Complex Cognition

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Human cognition can be viewed as a "fast track" along which we are constantly adapting to our changing environment, in addition to the "slow track" methods of genetic mutation and (operant) conditioning. This course supplements the first-year course Learning and Memory and offers an introduction into cognitive psychology. The course Complex Cognition focuses on higher cognitive processes such as reasoning, decision making and problem-solving. Students will learn about the information processing system that often underlies these processes. Finally, the focus of this course is the question of what role cultural differences play in research into cognition. The course starts with several questions about knowledge representation and language: How do we store the meaning of words? How do we recognise words? How do we categorise objects? We then focus on psychological research into human problem solving and reasoning and the underlying dual process. Decision making then becomes the dominant theme of this course. How rational is human decision making? What role does emotion play in the decision making process? If the human decision maker is often irrational, how can we improve his or her decisions? Can people learn to become better decision makers? How do we reach moral decisions and what role does our social and cultural environment play? That environment also plays an important role in negotiating and cooperative behaviour. A successful Indian negotiator, for example, acts differently than a negotiator in the Netherlands. Game-theoretic and social- neuroeconomic research also play a central part in studying cooperative behaviour. Theories on the role of complex cognitive processes in the development of applied psychological disciplines will also be touched upon. Attention will be paid to problems in educational psychology and work and organisational psychology. Throughout the course, students will focus on and map relations between theories.