Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology studies conscious mental life and cognition, including sensation, perception, attention, memory, language, thinking, and visual imagery, together with problem-solving and decision-making processes.

Research in cognitive psychology both within the RPA and at the University of Copenhagen focuses on two areas: Visual cognition and human memory.

Studies of the initial stages of the visual processes endeavour in particular to elucidate: 
  • how we gather information about or sense the world with our eyes; and
  • how information in the form of neural impulses in the visual pathways are processed so that we experience (perceive) a visual world consisting of meaningful objects and events (visual recognition).
Studies of the later stages of the visual processes investigates visual imagery, visual thinking, problem solving and concept formation, and our ability to control our central resources, for example, our ability to direct our interest towards specific objects or events (visual attention) or to adapt our actions to the physical structure of our surroundings (spatial vision).

Memory research is done in patient populations and in normal human subjects in the following key areas:
  • memory search
  • priming 
  • organization of long term memory
Using brain activation methods, researchers in both visual cognition and human memory now attempt to bridge the gap between psychology and neurophysiology in collaboration with neuroscientists and researchers in neuroinformatics. 

Results obtained in cognitive psychology are used in the design of technical and IT-based systems and other applications, but are also becoming increasingly important in the understanding and treatment of cognitive functional disturbances (of learning, attention or thinking, for example) associated with brain damage, psychotic conditions and mild or transient crisis states.
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