Department's Ph.D. requirements consist of coursework, foreign language competence, teaching experience, and research papers. The requirements are designed to meet the following goals:

Depth: Students become expert in their primary area of research interest and also are prepared so that they will be competitive for academic positions in one of the traditional disciples.

Breadth: Students develop the ability to understand, appreciate and critically evaluate work in the various sub-disciplines of Cognitive Science.

Integration: Students learn to integrate theory and methods across sub-disciplines.

I. Coursework

Depth

Students will take those advanced courses that the student, in conjunction with his/her advisory committee, determine to be important for achieving:

• Expertise in a chosen research area.
• Marketplace competitiveness in one of the traditional areas: Psychology/Neuropsychology, Computer Science or Linguistics

Breadth

Students take the following courses:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• • One course
• Philosophy
• • One course in Philosophy of Mind/Language/Science
• A total of SIX courses from the three following core areas
• • Cognitive Psychology/Neuropsychology
  • • Statistics (one semester)
    • One of:
    • • Cognitive Neuropsychology of Visual Perception
      • Cognitive Development (or an approved course or seminar on a topic outside the area of Language)
  • Computation
  • • Formal Methods: Neural Networks
    • One of:
    • • Programming (C++, Java, etc.)
      • Formal Methods: Inference (or the equivalent, e.g., computational linguistics)
  • Language
  • • Formal Methods: Language
    • One of:
    • • Phonology
      • Syntax
      • Morphology
        

Students may place out of breadth courses based on undergraduate coursework and (for certain courses) based on examination. Students admitted to our program typically place out of two of the breadth courses.

Integration

• Foundations of Cognitive Science (050.626)
• Departmental Reading Course (050.850)

Offered one semester per year, the Departmental Reading Course changes topics each year and involves all students and faculty in the program. Students attend this course each year, but only during one semester write a paper and direct a reading topic.

Emphasis is placed on producing two research papers prior to writing a dissertation. These two research papers are typically presented at conferences and often lead to separate journal publications. Students are encouraged to incorporate the two research papers into their dissertation.

III. Teaching Assistantships
Students function as teaching assistants for all semesters except for the two semesters of their final year. In addition, all attempts are made to exempt students from Teaching Assistant (TA) duties their first semester.

IV. Sample Program
(For a student finishing in five years who has placed out of two breadth requirements.)