Undergraduate Course: Informatics 1 - Cognitive Science (INFR08020)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Informatics |
College |
College of Science and Engineering |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 08 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Credits |
20 |
| Home subject area |
Informatics |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None |
|
|
| Course description |
This course is designed as a first introduction into cognitive science. It will provide a broad overview of the subject suitable for all interested students, including students on the Cognitive Science degrees and external students.
The aim of the course is to present a unified view of the field, based on a computational approach to analyzing cognition. The material is presented grouped by cognitive function, rather than by subdiscipline.
The course covers vision and attention, memory, motor control and action, reasoning and problem solving, and language. All topics will be presented from a computational point of view, and this perspective will be reinforced by a lab sessions in which students use implementations of cognitive models. The course will also provide a basic grounding in cognitive science methodology, focusing computational modeling, experimental design, and statistics. Both symbolic and subsymbolic modeling approaches will be covered. |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites |
|
| Prohibited Combinations |
|
Other requirements |
None
|
| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | 14:00 - 14:50 | | | | | Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | | | 14:00 - 14:50 | | | Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | | | | 15:00 - 15:50 |
| First Class |
Week 1, Tuesday, 14:00 - 14:50, Zone: Central. Lecture Theatre 2, Appleton Tower |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
After completing this course successfully, students will be able to:
- demonstrate knowledge of key areas of cognitive science, and be able to take an integrated, rather than disciplinary perspective on the field;
- evaluate the most important conceptual problems in cognitive science and discuss the solutions that have been proposed;
- analyze and modify simple computational models in a variety of modeling paradigms;
- demonstrate understanding of experimental design and statistics and apply it to simple problems in cognitive science. |
Assessment Information
Written Examination - 60%
Assessed Assignments - 40%
There will be three assessed assignments in this course, these will combine:
- practical exercises in which students are provided with implemented cognitive models they have to explore and modify them;
- essay questions in which students analyze empirical or conceptual problems in cognitive science.
The practical exercises will be supported by lab sessions in which students learn how to use implemented cognitive models. Where possible, the assignments will employ pre-existing modeling tools
(e.g., ACT-R, neural network simulators, probabilistic modeling tools).
The essay questions will be supported by tutorials in which students are able to clarify and discuss the materials covered in the lectures. |
| Please see Visiting Student Prospectus website for Visiting Student Assessment information |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Henry Thompson
Tel: (0131 6)50 4440
Email: h.thompson@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Ms Kirsten Belk
Tel: (0131 6)50 5194
Email: kbelk@staffmail.ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:09 am
|
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