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 | Priority will be given to Year 1 students, in particular those who need to take this course as a requirement of their degree programme. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, 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 |
This course will give an overview of the concepts and theories within cognitive science from different disciplines - students will learn how to explore concepts from different perspectives, and critically analyse them. They will also need to learn how to balance their workload and be resilient to get to grips with the content. The programming aspect in labs will teach students to become independent self-starters in programming, learning from their mistakes and how to create and analyse code. They will also start learning how to build experiments to collect data. During tutorials, students will learn to work as a group to understand the readings and dissect the writer's arguments. They will learn to discuss/debate respectfully and develop their public speaking skills to articulate their points. In the assessments, they have a strict word count to follow. They start developing clear written communication, how to convey their arguments succinctly, adapt their writing style to the audience, and how to bring clarity and structure to the essay.
Core skills gained on this course:
Critical thinking, critical analysis, considering alternative perspectives, formulating arguments, independence, taking initiative, learning from mistakes, taking on feedback and improving, problem solving, discussing/debating respectfully, clear written communication, having clarity and structure, adapting style to audience, resilience, workload management, programming/coding skills, data analysis, building experiments. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Zachary Horne
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Kayla Johnson-McCraw
Tel: (0131 6)50 3440
Email: |
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