Cognitive Science
University Malaysia Sarawak
What is Cognitive Science?
Cognitive science is the study of how the mind works, functions, and behaves. As a scientific field of study, cognitive science requires applying multiple existing disciplines such as philosophy, neuroscience, or artificial intelligence in order to understand how the brain makes a decision or performs a task. Cognitive science seeks to understand intelligence and behavior which can help humans in many ways such as developing educational programs or building smarter devices.
Cognitive scientists today will often engage in computational modeling and theorizing in their quest to understand the mind and intelligence. This will usually involve experimentation with willing human subjects. For example, undergraduates will often take part in laboratory experiments involving different types of thinking that are studied under controlled conditions. These experiments often involve deductive reasoning where subjects need to form and apply ideas to a range of different problems.
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Bachelor of Science with Honours (Cognitive Science) in UNIMAS
Understanding the human mind has intrigued mankind for centuries. This search has led to the inception of the field of Cognitive Science after World War II. Cognitive Science, being the field in the forefront of brain and mind research, holds great promises in revolutionizing the understanding of ourselves as well in bringing forth technological advancements we could only imagine today.
It draws from disciplines such as Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy with the central purpose of investigating the nature of mind and intelligence. UNIMAS or specifically Faculty of Cognitive Science and Human Development is the pioneer in spearheading the establishment of Cognitive Science in this region. We are also broadening our concentration to psychology, in line with the growing demands for psychologists in the country. Ours is unique because it focuses on the cognitive aspects of psychology tailored to the needs of professionals from a wide-ranging field, e.g. ergonomics and human factor, learning sciences, medical and the industries at large.
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Career Prospects
Knowledge in Cognitive Science could be important in a wide range of careers in contemporary society; such as information and communication technologies (ICT), training and education, business, design, research, as well as the enhancement and designing of new technologies to assist in the improvement of human work performance in different working environments. Graduates from the program could work as software designer and developer; software, systems or web interface designer; systems support professionals; systems analyst; human factors personnel; consumer product designer; industrial psychologist; consumer psychologist; academician/educator/ tutor; and instructional designer, amongst others.
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My Experiences in UNIMAS
At first when I enrolled into Cognitive Science program, I had no idea of what it is because I never heard of it before and I just thought that maybe I should take this as a new challenge for myself. So, I went through my very first semester and the most intimidating and complicated course for me at that time is Basic Programming because I never learned coding before and I have to learn everything, all the basics in just few months.
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However, I still study many other courses also such as Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience and more. I am very interested in Psychology so I had fun learning all of them and alhamdulillah, I scored well during my first semester until now. Thanks to the lecturers who will always kindly guide us if there is anything that we don't understand with.
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Moreover, I am eternally grateful for having such a good course mates by my side because they always help me in whatever I do and encourage me to keep going because sometimes, when I'm in my fragile state, I tend to say things that I didn't mean but believe it or not, now I am in my final year already. Glad I didn't give up, glad I have them by my side.
