This course is designed as
a survey of theories and research in human cognition—a subfield of psychology
that includes the study of how we learn and recognize the world. For the
moment, consider cognition to be the mental events and knowledge we use when we
recognize an object, remember a name, have an idea, understand a sentence, or
solve a problem. In this course, we consider a broad range of subjects, from
basic perception through complex decision making, from seemingly simple mental
acts such as recognizing a letter of the alphabet to very complicated acts such
as having a conversation. We ask questions such as “How do we read for
meaning?” “How do we memorize facts?” “What does it mean to forget something?”
“How do we know that we don’t know something?” The unifying theme behind all
this is one of the most fascinating and important questions of all time: How do
people think?
- Teacher: mspape, Spape Michiel