Cognitive Science

[Ready for Fall 2026]

Modified: 2026-07-27 2:59 PM CDST

• One of the newest fields that studies behavior is cognitive science.
  • Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field that draws not only on psychology, but also on computer science, linguistics, artificial intelligence, logic, and the neurosciences.
  • Cognitive science is a "hot" field right now, meaning that many are becoming interested in it, and that research dollars are being allocated to it as well.
    • Cognitive science studies behavior, but in a different way than psychology.
    • For most psychologists, behavior is the object of study, but for cognitive scientists, behavior is a dependent variable of cognition.
    • For cognitive science, cognition, not behavior, is the object of study.
    • Cognition exists in humans, animals, and in machines.
    • In humans and animals, cognition evolved, whereas in machines it is created by humans.
    • A good example of the difference between evolved and created cognition is how humans and computers each play chess.
    • Chess is a human game, but now computer programs can also play.
    • For years, the best programs played each other, and then, the winner played a human grand master player.
    • Until 1997, humans always one. But, a special IBM computer, Deep Blue, along with its software, beat the then current human world champion, Gary Kasparov.
    • Deep Blue, of course, did not play or approach the game of chess as a human player would. Instead, it used its large memory to search far ahead for good possible moves, something impossible for a human.
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI) is part of cognitive science.
      • Surely you have heard about ChatGPT and the impact it has had recently?
    • So, anything that thinks in any way could be a subject for a cognitive scientist.
    • However, the behavior of the thinking object will not be the point of study; rather, the point of study will be the mechanisms that lead to the subject's behavior.
    • That difference in emphasis, toward cognition and using behavior as a clue for that cognition, is what differentiates cognitive science, strictly defined, from psychology.
    • However, cognitive science is an inclusive term and many psychologists would consider themselves cognitive scientists without adopting the definition of cognitive science given above.
• Robotics and autonomous navigation are two other related areas.
• The ultimate goal of both is to create machines and systems that can successfully work in the natural environment.
  • Think of self-driving vehicles as an example.
• Another definition of cognitive science is:
  • "Cognitive science is the study of intelligence and intelligent systems, with particular reference to intelligent behavior as computation. .... Cognitive science can be approached in several ways. .... The principal contributing disciplines are experimental and cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence (within computer science), linguistics, philosophy (especially logic and epistemology), neuroscience and some others (anthropology, economics, and social psychology ...)" [Simon, H. A., & Kaplan, C. A. (1989). Foundations of cognitive science. In M. Posner (Ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science [pp. 1-47]. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press].