What is Cognitive Science? Overview Historical Breakthroughs Major Disciplines Within Cognitive Science Current Research Trends Careers in Cognitive Science Other Resources Overview Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and the nature of intelligence. Cognitive scientists come from a wide range of backgrounds including anthropology, biology, computer science, education, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, neuroscience, and others. Scholars in this field share common goals of better understanding cognition. Furthermore, cognitive science explores the nature of the mind and intelligence systems. At the core of cognitive science is the pursuit of formal theories of mind and information. The field is inherently interdisciplinary, and individuals who work in this field combine information and expertise from a variety of disciplines like those mentioned above. Both natural intelligence in humans and artificial intelligence in computers are central themes explored by students and scholars in the field. Cognitive science involves aspects of complex cognition, computational models of thought processes, knowledge representation, and the emergent behavior of large-scale interacting systems. At the most basic level, Cognitive science seeks a better understanding of the mind, the process and tools of teaching and learning, of mental abilities, and of the development of intelligent devices that can augment human capabilities in constructive ways. -Courtesy of the I.U. Cognitive Science Program Back to Top Historical Breakthroughs Attempts to understand the mind and its operation go back at least to the Ancient Greeks, when philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle tried to explain the nature of human knowledge. The study of mind remained the province of philosophy until the nineteenth century, when experimental psychology developed. Wilhelm Wundt and his students initiated laboratory methods for studying mental operations more systematically. Within a few decades, however, experimental psychology became dominated by behaviorism, a view that virtually denied the existence of mind. According to behaviorists such as J. B. Watson, psychology should restrict itself to examining the relation between observable stimuli and observable behavioral responses. Talk of consciousness and mental representations was banished from respectable scientific discussion. Especially in North America, behaviorism largely dominated the psychological scene through the 1950s. Around 1956, the intellectual landscape began to change dramatically. George Miller summarized numerous studies which showed that the capacity of human thinking is limited, with short-term memory, for example, limited to around seven items. He proposed that memory limitations can be overcome by recoding information into chunks, mental representations that require mental procedures for encoding and decoding the information. At this time, primitive computers had been around for only a few years, but pioneers such as John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon were founding the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, Noam Chomsky rejected behaviorist assumptions about language as a learned habit and proposed instead to explain language comprehension in terms of mental grammars consisting of rules. The six thinkers mentioned in this paragraph can be viewed as the founders of cognitive science. Excerpt From: Thagard, Paul, "Cognitive Science" - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Copyright Information Back to Top Major Disciplines Within Cognitive Science The true interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science provides for a unique blend of expertise from numerous academic disciplines. Although the list of related disciplines is constantly changing, the traditional disciplines of cognitive science include anthropology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. With the advent of new interest and research in cognitive science, several other disciplines are a part of the field including artificial intelligence, biology, communications, education, engineering, history and philosophy of science, informatics, mathematics, music, sociology, speech and hearing sciences and others. Back to Top Current Research Trends A complete listing of the countless amount of work being done by cognitive scientists worldwide would be an immense task and this fact alludes to the true beauty of cognitive science. The vast array of research in cognitive science is all centered around understanding the workings of the mind and the nature of intelligence. The following is a broad sample of recent research themes in cognitive science at universities and research institutes: Artificial Intelligence Cognitive Neuroscience Computational Modelling Functional Brain Imaging Human-Computer Interaction Learning and Memory Philosophy of Mind Logic Robotics Psycholinguistics Decision Making Speech & Communication Neural Network Modelling Visual Perception Object Recognition Neural Basis of Cognition Neuropsychology Perception and Action Back to Top Careers in Cognitive Science Training in cognitive science prepares students admirably well for careers in academia and research as well as numerous other major fields of the twenty-first century, including: computer programming, telecommunications, information processing, medical analysis, data retrieval, human-computer interaction, and education. Careers Specific to a Bachelor's Degree The skills acquired by cognitive science students are applicable in many career fields, including: Telecommunications Information Processing Medical Analysis Data Representation/Retrieval Education Scientific Research Assistance Multimedia Design Human Factors Engineering Computer-Human Interaction Artificial Intelligence Human Performance Testing Neurological Testing Marketing/Business Technical Writing Intelligence Analysist Careers that Normally Require a Graduate Degree Career options in any of the previously mentioned fields will usually be enhanced with an advanced degree. Because cognitive science related jobs often require significant amounts of technical training and knowledge, many individuals seeking these positions will have a graduate degree. Thus, a master or doctoral degree will certainly make a person more competitive in this job market. Many management and industrial research positions and all college level academic research and teaching positions will require a graduate degree. Career Outlook Due to the sharp rise in technology oriented industries, the number of career positions available in cognitive science has grown enormously, and this trend will likely continue. Career growth potential is also excellent in terms of salary as well as advancement in many diversified fields and geographical locations. The interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science also means that graduates with training in this field are often well-prepared to pursue career paths in several different disciplines. -Courtesy of the I.U. Cognitive Science Program Back to Top Other Resources Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article on Cognitive Science by Paul Thagard UC Berkeley - What is Cognitive Science? Celebrities in Cognitive Science Maintained by Martin Ryder, University of Colorado at Denver Cognitive Science Directory on Yahoo! Back to Top Historical Perspectives was taken from: Thagard, Paul, "Cognitive Science", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)