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Courses » Introduction to Basic Cognitive Processes

Introduction to Basic Cognitive Processes

About the course

Introduction to Basic Cognitive Processes is an introductory course in Cognitive Psychology. As opposed to the behaviorist tradition in psychology that concerns itself with only the observable behaviours of the individual, Cognitive Psychology focuses on the internal mental processes. The approach adopted in this course will look at human behaviour at large as made up of many component mental processes such as sensation, perception, attention, memory, language, imagery, decision making, problem solving, emotion and others.

In the current course, I will first introduce the students to the field of cognitive psychology. I will then move on to talking about the historical developments in Cognitive Psychology. I will spend some time elaborating the fundamental assumptions in cognitive psychology. Also, I will talk about sister disciplines like Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuropsychology and how they help us to understand the mental processes in question. I will then spend some more time talking about methods used in Cognitive Psychology before moving on to talk about the basic mental processes such as sensation, perception, attention and memory. Other cognitive functions like language, imagery, decision making etc. will be taken up in the next part of the course named Introduction to Advanced Cognitive Processes.

Intended Audience
The course will be beneficial to both UG and PG students interested in Psychology. Also, Masters & PhD students studying Cognitive Psychology and/or with any of the basic mental processes as mentioned above. Professionals working with human factors, user – interface designs etc. will also find the insights from the course as useful.

Prerequisites
None

Industries that will recognize this course
All industries engaging with human resources, user – interface design & consumer oriented goods may benefit from this course.

1001 students have enrolled already!!

Course instructor



Dr. Ark Verma received his B.A. (Psychology, English Literature) from the University of Allahabad in 2007. Later, he completed a Master’s Degree in Cognitive Science at the Centre of Behavioral & Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad in 2009. He joined the PhD program in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium in January 2010 & was awarded PhD in 2014. He joined IIT Kanpur as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in May 2015. His research lies in the field of Cognitive Psychology (Lateralisation, Symmetry Detection, Attention) & Psycholinguistics (Visual Word Recognition & Bilingualism).

Course layout


Week 1: 

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology, History and Foundations of Cognitive Psychology.


Week 2: 

Approaches towards studying Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.


Week 3: 

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology. Sensation. Psychophysics and Signal Detection Theory.


Week 4: 

Physiology of Visual Perception, Representation in Perception and Approaches to Perception.

Week 5: 

Theories of Object Recognition, Perception and Action, Attention.


Week 6: 

Attention, Concept of Memory, Sensory Memory, Short Term Memory.


Week 7: 

Long Term Memory, Errors in Memory, Improving Memory.


Week 8: 

Memory and other topics.



Suggested Reading
  • Goldstein, B. E. (2010). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. 3rd Ed. Cengage Learning Inc.
  • Quinlan, P. and Dyson B. (2008). Cognitive Psychology. 1st Ed.Pearson Education Ltd.
  • Braisby, N. and Gellatly, A. (2005). Cognitive Psychology. 1st Ed. Oxford University Press.
  • Groome, D. (2014). An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders. 3rd Ed. Psychology Press.

CERTIFICATION EXAM :
  • The exam is optional for a fee.
  • Date of Exam: April 27th 2019 (Saturday).
  • Time of Exam: Morning session 9am to 2 noon; Afternoon session: 2pm to 5pm
  • Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
  • The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published.
CERTIFICATION:

  • Final score will be calculated as : 25% assignment score + 75% final exam score
  • 25% assignment score is calculated as 25% of average of  Best 6 out of 8 assignments
  • E-Certificate will be given to those who register and write the exam and score greater than or equal to 40% final score. Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Kanpur. It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.