In the Cognition
focus, students are expected to become proficient in many of the traditional
topics associated with Cognitive Psychology, such as attention, perception,
language and thought, and memory. Our program's main strengths, however,
lie in the areas of memory, sensation and perception, language, AI,
intelligent systems, and neural networks.
Students pursuing a topic in any area need to take any 6 of the core
courses to
enhance
their fundamental
background knowledge. Note that other courses (either at AU or any
of the consortium schools) may be substituted for one or more of these
core courses, but only with the approval of the academic advisor.
In addition, we cater to individual interests and highly encourage
students to follow up these core courses with even more specialized
seminars for depth and more integrative courses for a broader perspective.
We also place a special emphasis on research at all stages of graduate
training. Students are expected to be an integral part of a
laboratory
from Day 1 and
augment their course learning through apprenticeship in research as
well as contribute to science. Laboratory rotations ensure that different
research skills are learned along with more content. The overarching
goal at all times is the pursuit of answers from Mother Nature.
