Have you heard name Cognitive Science. Cognitive Science
is the contemporary interdisciplinary study of cognition. Six disciplines
compose cognitive science:
Many people (including at UCSD, home to the first
Cognitive Science standalone department) have no idea what cognitive science
is, and even if they have some idea, they usually think it is no different from
psychology. I am going to elucidate the differences and describe the other
components of cognitive science.
Psychology:
Cognitive science is the study of cognition, and humans cognize as part of
their behavior. The study of human behavior is psychology, so naturally the
study of cognition falls within the realm of psychology. In particular, the
overlap between psychology and cognitive science is called, unsurprisingly,
cognitive psychology and includes the subfields of perception, memory,
language, emotion, judgment and decision making, reasoning, and attention,
among others. There is some overlap between these areas and others listed
below. Most cognitive science that you read about falls within this realm. (Of
note is that at UCSD there are more cognitive psychologists in the Psychology
department than in the Cognitive Science department.) Psychology that does not
overlap with cognitive science includes developmental psychology (besides the
development of cognition), clinical psychology (except cognitive
neuropsychology), and social psychology (exception social cognition). Clearly
the relationship between psychology and cognitive science is a tight one.
Computer
Science: Computer science is important for cognitive science in
several ways, but the most important is in Artificial Intelligence, which is
the study of how human cognitive can be modelled, simulated, or realized by
computers. Computer vision, speech recognition software, and ergonomic user
interfaces are all application of computer science with respect to cognitive
science. Other areas of cognitive science that have computer science and
engineering elements are human-computer interaction, brain-computer interface,
and prosthetic development.
Neuroscience:
Cognitive science is the study of cognition; brains cognize, and neuroscience
is the study of the brain. It is natural that cognitive neuroscience is another
of the primary fields that comprise cognitive science. Cognitive neuroscience
is the study of how brain structure informs brain function with respect to
cognition. Any time you see a brain scan while someone is performing a task,
you are witnessing cognitive neuroscience in action. The purpose of cognitive
neuroscience is to answer how the brain is able to do what it does; that is,
what are the specific functional properties of the brain that give rise to
perception, memory, language, emotion, attention, and consciousness? Right now,
most cognitive neuroscience focuses on the level of brain areas or single cells
because the technology available to neuroscientists has a limited scope. This
is the most promising and explanatorily powerful field of cognitive science.
(It’s the one I want to do most of my research in!) It overlaps with psychology
in the field of behavioral neuroscience, and in the field of cognitive
neuropsychology, which is the study of how brain injuries cause specific
cognitive effects.
Anthropology:
Anthropology is the least represented of the cognitive sciences, but its
relationship to cognitive science is quite important. Anthropology is the study
of humans, and, since human cognize, cognitive anthropology is a useful
approach to studying both cognition and anthropology. In particular, cultural
anthropology examines how culture affects cognition, and how cognition can be
distributed among members of a group. Less rigorous and explanatorily weaker
than the other scientific branches of cognitive science, some see anthropology
as not a true branch.
Linguistics: In
some departments, linguistics, the study of language, represents the majority
of the cognitive sciences. This is true of some departments on the East Coast,
including that of Johns Hopkins University. Cognitive linguistics is a research
program in linguistics that sees language as an essential and ineliminable
aspect of cognition not separate from other aspects. That is, language affects
everything. Unlike some other branches of linguistics, cognitive linguistics
takes the position that language knowledge comes from language use; that is, we
are not born with linguistic knowledge. Other areas related to language and
cognition include psycholinguistics, the study of the psychological factors
affecting language, and neurolinguistics of the study of how language is
instantiated in the brain.
Philosophy: The
beauty and excitement of cognitive science comes in part from its
interdisciplinary nature; not all of the cognitive sciences are actually
sciences, and philosophy represents the analytical and theoretic nature of
cognitive science that separates it from a simple amalgam of the aforementioned
sciences. In particular, philosophy of mind, which is the branch of philosophy
dealing with the relationship between the mind and the brain, plays a huge role
in understanding evidence garnered by the sciences and guiding research toward
a meaningful end. Other areas of interest to cognitive science include
philosophy of the cognitive sciences, which examines theoretical questions that
come up in the cognitive sciences (such as “What is a concept?”, “How does data
play a role in the debate between innate grammar and empiricist learning?”, and
“What does it mean for a brain state to represent something?”), and philosophy
of science, which address questions of methodology, truth, and evidence in the
sciences.
And there you have it. If your major isn’t cognitive
science or one of the cognitive sciences, I hope you’ve thought long and hard
about why this isn’t the most interesting thing you could study. If you’re
thinking about studying the cognitive sciences or just want to talk about how
awesome this field is, please let me know!
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