Introduction to Cognitive Science
UG Y1/2
Course description
This course introduces students to cognitive science, a field at the intersection of several disciplines including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, computer science, human-computer interaction, and neuroscience. The course has two broad aims:
- To provide a high-level perspective on a set of key questions that the field of cognitive science aims to address.
- To provide hands-on training in computational skills that will serve as a necessary foundation for future related courses in PPLS and Informatics.
Students who have participated fully in the course will:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the themes and questions encompassed by cognitive science across a variety of disciplines
- Evaluate recent findings in cognitive science to identify how they inform long- standing debates in the field
- Be able to discuss and appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science
- Implement concrete tasks in a computer programming language to acquire the transferable skill of writing, testing, and amending computer code
Organisation
Students attend 2 hours of lecture per week, 2 hours of programming lab per week, as well as 1 hour of tutorial.
Course content
This course is divided into three themed blocks:
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Nativism & Empiricism: Basic questions about the degree to which certain cognitive capacities are “native”, or hard-wired, in the human brain from birth or can be learned via empirical evidence during development.
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Representation: Principles regarding the types of hypothesized structures and symbols that could be used to represent external reality in the human brain or in a computational model.
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Situated Cognition: Fundamental approaches to cognition that incorporate the physical constraints and affordances of the body.