Sections offered FALL 2023:
#5590 |
LEAH SAVION |
TuTh 9:45 AM–12:15 PM
|
SY 004 |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd N&M credit – Natural Science; COLL (CASE) N&M Breadth of Inquiry credit
Human survival depends on effective gathering of huge amounts of information, adequate processing, fast learning, and controlling the environment to secure predictability and adjustment. Our brain selects what to attend to, categorize and integrate perceptual input, makes inferences, establishes emotional and physical reactions to environmental cues, and activating all other systems (affective, behavioral, and physiological) with staggering speed and efficiency. These cognitive feats are executed extremely quickly and accurately with the help of mental short cuts called “heuristics.”
The concept of cognitive heuristics has caught on fire recently, infiltrating areas such as economics, music, ethics, social behavior, perception, problem solving, legal reasoning, categorization, rationality, mental health, attention and learning, and even some self-help literature. This course presents students with an opportunity to investigate this relatively new and highly useful theoretical construct, from its conceptual analysis to theoretical and pragmatic applications of its models to self-awareness as a cognitive agent.
Course activities include:
- Micro-thematic papers/tests: in-depth analysis of some aspect of the material covered in the book or in the original papers.
- Final research paper: with an original thesis or synthesis in philosophy, psychology, or cognitive science, due in the last week of classes.
- Team project/presentation of researched topic in cognitive science, sociology, philosophy, animal cognition, legal reasoning, economics, or linguistic. Team papers are due, if required, 5 days after class presentation.
- Educational videos on belief perseverance, scientific frameworks, development, fallibility of eyewitness testimony, and cognitive gender differences.
- Short Group presentation of the reading material and specific assignments.