Cognitive Psychology

[anon14]

What is the state of Cognitive Psychology? Is Neuroscience replacing these programs?

Can someone explain cognitive psychology vs. cognitive science. How about prospects out of academia?(yes, these have been googled!)

[zapster]

viz. CogPsych vs CogSci: Cognitive Science is a broader, more interdisciplinary field that along with Psychology, encompasses areas such as theory of the mind and philosophy, computer science and artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, etc.

[Guest |||]

Cog psy as a field is very broad and the term is used loosely.

 

Within cog psy you can study artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive science, neuro-biology, psychoimmunology

 

It really just depends on how you phrase the question.

 

 

 

But I think more important than the label of the field you are in, study whatever you want within the field (as long as it still is relevant, you wouldn't for instance study how a toliet works within a psych program), and let the semantics sort themselves.  Very few researchers will say I study "cognitive psychology", most will say I study "xxxx" and happen to be in the faculty of "xxxx".

 

 

Neuroscience is not replacing psych either, but if anything the two are working more closely together.  I suppose psych might have better job prospects in as far as, its a very popular undergrad major, so there will be more demand for faculty and lecturers.

[Arcadian]

Cognitive psychology - study of mental functions with behavioral measures

Cognitive neuroscience - study of mental functions with both physiological and behavioral measures

Cognitive science - the "umbrella field" encompassing any field that studies cognition in a scientific manner

 

Sometimes people use "cognitive science" to refer specifically to computational modelling (as if it were a field in its own right), but I use it in the broader sense.

 

I would say that cognitive neuroscience (CNS) is mostly replacing cognitive psychology (CP) - but they were never really separate in the first place. CNS emerged out of CP, adopting its theoretical frameworks and using new methods to study them. I would say CNS and CP are basically the same thing, just with a different emphasis.

 

Neuroscience (broadly) is not replacing psychology. Some philosophers who defend eliminative materialism believe that it should or will replace psychology, but this is by no means a foregone conclusion. Non-reductive materialism seems to be the prevailing view currently. That is, mental states are caused by physical states of the brain, but they have emergent properties that can't necessarily be found at "lower" levels of analysis.