Date: Thursday, 21-Nov-96 22:33:35 GMT Server: NCSA/1.3 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Thursday, 30-May-96 14:29:48 GMT Content-length: 2943 Ron Ferguson

Ronald W. Ferguson

Qualitative Reasoning Group

Institute for the Learning Sciences

Northwestern University

ferguson@ils.nwu.edu

Research interests

My research focuses on computer models of similarity and analogy, both as practical modules within AI systems and as cognitive models of observed psychological effects. I am especially interested in how we use one area of similarity--symmetry and regularity detection--to break up the world into comprehensible parts.

I mainly work with my advisor, Ken Forbus, and the Qualitative Reasoning Group at the Institute for the Learning Sciences. However, I also spend a lot of time with psychology researchers in Dedre Gentner's lab.

Recent publications

Ferguson, R.W., Aminoff, A., & Gentner, D. (1996). Modeling qualitative differences in symmetry judgments. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gentner, D., Brem, S., Ferguson, R.W., Markman, A., Levidow, B.B., Wolff, P., & Forbus, K.D. (in press). Analogical reasoning and conceptual change: A case study of Johannes Kepler. To appear in The Journal of the Learning Sciences.

Ferguson, R. W., and Forbus, K. D. (1995) Understanding illustrations of physical laws by integrating differences in visual and textual representations. 1995 AAAI Fall Symposium on Computational Models for Integrating Language and Vision.

Forbus, K. D., Ferguson, R. W., and Gentner, D. (1994). Incremental Structure Mapping. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ferguson, R. W. (1994). MAGI: A model of analogical encoding using symmetry and regularity. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.


Ron Ferguson. Last edited May 14, 1996.