Undergraduate Course: Introduction to Cognitive Science (PPLS08002)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces students to Cognitive Science, a field at the intersection of several disciplines including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, human-computer interaction, and neuroscience. |
| Course description |
This course introduces students to the study of Cognitive Science as the intersection of an array of interrelated disciplines including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, human-computer interaction, and neuroscience.
Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary effort to uncover the relationships between brains, minds, computation, and behaviour. The course combines a high-level perspective on key questions that the field of Cognitive Science aims to address along with a nuts-and-bolts training in computational skills that will serve as a necessary foundation for future courses in PPLS and Informatics.
Classes and assignments will cover topics in areas such as language, learning, perception, action, and thought. Students will receive hands-on training in the transferable skills of computer programming.
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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 |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 22,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
152 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Essay worth 30%
Programming assignment worth 28%
Research participation 2% (see below)
Final assignment: 40%
2 hours of research participation are also required, either via 2 hours of experiment participation or attendance at (and 300 word writeup of) 1 research meeting (e.g. Psychology talk series, Linguistic Circle talk, Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation etc.). Each hour of experiment participation is worth 1%; attendance at a research meeting plus writeup is worth 2%. The deadline for submitting a research group write up will be no later than Monday of Revision week, so as not to interfere with exam preparation for other courses
Essays will help students understand primary questions in Cognitive Science. They will also provide an opportunity for writing practice and feedback. Programming assignments will be practical coding tasks to help students become familiar with the syntax of the programming language and the process of writing code, testing, and debugging. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the themes and questions encompassed by Cognitive Science across a variety of disciplines
- Evaluate recent findings in Cognitive Science to identify how they inform long-standing debates in the field
- Discuss and appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of Cognitive Science
- Implement concrete tasks in a computer programming language to acquire the transferable skill of writing, testing, and amending computer code
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The research participation component is intended to give students more direct exposure to research methodologies as one of the avenues for understanding human cognition. Experiment participation will provide hands-on experience and an opportunity to discuss the methodology with the researcher during the experiment debriefing. The alternative research-meeting attendance will show students how specific methods are applied to particular research questions in Cognitive Science. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Alistair Isaac
Tel: (0131 6)51 5174
Email: A.M.C.Isaac@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Susan Hermiston
Tel: (0131 6)50 3440
Email: Susan.Hermiston@ed.ac.uk |
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