Cognitive Psychology Program

 

Program description: 
  • Cognitive psychology is the study of thought, and of human information processing. Cognitive psychologists investigate the mental processes that allow human beings (and sometimes animals) to perceive the world around them, call upon memorial representations to guide their decisions, use their body to navigate their environment, and much more.  These processes include things like attention, perception, memory, reasoning, language, decision-making, and much else.
  • We encourage our students to take advantage of the department's other strengths in Engineering and Social Psychology. Many of our students further diversify their skills by completing internships in industry or government.
  • Careers in cognitive psychology include academia, research, medicine, user-experience, technology, and government. Recent gradautes from our cogntive area have gotten degree-dependent jobs at Univeristy of Texas at Corpus Christi, University of Richmond, CrowdStrike, Edwards Lifesciences, INQU, and University of New Mexico. 
Basic and applied areas of research include:
  • Individual differences in cognitive abilities
  • Motor learning
  • Attention
  • Visual search
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Perception
  • Long-term memory and working-memory
  • Human factors
The Cognitive Program at New Mexico State University has several distinctive features:
  • The faculty and students are highly collaborative within the department and across the university. In addition to collaborations across research areas within the department, our cognitive area collaborates with researchers in engineering, kinesiology, and elsewhere. These collaborations also include researchers at other institutions within the United States and abroad. 
  • Many of the faculty and students in the program have interest in both basic and applied research.  This involves creation of fundamental and discovery science projects but also those directed at (or inspired by) real-world problems. A consistent focus on applications has led to increased federal funding for our department. 
  • Students are encouraged to pursue the career path (academia, government, or industry) that most appeals to them and are given oportunities to conduct the types of reseach that allow them to achieve their goals.

 

Cognitive Program Faculty