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To plan your course schedule, please check the Searchable Schedule
of Classes at the registrar's
website and consult Professor Mark Turner, chair of the
department, who can be reached at
 .
COGS 101, 201, 102, and 202 are all entry-level and
can be taken in any order. It is commonly the case that undergraduate
cogsci majors take 101 & 201 simultaneously in the Fall
and 102 & 202 simultaneously in the Spring, but this is
not a required order.
For the 08-09 Academic year, 101 & 201 will be
taught in the Fall and 102 & 202 will be taught in the Spring.
Partial and provisional schedule for Fall 2008.
COGS 101 Introduction to Cognitive Science. Parrill.
COGS 201 Human Cognition in Evolution and Development. MW 12:30-1:45.
Turner & Tobin. Class
Number: 8483
COGS 206 (formerly 203) Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics.
TR 10-11:15am. Oakley.
COGS 301 Special Topics: Cognitive
Robotics. Brandt. F 4-6:30.
COGS 326/426 Cognitive Approaches to Music. Brandt. TR 4:30-5:45
COGS 352/452 Language, Cognition, and Religion. Deal. W 4:00PM
- 6:30PM
COGS 397 Capstone. Staff. Consult with Mark Turner, chair of
the department.
COGS 399 Independent study. Staff.
Partial and provisional schedule for Spring 2009.
COGS 102, Introduction to Cognitive Science, II (Cognitive Neuroscience).
COGS 202, Human Cognition from a Cultural Perspective.
COGS 302 SAGES Departmental Seminar. Brandt.
COGS 397 Capstone. Staff. Consult with Mark Turner, chair of
the department.
COGS 399 Independent study. Staff.
General Descriptions of Courses
Note: COGS 101, 201, 102, and
202 are all entry-level and can be taken in any order. It is
commonly the case that students take 101 & 201 simultaneously
in the Fall and 102 & 202 simultaneously in the Spring,
but this is not a required order.
COGS 101 Introduction to Cognitive Science I, 3 credits
A survey of major theories and facts about human cognition (including computational and engineering theories), along with an introduction to the kinds of methodologies available to modern cognitive science.
COGS 102 Introduction to Cognitive Science II, 3 credits
A survey of the fundamental methods, findings, and theories
that attempt to understand the human mind from a neuroscientific
standpoint. It provides the student with background knowledge
of brain processes underlying such psychological phenomena as
consciousness, sensation, perception, thought, language, and
voluntary action. The approach of this course is cross-disciplinary,
including theories and data from clinical and experimental neuropsychology,
brain imaging, neuro-electric and neuro-magnetic brain activity,
neuro-linguistics, and behavioral neuroscience, among others.
("Cognitive Neuroscience . . .will increasingly come to
represent the central focus of all Neurosciences in the 21st
century." —Eric R. Kandel, M.D., Nobel Laureate.)
COGS 201 Human Cognition in Evolution and Development, 3 credits
The unfolding of cognitive structures and functions over time, in both the deep temporal perspective of evolution (measured across many lifetimes) and the shorter one of development (measured within single lifetimes). The approach of the course is cross-disciplinary, including approaches that come from anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, computing science, comparative psychology, primatology, and comparative linguistics, among others. For students familiar with basic research and theory in cognitive science. COGS 202 Human Cognition from a Cultural Perspective,
3 credits
A survey of the fundamental methods, findings, and theories
that attempt to understand the growth and evolution of cognition
from a social science or humanistic standpoint. The course covers
theories of human cultural evolution and change, of the relationship
between the cognizing individual and larger social-cognitive
structures, and of such phenomena as distributed networks, cooperative
mental work, and the phenomenology of human experience.
COGS 204 Cognition and Computation, 3 credits.
This course discusses contemporary uses of computational technology
in the study of cognition. Since the human or animal mind-supporting
brain is not in any technical sense "just" a computer,
it is instead relevant to simulate various cognitive phenomena
by computation in order to model their formal properties. From
perception to linguistic semantics and syntax, and from bodily
motion to the processes of abstraction, computation can help
us understand mental architecture, the interrelations between
iconicity and symbolization in mental representations, and the
constraints and indeterminacies at work in social cognitive
networks (distributed cognition). It also is relevant to analyze
the cognitive roles of actual computation as a social and communicational
technology, mirroring certain of our mental routines on the
screens we interact with and we program to manifest symbolic
and iconic behaviors in ever-changing patterns of "interface"
communication, while the underlying systems control our social
and technical environment.
COGS 206 (formerly 203) Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics,
3 credits
This course is both an exposure to the technical field of cognitive
linguistics—suitable in itself as part of a liberal education—and
a gateway to advanced study of cognitive linguistics, leading
to special topics and capstone experiences inside the cognitive
science major. This course focuses on the methods that have
been developed in cognitive linguistics in the last ten to twenty
years for the study of grammar, semantics, and their relations
to cognition. Click here
for details.
