest, video demonstrations of subsumption, as well as fire-fighting robots.

http://www.ecsel.psu.edu/~avanzato/robots/contests/firefighting/contest05.htm