Memory and Cognition

Relative to other areas of psychology, cognitive psychology is a relatively young sub-discipline that emerged in the late 1950’s in response to various problems associated with the behaviorist paradigm. In the research which has followed, a primary goal has been to discover the basic underlying mechanisms mediating the processes of selective attention, perception, learning, remembering, forgetting, and both the representation and use of various types of knowledge systems. More recently, however, the trend has been to investigate various ways in which cognitive behavior manifests itself within everyday life. As illustrated in the syllabus below, this covers a broad range of topics that includes the memory for faces and geographical locations, eyewitness testimony, advertising, decision-making, the use of language, and modifying the environment to make it optimally compatible with cognitive resources. In addition, we will also consider some recent developments in the areas of autobiographical memory, meta-cognition, the biological bases of memory, mood and emotion, and cognitive diversity. The overall intent is to address cognitive behavior from a more ecological perspective and to not only consider some of the practical implications of this endeavor but the subsequent influence on certain theoretical constructs