Hands-On Computing for Cognitive Science

To explore Cognitive Science and gain hands-on practical skills in programming, students will learn how to simulate agents/robots to complete goal oriented tasks as well as a variety of natural systems from physics and biology. No previous programming experience required, this course is intended to help students build foundational computational skills. We will be using Processing programming language. Processing is an open-source graphical library and integrated development environment built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context. Along the way, we will learn about the history of cybernetics, chaos theory, feedback loops, and circular causality. This class is designed to develop hands-on skills for fundamentals in computer programming and computational modeling of cognition. We will create computational models of weather patterns, predator/prey models, dancing, maze navigation, and students will create a final project of their own.