PSY 6310 - Cognitive Processes

• Articulate basic neurobiological findings that link cognitive processes to brain function.
• Cite and describe three key findings on how affective states may influence learning, perception, or memory (and vice versa).
• Cite key results pertaining to the processing capacity limits inherent to some of the cognitive processes listed above.
• Describe and explain a well-established theory in each of the following domains: perception, attention, similarity assessment, categorization, and concept learning, memory, language, reasoning, problem solving, and judgment and decision making.
• Describe the various approaches to the study of the human mind and it’s limitations: from theoretical approaches via formal modeling to empirical approaches using reaction times and fMRI.
• Explain how at least one key cognitive model or empirical finding from each of the cognitive domains listed above may be applied to real world situations.
• Explain how specific failures in cognition for special populations can enhance the understanding of normal cognition.
• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the behavioral and cognitive approaches to the study of intelligence.
• List and explain in precise terms the factors that contributed to the emergence of the information processing revolution (e.g., the theory of computation and Turing machines, Shannon’s information theory, Chomsky’s universal grammar, perceptrons).