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Semester 2

Perception, Action, Cognition (PSYL10152)

Subject

Psychology

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must be studying Psychology as their degree major, and have completed at least 3 Psychology courses at grade B or above, ideally including a course equivalent to Data Analysis for Psychology in R 2 (PSYL08015). We will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

This course concerns how we perceive the world in order to act in it, how the processes of perception and action relate to each other, and how they are organised within the human brain. We will cover theoretical approaches to perception and action, the use of vision and body-senses to guide action, body representation as a feat of multisensory integration, and the experience of body ownership and agency. We will finish by connecting some of the main course themes with the contemporary theoretical framework of predictive processing. Evidence will be drawn from diverse techniques in cognitive neuroscience, but with a focus on the study of neuropsychological symptoms following brain damage. Students will gain practice in interpreting primary literature, and evaluating it with respect to larger theoretical frameworks, and the assessment will focus on core skills of evidence-based academic writing.

Course Description

The course begins by giving an overview of major theoretical perspectives on perception, from constructivist and ecological approaches, to notions of enactive perception and embodied cognition. It will be argued that constructivist and ecological approaches have to some extent been combined in a dual streams model of human vision, which emphasises that visual information is processed in different brain areas, in different ways, for different purposes. We will then consider how we represent our bodies and the external world in relation to one another, in order to make purposeful action possible. We will refine our discussion of a body representation for action, considering how this relates to our feeling of ownership of our bodies, and the concept of body image. We will then focus on some key requirements for effective action guidance, highlighting the importance of feedback-based control, and forward modelling. We will consider whether these control principles might help explain how it is that we feel that like active agents in the world, rather than passive spectators on our actions. Finally, we will see how the concept of forward modelling is now being applied within contemporary predictive processing approaches to perception, action and cognition.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a Psychology exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year Psychology course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course