PSYCHOLOGY 340

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
WINTER TERM 2007

INSTRUCTOR:        Terry Gottfried
OFFICE HOURS:    
MWF 10:00-11:00 a.m. or by appointment
OFFICE:       
Briggs Hall 311    PHONE: 832-6706
EMAIL:       
Terry.L.Gottfried@lawrence.edu
LECTURE TIME:   
MWF 8:30-9:40 a.m., Briggs Hall 224
LAB TIMES:       
T 9:00-10:50 a.m.,
T 12:30-2:20 p.m., or T 2:30-4:20 p.m., Briggs Hall 127 (Lab roster)


COURSE DESCRIPTION

 
    Cognitive psychology is both a content area and a particular approach to investigating psychological questions.  In cognitive psychology, we assume that mental structures and processes can explain human learning, perception, memory, language, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.  These are the main topics of investigation in cognitive psychology and will provide the topical focus of this course.

    However, the cognitive approach, which investigates the mental stages by which people process information and act in the world, has been applied to various other topics in psychology.  For example, social psychological theories about prejudice and group behavior are based on the study of attitudes and stereotypes, concepts that are fundamentally cognitive.  Certain "cognitive behavioral" therapies call attention to and attempt to alter a client’s inappropriate self-cognitions (e.g., globalizing, hopelessness).  Much of our current thinking about human cognitive functioning has had its origin in theories of cognitive development from infancy into adulthood.  In addition, cognitive neuroscience is a rapidly expanding sub-discipline of psychology, attempting to bridge what we have learned about human neurophysiology and information processing in order to develop models of brain function, including an understanding of regional and hemispheric specialization in the cortex.   Thus, the cognitive approach has had an impact on all the sub-disciplines of psychology—including social, clinical, developmental, personality, and physiological—and we will occasionally discuss the use of the cognitive approach to investigate topics in these areas.

    Cognitive psychology may also be seen as part of the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science.  (For this reason, PSYC 340 is one of the core courses in Lawrence University’s Interdisciplinary minor in Cognitive Science.)  Cognitive science takes its subject matter and methodologies from many disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and neurophysiology.  We will see how this interest in cognitive science has influenced the study of thought and action in psychology, and how findings from psychology have affected our theories of the mind.
 



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Revised: 02-Jan-07