COGS 301 Special Topics in Cognitive Science, 3 credits
This course offers instructors the opportunity to examine a
more specialized topic. Topics vary from year to year.
Topic for Fall 2008: Cognitive
Robotics.
Topic for Spring 2008: Cognition
and Design.
Topic for Fall 2007: Cognitive Semiotics.
Topic for Spring 2007: The
Artful Mind.
COGS 302 SAGES Departmental Seminar: Methods and New
Theories in Cognitive Science, 3 credits
A SAGES departmental seminar open to advanced undergraduate
students. At this point, you have taken the required core courses
for the cognitive science major. Your brain has been
crammed with information. Now it is time to reflect on that
information. This course takes look at the discipline<
of cognitive science by exploring the methods cognitive scientists
use in their research. We will discuss how
different methods reflect different approaches and traditions
of thought and how they provide different
answers to particular questions. We will also spend much of
the class talking about the process of translating
research into writing. We will discuss the mechanics of scientific
writing, but we will also talk about how different
kinds of writing reflect the many different methods used in
cognitive science.
COGS 303 SAGES Departmental Seminar: Current Controversies
in Cognitive Science, 3 credits
A SAGES departmental seminar open to advanced undergraduate
students. This course takes a look at the discipline of cognitive
science by exploring the current controversies that impact cognitive
scientists in their research. We will discuss how different
controversies effect different approaches and traditions of
thought and how they elicit different answers to particular
questions. We will also discuss the process of translating research
into writing and talk about how different kinds of writing reflect
the many different controversial issues presented in cognitive
science.
COGS 304 Conceptual Integration, 3 credits
Conceptual Integration, otherwise known as "blending," is a
defining feature of higher-order human cognition, indispensable
for all behaviors typically taken as distinctive to human beings.
This course presents the cognitive mechanisms of conceptual
integration, the constraints on its operation, and its deployment
and expression in a range of human behaviors such as learning,
invention, mathematical and scientific discovery, language,
art, music, gesture, social understanding, institutional performance,
reasoning, decision, judgment, choice, design, and engineering.
A student in the class will work on an individual research project
in any of a variety of fields, including engineering (e.g.,
designing with blends), computer science, the arts, the humanities,
the social sciences, cognitive neuroscience, and linguistics.
Click here
for details.
COGS 313/413 Special Topics in Cognitive Linguistics,
3 credits
This course offers instructors the opportunity to examine a
more specialized topic. Topics will vary from year to year.
COGS 315 Mental Space Theory, 3 credits.
Mental Space Theory is a foundation field of cognitive science.
It provides a framework for analyzing the dynamic construction
of meaning during thought and action. As such, it is used in
the analyses of a very wide range of human higher-order cognitive
performances, ranging from inferencing and decision to persuasion
and communication to discovery and design. (Website for the
course Mental Spaces
.)
COGS 325 Cognitive Approaches to Literature, 3 credits.
Satisfies the GER requirement for Arts & Humanities:
Literature and Language.
COGS 326/426 Cognitive Approaches to Music, 3 credits.
This course will study the ways in which the presence
of music relates to cognition and the semiotics of inter-subjective
communication at large--the emergence of language, gesture,
and symbolization of time. Topics of interests include: the
ways that specific works of musical art invite semantic interpretation;
how intelligible musical structure relates to meaning; how musical
activities correspond to brain activity; and how music relates
to and/or induces emotion. Prerequisites: COGS 101, COGS 202,
or permission of the instructor.
COGS 327/427 Gesture in Communication and Cognition,
3 credits
Surveys scientific research on gesture, exploring topics such
as the role of gesture in communication, cross-cultural differences
in gesture, and the relationship between gesture and signed
languages. The course will focus on gestures produced with speech,
but will cover symbolic and ritualized gesture in the visual
arts and in dance. More information (and current syllabus) available
here.
COGS 328 Cognition and Visual Aesthetic Experience,
3 credits. Human cognition and perception achieve their
most sophisticated levels in the cognition and perception of
art works. Understanding the art-creating and art-perceiving
mind is a key to understanding the human mind. This course is
offered as a reciprocal exchange between new research on the
mind/brain and existing theories of visual aesthetics. The material
covered links a traditional approach to philosophical aesthetics
with a most up-to-date research on visual perception and brain
functioning. Throughout the course a variety of examples from
the history of art, exemplifying diverse traditions, artists
and periods will be used to supplement the theories discussed.
