Research Initiative - RPTU Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau

Research Initiative "Graduate Program Cognitive Dynamics"

The goal of the research initiative is to further promote coordination of the groups working in different subject areas and departments of the RPTU, University of Landau and the non-university research institutes in KL, which deal with questions of cognitive science on the basis of their respective subject discipline, in particular with the topics of cognition of language and written language processing, and cognitive aspects of human-machine interaction in the areas of health, work and education.

This research initiative has been funding joint research projects and scientific activities (e.g., meetings and colloquia) at the Center for Cognitive Science and promotes young scientists at the Graduate School since 2014.

Virtual reality, assistance systems, autonomous driving, social networks - these and other omnipresent terms characterize the process of digitization in all areas of life directly and largely influence people's experience and behavior and their interaction with their environment. Cognitive assistance, for instance, is intended to support learning or rapid decision-making processes. However, this requires an understanding of how learning and decision-making work in humans. In addition, it is necessary to consider the circumstances under which people are willing and able to accept technical assistance and to integrate it optimally into their actions. At the same time, situational and habitual factors, i.e. individual characteristics of the person acting in a given situation, should be taken into account.

In this context, cognitive science plays an increasingly important role, as it deals with the study and formalization of information processing in humans from an interdisciplinary perspective. Classically, it combines researchers from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, but increasingly also from other disciplines who are concerned with the empirical investigation and modeling of cognitive processes, such as perception, problem solving, language, decision making, learning, and increasingly also with the role of these processes in human interaction with technology. At the same time, technology is playing an increasingly important role in the study of such cognitive processes; think of computer simulations or the development of new methods in neuroscience.