The first lecture of cognitive psychology aims at enabling the student to attain the following competencies:
- providing a full and reliable definition of the discipline.
- Recognizing the experiments that contribute to our understanding of the human mind.
- Establishing a connection between the area and everyday experience.
The course is devided into two chapters :
The first chapter encompasses two main headings: the scope of cognitive psychology, a part which attempts to define the area as a component part of psychology concerned with the study of the ways in which the brain processes information; the stages of cognition, another part which tackles roughly the overlapping steps of information processing.
The second chapter consists of three main headings, Relevance of cognitive psychology to everyday experiencewith special reference to aspects of cognition; Early Psychologists who pioneeredthe area of cognitive psychology and contributed to its evolution, whereas the last part rounds off with the factors that led to its decline.
In order to consolidate the student's knowledge and develop strategies of exam answering, a test is scheduled at the end of the course as an integrative part of formative assessment allowing the teacher to gauge the student's performance as well as the quality of his teaching.