Postgraduate Course: Concepts and Categorisation (PSYL11005)
Course Outline
School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
Summary | This course aims to provide a high level of understanding about how humans, as language machines, categorise their experiences from the world around them. The course will cover questions such as how similar objects are categorised as the same or different concepts (e.g., are penguins and canaries more different than they are similar?) and whether similar types of objects (e.g., all fish) might be tagged with linguistically similar names. We'll also ask how categories are encoded at basic levels in the brain using evidence from anomic patients (who might be unable to name fruit, for example, but not animals). Finally, we'll consider how the brain creates abstract linguistic representations for concrete sensory experiences. We'll look at how categories pertaining to the senses are likely retrieved by re-activation of those same sensory regions in the brain (e.g., does merely thinking of food-names activates regions involved in taste perception?). We'll also consider cases of synaesthesia, where this sensory-conceptual categorisation gives rise to overt sensory perception during reading (e.g., tasting food in the mouth when reading food-names).
Formative feedback;
- students are given immediate verbal feedback after the class where they give their in-class presentation |
Course description |
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
An advanced understanding of research in concepts and categorisation.
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Additional Information
Course URL |
Please use Learn |
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
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Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | |
Course secretary | Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
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