Academic Catalog

COGS534 COGNITION PERCEPTION AND ACTION

Course Code: 9020534
METU Credit (Theoretical-Laboratory hours/week): 3(3-0)
ECTS Credit: 8.0
Department: Cognitive Sciences
Language of Instruction: English
Level of Study: Graduate
Course Coordinator:
Offered Semester: Fall or Spring Semesters.

Course Content

Students will learn about the history of the topic, starting with James´ Ideo-motor principle; the importance of the interaction between cognition, perception, and action and its implications for contemporary theories in cognitive science will be pointed out; modern theories accommodating this interaction will be discussed in depth: the Common-Coding model and the Theory of Event Coding (TOC) which both assume a common representational code for perception and action; students will be presented with important methods to study cognition, perception, and action, e.g., the Simon-task; support of joint action-perception representations by the discovery of a human mirror neuron system; we will address ´embodied´ and ´embedded cognition´ which stress the role of the body and the environment for cognition; how joint actions are coordinated by joint minds between two or more subjects; how infants and children learn to control their actions through the anticipation of their intended action goals. Team-work: Students will engage in planning, conducting, analyzing, and reporting experiments on relevant topics, in small groups.