Cognitive science is the systematic study of the mechanisms behind human perception and behaviour. It goes beyond a mere description of the observable and aims to theorise the underlying processes. To fulfil this goal, an interdisciplinary approach must be taken: Our disciplines range from mathematics, over computer science, medicine or neuroscience up to applied psychology.
The Cognitive Science Group is an association of neuroscientists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists at the Psychology department of Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Our goal is to facilitate the role of cognitive science in research and education, to promote collaboration within our field, and to use insights from cognitive science to help to improve education and research.
The logo of the Cognitive Science Group shows a dialogue balloon in the form of a brain. In the balloon, the first derivative of a function f with respect to x is shown.
The logo represents the aspiration of cognitive science to describe brain processes. The dialogue balloon stands for the attempt itself, its form mirrors the rough structure of the object to describe (i.e. the brain). The brain is drawn in an overly simplified way, referring to the idea of describing the complexity of human behaviour through relatively parsimonious theories. The derivative as the content of the dialogue balloon depicts the way of formalising our theories through mathematical models. It also hints at backward propagation, an algorithm that is used in AI to train artificial neural networks.