Cognitive Psychology

This program is designed to help you develop a systematic understanding of cognitive processes. These include perception, human learning, attention, categorization, problem solving, decision–making, information processing and retrieval, short and long-term memory and forgetting, sensory encoding, motor control, psycholinguistics, and reading. We place major emphasis on the development and testing of theories in this area. As part of the training program, you are expected to participate in extensive research programs.

Cognitive Psychology overlaps with other areas of specialization both within and outside the department. Where it is appropriate to your individual program, coursework in other areas such as cognitive science, mathematical psychology, linguistics, computer science, and mathematics is encouraged.

Our department is particularly strong in the areas of computational and mathematical psychology. We encourage the use of mathematical theory in psychology, cognition, and cognitive science.

Mathematical Psychology

Within the Cognitive Psychology area at Indiana University, a central theme of many (but not all) of the faculty members involves mathematical-psychology approaches. Mathematical psychology encourages and develops the use of mathematical and computational modeling in psychology, cognition, and cognitive science. Formal mathematical and computer-simulation models are developed to express theories of mental processes and behavior. Such models are tested using data from laboratory experiments, data from web-based experiments, or data sets (often very large) from real-world sources.

Problems under current study by faculty and students in mathematical psychology:

human learning and memory
categorization
decision processes
choice
semantic representation
quantum cognition
perception and action
dynamics
complex cognitive processes
response-time modeling
network and deep-learning models
Bayesian modeling and statistics
computer simulation
data science and statistical techniques

Students who intend to specialize in Mathematical/Cognitive Psychology are expected to have a research interest in at least one of the major content areas of cognitive psychology. Students are also encouraged to undertake ancillary study in mathematics, statistics, computer science, or cognitive science.

Curriculum

The curriculum in Mathematical Psychology deals with progressively deeper and more advanced application of mathematical thinking in psychology. Students planning to double-major in Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science would plan to take the required Q550 (Models in Cognitive Science). Mathematically oriented courses and seminars in specialized topics such as learning, memory, attention, information processing, speech perception, psycholinguistics, perception, decision making, choice, categorization, scaling, and test theory are offered on a regular basis, as are advanced courses and seminars in computer applications, multivariate analysis, and advanced statistical theory.

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Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences

Cognitive Psychology