Thought no specific knowledge is required, basic notions about the experimental method and its use in psychology or, more generally, in human sciences are useful.
Students will be required to demonstrate their understanding of the course topics in the final exam, which will include both multiple-choice and (short) essay questions. Supplementary oral examinations may be required.
The course unit aims at providing theoretical and methodological tools useful for understanding how research in cognitive psychology is carried out and its main results. The main purpose is to provide students with the necessary skills to analyse critically the various phenomena shown by cognitive psychology studies and the explanations of such phenomena. Students will be stimulated to go in-depth into each topic discussed in this unit.
Main topics of cognitive psychology. The course surveys areas such as attention, consciousness, memory, learning, knowledge representation, emotion, motivation, reasoning and problem solving, language and intelligence.
- Stablum F. (2002). L'attenzione. Roma: Carocci Editore. - an handbook of psychology of cognitive processes. The title of the handbook will be provided during the first lesson of the course unit. ---------------------------------------------------- Additional materials will be provided during classes: - PowerPoint presentations from the course lessons. - Studies reported in scientific papers published in open-access journals will be discussed during the course lessons
Main issues of cognitive psychology will be presented in face-to-face lessons which will make use of PowerPoint presentations. For each topic, prominent theories will be discussed, together with the results of the experiments that have been conducted to evaluate such theories. Students may be asked to participate in one or more experiments. At the end of both the data collection and analysis phases, aims and results of such experiments will be explained to students.
