Cognitive Studies Program

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The central goal of the Cognitive Studies Program, which offers a minor in cognitive studies, is to help students better understand the nature of cognition by emphasizing how knowledge is acquired, represented, and stored in the nervous system. Emphasis is placed on how neural functioning influences our mental abilities and includes philosophical inquiry into cognition.  By encouraging students to adopt a broad scope of inquiry, the program reaches beyond traditional disciplinary themes and methodologies to the point where students can effectively assimilate, evaluate, and examine the foundations of knowledge from a variety of perspectives. 

The Cognitive Studies Program is grounded in the emerging field of cognitive science, which has become a major field of interdisciplinary study, animated by the idea that the disciplines that investigate cognition and knowledge can benefit from one another’s methods and perspectives. By combining computer science, technology, and the conceptual analysis of philosophy and linguistics with the empirical research of psychology and neurosciences, the field of cognitive science has produced work of fundamental importance on such diverse topics as visual perception, the role of language in cognition, consciousness, human performance, and artificial intelligence. Tapping the college’s traditional strengths in liberal arts education, the Cognitive Studies Program integrates the study of cognitive science with work in the humanities and social sciences.

Program Faculty

Professor

Carol Mills, professor emerita (cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, language)

Assistant Professor

Charles Seltzer, director (neuropsychology, physiological psychology),

Senior Lecturer

Robert Welch (epistemology)

Lecturer

Kelly Dunn (pharmacology, biopsychology, and experimental psychology), Annie KleyKamp (psychopharmacology)

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