At the present time, the core faculty in the Cognitive Psychology Program have active research programs in human performance and skill acquisition, human learning and memory, concept learning and conceptual representation, visual attention and cognition, as well as the cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory. The program emphasizes research training. Core requirements include two semesters on statistical methods, an empirical Master's thesis, one or two papers at the preliminary level, and an empirical doctoral dissertation. Although the department does not accept students for a terminal Master of Arts degree, a Master of Arts degree can be obtained as part of completion of qualification for candidacy for the doctorate. The cognitive program emphasizes research and scholarship in many aspects of human and animal cognition with particular stress on visual and auditory perception, attention, memory, learning, language, judgment, decision making, cognitive neuroscience, and development.
Developmental psychology is represented in all three areas.
The graduate program in Cognitive and Perceptual Sciences focuses on how humans perceive, learn, remember and think about the world. The principal subareas are visual perception, attention and performance, and higher cognitive processes. Mathematical and computational models are used in many of the research programs. The graduate certificate program in cognitive science at the University of Colorado at Boulder is designed to supplement existing graduate programs in the cognitive science academic departments and consists only of course requirements. The program provides breadth and depth training in the cognitive sciences outside of the graduate disciplines as well as formal acknowledgment of that interdisciplinary training.