Introduction to Cognitive Science

Course Overview

What is cognition and how does it emerge from the brain? This course introduces you to the exciting interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. Researchers in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics realized that they were asking many of the same questions about the nature of the human mind/brain, that they had developed complementary and synergistic methods of investigation, and that the evidence led them to compatible answers to their questions. This course introduces cognitive science through a representative sample of such questions, methods, and answers. It is not a special-topic course for students who seek detailed knowledge in a specific area of cognitive science. We will try not to lose sight of the forest for the trees but we will take a closer look at a few trees too because science is in the details. The first half of the course introduces the constituent disciplines and their respective contributions to the study of cognition. The second half introduces three select topics in greater depth: cognitive architectures, memory, and visual object recognition. Three unifying themes are emphasized throughout: 1. Information processing: The mind/brain is viewed as a complex system that receives, stores, retrieves, transforms, and transmits information. 2. Neurological grounding: Explicit effort is made to show how mental phenomena emerge from the interactions of networks of neurons in the brain. 3. Cognitive architecture: The emphasis is on functionally complete systems rather than disjoint empirical phenomena

Intended Audience. Prerequisites

This course is cross-listed in the Departments of Computer and Information Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology. It is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in these departments. Interested students from related areas are welcome too. The formal prerequisites for taking the course are: graduate standing in any of these departments or permission of the instructor or at least 12 undergraduate-level credit hours from at least two of the four disciplines. The informal prerequisites are: willingness to step outside the confines of one's area of specialization, willingness to read the professional literature (as opposed to textbooks) with help from the instructor and one's peers, willingness to participate in open discussions, and the ability to write clearly and concisely about topics outside one's area of specialization.

Teaching Method

As we will learn in the course, people remember much better when they study on a regular basis rather than cramming for a final exam. Also, people remember better when they actively process the material rather than just sit and listen. The course organization capitalizes on these important properties of memory. In addition to the lectures, it is arranged that you read something every week, discuss something every week, and write something every other week. A typical week might go as follows. You are advised to read the assigned textbook chapter and/or supplementary materials in preparation for the Tuesday class. This class is a two-hour lecture that introduces a particular discipline or topic. Among other things, the lecture provides background for understanding the target article for the week. These target articles are classic publications in the research literature that have stood the test of time and are recognized to have lasting value and importance in cognitive science. You are required to read each target article carefully and be prepared to discuss it in detail during the second hour of the Thursday class. (The first hour on Thursdays is in lecture format.) For some target articles, you will also be required to write a 500-word summary paper by Friday evening.

The course syllabus is available in pdf format.