What distinguishes human beings from other animals, even other apes, is our qualitatively distinct abilities to think, reason, and communicate with others. Cognitive psychology is the scientific field devoted to studying our special mental capacities. That is, the goal of cognitive psychology is to understand the nature of human intelligence and how it works. Why are huskies, golden retrievers, daschunds, dalmations, etc. And so on and so on.
Cognitive psychology is a laboratory science.
That is, we learn about how the human mind works by conducting controlled experiments. The heavy emphasis on experimentation by cognitive psychologists will be reflected in the content of this course. We will spend a lot of time talking about the particular experiments psychologists have done that allow us to draw conclusions about the nature of human thinking. In the laboratory, students will participate in most phases of the research process associated with three particular experiments that are discussed in the class. That is, important thinking processes are going on inside your brains even though we can't see them, and those processes are responsible for guiding your behavior.