Quantum computing and cognitive simulation

Abstract

Cognitive Science is the study of the mind and how it relates to human behaviour. As a field, it is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together theories from Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology, and others. The field of cognitive science operates at a number of levels. On the one hand, some aspects of cognitive science look at the behaviour of neurons, whereas other aspects look to explain human behaviour at a more abstract level, seeking to explain human decision making or reasoning. A key area of research in cognitive science is how to formalise human behaviours around judgements of similarity, categorization, and decision making. In the field of Physics, Quantum Mechanics has fundamentally altered our understanding of the way in which particles behave. Quantum mechanics has a number of unintuitive phenomena, some of which can be used model unusual aspects of human behaviour. The application of quantum theory to model human behaviour is wide-ranging. In this chapter we will look at three main areas in which it has been applied. One key area is in how similarity judgements can be modelled. There are a number of phenomena around similarity judgements that are not well modelled using a view of concepts that does not take the state of the observer into account. These include the asymmetry of similarity judgements and the fact that similarity can change depending on other exemplars that are present. Another key area is in judgement and decision-making. Again, puzzling phenomena have been observed regarding the fact that judgements do not follow classical probability theory, known as the conjunction fallacy, can depend crucially on the order in which questions are presented or on the amount of knowledge about the world. Finally, approaches to modelling cognitive phenomena at the neural level will also be discussed within a quantum-theoretic framework.