Course Description
Contemporary theories of human information processing. Major topics include attention, mental representations, short-term and long-term memory, psycholinguistics, reasoning, problem-solving, judgment, and decision making.
Athena Title
Cognitive Psychology
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in PSYC 2530, PSYC 4100
Non-Traditional Format
This course will be taught 95% or more online.
Pre or Corequisite
PSYC 3990 or PSYC 3990E or permission of major
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every year. Offered summer semester every even-numbered year. Offered summer semester every odd-numbered year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about the historical antecedents of cognitive psychology, including behaviorism, neobehaviorism, verbal learning, linguistics, human engineering, communication engineering, information theory, and computer science, and be able to specify which elements were contributed by each to current cognitive psychology.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about the role of attention in cognitive processes, including models of selective attention, and filter and capacity models of limited capacity attentional systems.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about models of sensory memory, short term memory, working memory, and long-term memory and to relate the models to the output of attentional processes.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about modern models for the internal representation of knowledge, including feature comparison models, hierarchical networks, spreading activation models, and schema-based models, and be able to relate them to attentional and memory processes.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about the modern models for processing semantic and syntactic information and be able to explain computer programs for speech and text comprehension.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about the history of analyses of problem solving, including gestalt, behaviorist, neobehaviorist, and information processing and analyses.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned the structure of problem-solving computer models for general problem solving, game playing programs for chess and checkers and programs for solving arithmetic, algebra and geometry problems.
- By the end of the course, students should have learned about modern models of Reasoning, Judgment, and Decision making.
Topical Outline
- 1. Origins of Cognitive Psychology
2. Attention
3. Object Recognition
4. Neural Models
5. Schemata
6. Representations: Visuospatial and Imagery
7. Representations: Categories
8. Memory: Basics of Short Term Memory and Long Term Memory
9. Memory: Encoding
10. Memory: Retrieval
11. Memory: Picture Memory, Distortions, Mnemonics
12. Cognitive and Motor Skill Acquisition
13. Psycholinguistics
14. Problem Solving
15. Reasoning
16. Judgment and Decision Making
