Cognitive Science

The main components of the curriculum for a minor in Cognitive Science include: cognitive architectures, i.e., the structural and functional organization of biological and technical systems that are capable of cognitive activity, as well as the foundations of – and problems understanding – cognition as information processing; the representation and organization of general and domain-specific knowledge as well as learning processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge and inference processes involved in the use of knowledge; the processing of natural language as it pertains to information processing as well as perception and sensorimotor processes (control of action); applied cognitive science: human-computer interaction; computerized learning systems; the technology of knowledge-based systems: artificial intelligence programming (“expert systems”) and knowledge engineering; as well as concepts for applying and evaluating “intelligent” computer systems as a further related area. The goals of the course of study are the acquisition of methodological skills from the humanities and the empirical sciences to the extent that they are necessary for research in cognitive science and, in particular, mastery of the methods of cognitive modeling, including programming techniques of artificial intelligence (AI), the acquisition of a broad knowledge base in general cognitive science in combination with specialized knowledge in one of the subdisciplines named above, and the integration and practice of cognitive analysis and modeling of representations and processes in cognitive systems through project work.