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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course covers theory of mental spaces and methodology of mental space analysis, with special emphasis on the use of mental space theory to analyze human performance in various areas of cognition, including reasoning, judgment, decision, counterfactual thought, inference, planning, communication and language, gesture, social cognition, cognitive design and engineering, representation, learning, humor, symbol systems, and invention. It includes a consideration of experimental methods that have arisen under the influence of mental space theory. A student may earn credit for either COGS 315 or COGS 415, but not both. Offered as COGS 315 and COGS 415.
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3.00 Credits
This course is a topical introduction to decision-making, a major area of cognitive social science, with connections to economics, law, political science, business, policy, and related fields. Topics include game theory and rational calculation, equilibria, kinds of choice, heuristics, the role of affect in decision, framing, bounded rationality, mechanisms of choice such as heuristics, the role of social cognition in choice, concepts of self and other, and computer modeling of choice. The course also includes an introduction to the design of empirical behavioral research. Offered as COGS 316 and COGS 416.
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3.00 Credits
The ancients were much concerned with the nature and validity of signs: Important decisions depended on the flight of birds or the coloration of the liver of a sacrificial victim. The relationship of language to truth, i.e., a reality beyond the contingent, was a crucial issue, not least because of the rise of sophistic rhetoric: for an orator, language was a tool in a contest rather than a means to true understanding. The discipline of medicine, developed by such important figures as Galen and Hippocrates, depended on the interpretation of physical signs to diagnose and treat ailments of mind and body. The term for the theory of signs - semiotics - is derived from the Greek term "semeiotike", and for many Greek philosophers and their Roman and medieval successors the sign was a key issue. For Christians especially, new forms of vision and discerning truth presented particular problems: after all, the Christian God revealed his intentions through "portents" that had to be read and interpreted. And even if sacred scripture was in some way understood as encapsulating the whole word, there were countless passages requiring clarification or adaptation to contemporary situations. In other words, the concern was with the relationship between a universe of structured signs (the subject of semiotics) and structures of interpersonal communication (pragmatics). Offered as CLSC 313 and COGS 318. Prereq: WLIT 211 or WLIT 212.
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3.00 Credits
This course focuses on the question, "How does the human brain learn?" Through assigned readings, extensive class discussions, and a major paper, each student will explore personal perspectives on learning. Specific topics include, but are not limited to: the brain's cycle of learning; neocortex structure and function; emotion and limbic brain; synapse dynamics and changes in learning; images in cognition; symbolic brain (language, mathematics, music); memory formation; and creative thought and brain mechanisms. The major paper will be added to each student's SAGES writing portfolio. In addition, near the end of the semester, each student will make an oral presentation on a chosen topic. Offered as: BIOL 302 and COGS 322.
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3.00 Credits
This course explores discourse and interaction from a cognitive linguistic perspective, with special emphasis on mental space, conceptual integration, and cognitive grammar. Cognitive linguistics is a paradigm of language study that seeks to understand language structure, acquisition, and use as a function of embodied conceptualization. This means that it seeks to describe and explain language as a symbolic activity involving general cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, memory, categorization, framing and sensory-motor activities. Another burgeoning area of interest among cognitive linguists is social-cognition, gesture, and interaction. In each of these endeavors, the goal is to explain as much about language without having to posit autonomous and language-specific faculties. While cognitive linguists have always been seen discourse as a legitimate object of study, many still take the sentence, clause, and phrase as their primary unit of analysis. In this course, we shall focus on the relationship between discourse and relevant cognitive processes such as attention, memory, categorization, framing, and kinesthetic experience, with the intention of exploring who these cognitive processes shape discourse in English and other languages. We will subsequently reverse our orientation and explore how discourse (in text as well as embodied/face-to-face) in turn shapes how we pay attention, remember, categorize, frame, and even experience the world. The readings, discussion, and/or research projects for this course may include the following topics: interactional conduct, intersubjectivity, consciousness, co-speech gesture, mental spaces, prosody, time and temporality, and working memory. The international structure of this course will likely lead to focused discussion and research projects on English as a Second & Foreign Language. Offered as COGS 324 and COGS 424.
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3.00 Credits
This course approaches literature as a window into language, in which cognition is characterized by the same imaging and imaginary properties as artistic literature. It is an attempt to identify and analyze procedures as aesthetically interesting and generally relevant forms of human thinking, feeling, imagining, fantasizing, and conceptualizing. The course introduces current theories of literature in relation to language and mind, and it presents and discusses practical applications in critical reading and text analysis, using examples from modern literature in the main genres. A student may earn credit for either COGS 325 or COGS 425 but not both. Recommended preparation: COGS 101, COGS 202. Offered as COGS 325 and COGS 425.
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3.00 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. Recommended preparation: COGS 101, COGS 202. Offered as COGS 326 and COGS 426.
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3.00 Credits
Most people never notice that when they are talking, they're also gesturing. Why do we produce these gestures? What can studying them tell us about the human mind? This course 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. Offered as COGS 327 and COGS 427 and MLIT 327.
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3.00 Credits
This course is offered as a reciprocal exchange between new research on the mind/brain and existing theories of visual aesthetics. It would appeal to students from diverse majors, ranging from art, language or philosophy, to psychology, computer science or pre-medicine. The material covered links a traditional approach to philosophical aesthetics with a most up-to-date research on visual perception and brain functioning. Recommended preparation: COGS 101, COGS 202.
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3.00 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. Recommended preparation: COGS 101, COGS 202.
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