Introduction to Volume 8, Issue 3 of topiCS

We predict that years from now this issue of topiCS, “Discovering Psychological Principles by Mining Naturally Occurring Data Sets,” will be seen as the point at which the field of Cognitive Science realized that the ready availability of large quantities of human data in electronic format had and would continue to have a major impact on the nature, conduct, and definition of human cognitive research. From this point forward, the nature and definition of naturally occurring data sets (NODS) as a method for empirical research will reference, debate, redefine, and amend the definitions of NODS proposed in the Editors’ introduction and their collection of papers. As Topic Editors Robert L. Goldstone (Indiana University) and Gary Lupyan (University of Wisconsin) carefully discuss in their short and interesting introduction, NODS is not necessarily Big Data, and it is not necessarily data that was collected for other than research purposes (this point is clearly made in their discussion of Anderson and Schooler [1991]). Equally important is their emphasis on the interplay between laboratory studies and NODS: namely, that “NODS should supplement not supplant experiments.” Based on the papers in this issue of topiCS, they stress five roles for NODS: