Overview of Cognitive Psychology

Over the past several years, the Cognitive area has seen explosive growth, with new faculty members, new graduate and undergraduate courses, expanded laboratory space and burgeoning research opportunities.

Focus

The hub of our program is Spatial Cognition: how we think about, navigate and perceive the world around us. Our labs tackle core aspects of information-processing, such as scene representation, language, attention, emotion and categorization. We examine these topics by testing diverse populations with a range of techniques – behavioral experiments, ERP, fMRI, eye tracking and computational modeling.

Faculty

Collectively, our five faculty members have authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications; given hundreds of invited colloquia, conference presentations and public lectures; and published dozens of articles in top journals. We have received substantial funding from the National Science Foundation, The National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Faculty members have been awarded APA and APS Fellowships and have been appointed to the editorial boards of Psychological Science, Child Development, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, and Perception & Psychophysics. Faculty research has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, Parent Magazine, CNN, and Discovery Channel.

Collaboration

In order to maximize opportunities and experience, we strongly encourage bridge-building between labs. Thus Cognitive students collaborate freely with researchers not only from the Psychology department, but also from Linguistics, Education, and Philosophy. Developmental research in particular is enhanced by strong ties to the Early Learning Center and Linguistics’ Cognitive Science Program.