Cognitive psychology and neurobiology of human reasoning - Study with Professors from University of Cambridge & University of Oxford
Psychology is a science that studies human psychological phenomena and their mental functions and behavioral activities under their influence, taking into account outstanding theory and application (practice). Psychology includes basic psychology and applied psychology, whose research involves many fields such as perception, cognition, emotion, thinking, personality, behavior habits, interpersonal relations, social relations, artificial intelligence, IQ, personality and so on. It is also related to many fields of daily life -- family, education, health, society and so on.
Cognitive science is a new interdisciplinary discipline including linguistics, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and artificial intelligence. Its research object is the understanding and cognition of human, animal and artificial intelligence mechanism, that is, the complex system of information processing that can acquire, store and transmit knowledge. With the development of technology, especially the rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years, new ideas have been brought to the research and application of cognitive psychology. The ecological behavior data obtained by artificial intelligence and big data improves the internal and external validity of the research results.
The project aims to introduce students to the frontier of psychology research -- human cognitive science, mainly including the basic theory of the discipline and the overview of the research field. The program will focus on guiding students to explore topics such as human perception, attention, long and short term memory, cultivate students' critical thinking, and encourage students to actively connect what they have learned with other scientific research fields.
Psychology topics and lesson plans include:
High school students, college students (students interested in economics, psychology, neurobiology or related majors)
Professor of Wolfson College, Cambridge University; Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
Professor Vestergaard is a neuroscientist interested in the psychology of decision-making, mental health & communication
Martin's research interests include mechanisms of automatic processing in sensory systems and their evolutionary basis, cognitive aspects of auditory perception, and behavioural and neural aspects of economic decision-making. He uses psychophysical, electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods to identify behavioural and neural indices of reward processing and auditory specialization. A key finding in his early work is that humans and other animals may have evolved an ability to judge the competence of suitors and predators by gauging skeletal size from their communication signals.
Martin received his PhD in Psychological Acoustics from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) where he had previously earned his MSc and EE degrees following undergraduate and graduate studies in Electrical Engineering and Communications at DTU and in Systèmes électroniques et Informatiques Industrielles at Polytech Nantes. He was a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing, Cambridge before he moved on to study cognitive aspect of the reward system in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience.
He became a Fellow and Tutor in Wolfson College in 2011, and since 2016 he has held the role as Deputy Senior Tutor.
The University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by King Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking word and the world's fourth-oldest surviving university. The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople. The two "ancient universities" share many common features and are often referred to jointly as "Oxbridge".
Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 semi-autonomous constituent Colleges and over 100 academic departments organised into six schools. As of 2019, Cambridge is the top-ranked university in the United Kingdom according to all major league tables. It is a member of numerous associations and forms part of the "golden triangle" of English universities. The university has educated many notable alumni, including eminent mathematicians, scientists, politicians, lawyers, philosophers, writers, actors, monarchs and other heads of state. As of October 2019, 120 Nobel Laureates, 11 fields Medalists, 7 Turing Award winners and 14 British Prime Ministers have been affiliated with Cambridge as students, alumni and faculty or research staff. University alumni have won 194 Olympic medals.
1. Introduction to cognitive psychology
In this lesson we first look at philosophy of identity and the Self as a basis for studying psychology. We then cover mental processes such as auditory and visual perception, problem solving, reasoning and language. We also look at Theory of Mind (ToM) and the Stroop effect.
2. Experimental psychology
In this lesson we look at research methods in experimental psychology, how to design an experiment, collecting and analyzing data, critical thinking and scientific writing, Bayesian inference, evidence, prior, likelihood, optimization, generative model and cost function.
3. Choice of Psychology
This lesson is an introduction to behavioral decision-making. We cover basic axioms of preference, utility maximization, decisions under risk, risk aversion, loss aversion, temporal discounting, trust and cooperation, prospect theory, opportunity costs, decoy effect, sunk costs, and anchoring.
4. Neuropsychology
This lesson introduces brain imaging techniques such as fMRI, EEG, MEG, TMS and single cell recordings and their application in investigations of the reward system. We look at how computational models used in fMRI research can be used to study brain the mechanisms underlying psychological phenomena.
5. Biases and errors in human cognition
In this lesson, we look at biases of human cognition, confirmation bias, Dunning–Kruger effect, cognitive dissonance, framing effect and endowment effect. We also look at errors in psychology research, survivor bias, selection bias, collider bias and type I vs type II error and the biological basis for type I error bias of human cognition.
6. Dual-processes in human cognition
In this lesson, we cover the dichotomies in psychology that underlie dual-process theory of human thought. Often termed System 1 and System 2, the psychological processes are characterized as implicit vs explicit, automatic vs controlled, unconscious vs conscious, goal directed vs habitual, model-based vs model free, analytical vs intuitive, or declarative vs procedural.
7. Case-study: Irrational decision-making in humans
In this lesson, we will study an example of neuroimaging research. We start from the initial observation of a human behavior, then though psychology theory and modelling to the identification of brain mechanism responsible for irrational decision-making in humans. This lesson can also serve as model for a Journal Club, i.e. a lab meeting in which research students present a journal article in detail to their colleagues, which prospective graduate students will need to learn.
8. Practical applications, revision and poster presentation
In this lesson we look at everyday instantiations of the theory covered in the course. We go over different strategies of decision-making and coping mechanisms that may be used to prevent failure in rational decision-making that is hardwired into the human brain. We summarize the main learning outcomes from the course and discuss how to present psychology results as Poster.
9. Program Review and Presentation
10. Project Paper and Publication
For more information, please contact us.
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