This course provides an introduction to the science of the mind.  Everyone knows what it's like to think and perceive, but this subjective experience provides little insight into how minds emerge from physical intities like brains.  To address this issue, cognitive science integrates work from at least five disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy.  This course introduces students to the insights these disciplines offer into the workings of the mind by exploring visual perception, attention, memory, learning, problem solving, language, and consciousness. 

Catalog Distribution: (KCM-AS)

Full details for COGST 1101 - Introduction to Cognitive Science

This section is highly recommended for students who are interested in learning about the topics covered in the main course through writing and discussion. 

Full details for COGST 1104 - WIM: Introduction to Cognitive Science

Environmental Psychology is an interdisciplinary field concerned with how the physical environment and human behavior interrelate. Most of the course focuses on how residential environments and urban and natural settings affect human health and well-being. Students also examine how human attitudes and behaviors affect environmental quality. Issues of environmental justice and culture are included throughout. Hands-on projects plus exams. Lecture and discussion sections. DEA 1501  - Writing in the major (WIM) option also is available (by instructor permission) for 4 credits.

Catalog Distribution: (SBA-AS)

Full details for COGST 1500 - Introduction to Environmental Psychology

Human-Environment Relations is an interdisciplinary field concerned with how the physical environment and human behavior interrelate. Most of the course focuses on how residential environments and urban and natural settings affect human health and well-being. Students also examine how human attitudes and behaviors affect environmental quality. Issues of environmental justice and culture are included throughout. Hands-on projects plus exams. Lecture and discussion sections. WIM section attend a regular lecture but also meets weekly with a graduate writing tutor. The two principal objectives of WIM section:

Catalog Distribution: (SBA-AS)

Full details for COGST 1501 - Introduction to Environmental Psychology - Writing in the Major

Provides an introduction to the psychology of language. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the scientific study of psycholinguistic phenomena. Covers a broad range of topics from psycholinguistics, including the origin of language, the different components of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), processes involved in reading, computational modeling of language processes, the acquisition of language (both under normal and special circumstances), and the brain bases of language.

Catalog Distribution: (KCM-AS)

Full details for COGST 2150 - Psychology of Language

This course states and motivates the observation that cognition is fundamentally a computational process and explores the implications of this idea. Students are introduced to a variety of conceptual tools for thinking about cognitive information processing, including statistical learning from experience and the use of patterns distilled from past experience in guiding future actions. They learn to apply these tools to gain understanding of perception, memory, motor control, language, action planning, problem solving, decision making, reasoning, intelligence, and creativity.

Catalog Distribution: (KCM-AS)

Full details for COGST 3140 - Computational Psychology

This course will focus on the complex interactions between neurochemicals and their receptors (pharmacodynamics) that drive human behavior. It will provide an overview of the principles of neurotransmission of chemicals as well as how alterations in their normal function can manifest in pathological behavior/mind processes.

Full details for COGST 3250 - Neurochemistry of Human Behavior

Focuses on networks of brain regions that are organized around the integration of processes related to emotion and motivation. The course first explores brain pathways for processing visual, auditory, body and face movements, and tactile stimuli that comprise the raw material used to judge the emotional significance of external events. Next, brain regions involved in the (1) emotional evaluation of that sensory input, and (2) emotional expression once a significant event is identified are described. Then, brain processes underlying the special nature of human emotional experience (subjective feelings) are explored. All of these basic emotional processes are extended by placing them within widespread brain networks that modulate emotional behavior. There is an emphasis on social contexts and the development of social emotions, including social bonding and social rejection. The manner in which emotional stress influences learning and memory, with implications for PTSD, concludes the course.

Full details for COGST 3660 - Affective and Social Neuroscience

Computational models of natural languages. Topics include tree syntax and treebank databases; broad-coverage probabilistic grammars; finite state generative phonology; computational semantics; computational minimalist grammar; finite state optimality-theoretic phonology; Hidden Markov models of acoustic realization; text and speech corpora; lab methods in Unix/Linux environment.

Catalog Distribution: (MQR-AS)

Full details for COGST 4240 - Computational Linguistics

A course examining the core disciplines of cognitive science using varied themes from semester to semester.

Full details for COGST 4310 - Topics in Cognitive Science

Discussion of current research in the area of cognitive development.

Full details for COGST 4340 - Current Topics in Cognitive Development

Imagination is a core feature of human cognition, and the study of human imagination possibly one of the broadest and least unified topics in psychological science. This course, drawing on readings from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, developmental psychology, and philosophy, is for anyone interested in understanding the psychology of imagination as it functions in everyday thought and action. Topics covered: counterfactual and future thinking, mind-wandering, creativity, children's imaginary friends, pretense, and fantasy, imagination in clinical populations, and imaginations in social life (relationships, organizations, social identity).

Full details for COGST 4470 - Psychology of Imagination

Experience in planning, conducting, and reporting independent laboratory, field, and/or library research in an interdisciplinary area relevant to Cognitive Science.

Full details for COGST 4700 - Undergraduate Research in Cognitive Science

Provides a research workshop in which undergraduate students who are engaged in research in a particular area relevant to cognitive science can meet across disciplines to learn and practice the essentials of research using interdisciplinary approaches. In this workshop, students critique and discuss the existing literature in a field of inquiry, individual students present their research designs, methods, and results from their independent research studies, debate the interpretation of their research results, and participate in the generation of new research hypotheses and designs, in a peer group of other undergraduate students involved in related research.

Full details for COGST 4710 - Cognitive Science Research Workshop

This course surveys the study of how the mind/brain works, drawing primarily from six disciplines: philosophy, psychology, developmental science, neuroscience, linguistics, and computer science.

Full details for COGST 6101 - Cognitive Science Proseminar

Imagination and Cognition: Imagination serves important functions in everyday thought and action. We will read some classic and some recent studies highlighting the cognitive and neural basis of imagination, how it relates to memory, planning, and decision making. Imagination in Childhood: Research on imagination in childhood is characterized by a paradox: children are generally viewed as imaginative and creative. They're also more likely than adults to engage with imaginary friends, pretend play, and elaborate "worlds" of fantasy. Yet children, unlike adults, are poor at episodic memory, future thinking, planning, and creative problem solving. Is this evidence for one use of imagination receding in favor of another? Applications to life: Here we can choose topics based on class interest. Some ideas (and readings) below on imagination in social life, in clinical research, in creativity, in self-understanding, and in the behavior and functioning of organizations.  

Full details for COGST 6470 - Psychology of Imagination