COGS 329 Cognitive Approaches to Theater and Dance,
3 credits. In the past twenty years cognitive scientists
working in neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, philosophy,
and related fields have made great progress in understanding
perception, empathy, the human mind’s sense of space and
movement, emotions, meaning-making, and many other cognitive
areas that are crucial to producing, enacting, and responding
to performances on stage. This course will look at ways of incorporating
many of the insights of cognitive science into the existing
work of theatre and performance scholarship. The course will
thus link a more traditional approach to the body in theatre
and dance studies, where it has commonly been considered one
of the main means of communication, to a most up-to-date research
on embodied cognition. Observation of live and pre-recorded
dance and theatre performances will regularly be used to supplement
the theoretical discussion.
COGS 352/452. Language, Cognition, and Religion.
This course utilizes theoretical approaches found in cognitive
semantics—a branch of cognitive linguistics—to study
the conceptual structures and meanings of religious language.
Cognitive semantics, guided by the notion that conceptual structures
are embodied, examines the relationship between conceptual systems
and the construction of meaning. We consider such ideas as conceptual
metaphor theory, conceptual blending, image schemas, cross-domain
mappings, metonymy, mental spaces, and idealized cognitive models.
We apply these ideas to selected Christian, Buddhist, and Chinese
religious texts in order to understand ways in which religious
language categorizes and conceptualizes the world. We examine
both the universality of cognitive linguistic processes and
the culturally specific metaphors, conceptual blends, image
schemas, and other cognitive operations that particular texts
and traditions utilize.
COGS 363 Philosophy and Social Neuroscience
A philosophical examination of recent research in human cognition and emotion at the intersection of the social sciences and neurological sciences. The course provides the student with background knowledge of brain processes underlying such social and cultural phenomena as bonding, aggression, imitation, mind-attribution, language, sexual behavior, moral action, and creativity. The approach of this course is at once scientific (comparing methods, findings and questions as they arise in clinical and experimental neuropsychology, brain imaging, neuro-linguistics, and behavioral neuroscience) and humanistic, asking critical questions about the nature and methods of a science of cognition, and surveying moral responses from a neurologic and philosophic perspective.
COGS 365 Advanced Topics in Cognitive Neuroscience,
3 credits.
COGS 366 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 3 credits.
COGS 378 Computational Neuroscience, 3 credits. Computer
simulations and mathematical analysis of neurons and neural
circuits, and the computational properties of nervous systems.
Students are taught a range of models for neurons and neural
circuits, and are asked to implement and explore the computational
and dynamic properties of these models. The course introduces
students to dynamical systems theory for the analysis of neurons
and neural circuits, as well as a cable theory, passive and
active compartmental modeling, numerical integration methods,
models of plasticity and learning, models of brain systems,
and their relationship to artificial and neural networks. Term
project required. Prerequisites: MATH 223 & MATH 224 or
BIOL 300 & BIOL 306, or consent of instructor.
COGS 397 Capstone Research in Cognitive Science, 3
credits
The Capstone in Cognitive Science involves guided laboratory,
empirical, theoretical, or library research, or service work
with a research aspect, under the direction of a Cognitive Science
faculty member who serves as Sponsor. The capstone work may
be carried out within the Department of Cognitive Science or
within an affiliated department or across departments and units.
The capstone may be taken only one semester during the student's
academic career. A permit is required to take the course. The
student's Cognitive Science Sponsor must approve a written report
and submit it to the chair of the Department before credit can
be granted. A public presentation is also required. Contact
the chair of the department for further information.
COGS 399/499 Independent Study, 1-3 credits
Students propose special projects.
Departmental approval of both topic and method of evaluation is required.
COGS 406 Theory of Cognitive Linguistics I, 3 credits
The first course in a two-course sequence designed to provide
an introduction to cognitive linguistics at the M.A. level.
It supports student work in COGS 407 and 408, the Workshop courses.
This course begins with a discussion of major theoretical questions
in linguistics. We first ask how these questions have been approached
within theoretical frameworks which view language and general
cognition as being separate from one another. The course then
focuses on the methods that have been developed in cognitive
linguistics in the last ten to twenty years for the study of
phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We ask how approaches
that relate language to general cognitive processes (perception,
memory, categorization, etc.) can lead to a deeper understanding
both of language and of the human mind.
COGS 407 Theory of Cognitive Linguistics II, 3 credits
This course covers contemporary theory in cognitive linguistics
in greater detail and supports student work in COGS 408 and
409, the Workshop courses.
COGS 408 Workshop in Cognitive Linguistics I, 3 credits
This is the first course in a two-course sequence designed to
provide experience in research methods in cognitive linguistics
at the M.A. level.
In this workshop, students read examples of cognitive linguistics
research, develop their own topics (theoretical or empirical),
and work on them to produce a final paper.
COGS 409 Workshop in Cognitive Linguistics II, 3 credits
The second course in a two-course sequence designed to provide
experience in research methods in cognitive linguistics at the
M.A. level.
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