The Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind: How We Think, How We Learn, and What It Means to Be Intelligent

As artificial intelligence authority Schank tries crab sushi in Tokyo, sips champagne in France and samples the cuisines of Denver, Barcelona, Atlanta and Korea, he uses his culinary experiences to explain short- and long-term memory, the mind's tendency to fill in blanks, how people rely on stereotypes, and such mental processes as inference, expectation, learning and generalization. In an ingenious, gourmandizing romp of a book, Schank, director of Northwestern University's Institute for Learning Sciences, takes hungry minds deep inside the mind's workings. Along the way he offers amusing commentary on the Michelin restaurant guide, Japanese food and ``wildly overpriced'' wines in fancy U.S. restaurants. Readers meet CHEF, a computer program that creates recipes; FRUMP, a program that reads and summarizes newspaper stories; and JUDGE, a program that metes out judicial sentences for crimes. (Oct.)