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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences : Psychology

Postgraduate Course: Concepts and Categorisation (PSYL11005)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryThis 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 Not entered
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
An advanced understanding of research in concepts and categorisation.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Course URL Please use Learn
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiser Course secretaryMiss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk
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