Models of Thinking - Cognitive Sciences Area of Excellence

In linguistic communication, one hardly notices how much the brain has to perform: how individual words are recognized, background noise is filtered out, and missing syllables are filled in. Cognitive sciences try to uncover these highly complex processes. Mathematical models of human thinking have brought international recognition to the Interdisciplinary Center for Cognitive Studies at the University of Potsdam. The Cognitive Sciences Area of Excellence has developed in cooperation with the linguistic Collaborative Research Center “Information Structures” and has become a unique feature of the University of Potsdam. In order to better understand the processes of the brain, perception and memory as well as thinking and language, psychologists have been collaborating with mathematicians, linguists with physicists, and biologists with computer scientists.

A prominent example of this intensive cooperation is the large-scale study of eye movement during reading activities. While test persons read simple sentences on a screen, a camera records the path that their eyes take during the activity. Straight lines and jumps as well as back movements and curves show which strategies a reader develops to perceive a sentence, to understand it, and finally to remember it. Through recording the activities of the brain, researchers hope to analyze this extremely complex and dynamic process to improve the ability to compensate for reading difficulties and to facilitate the overall reading learning process.

"In Cognitive Sciences at the University of Potsdam we focus on nothing less than the basics of human communication and other complex mental and motor abilities."

Prof. Dr. Reinhold Kliegl
Director of the Cognitive Sciences Area of Excellence

Scientists at the new Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism (PRIM) investigate how multilingual children and adults comprehend and produce language. This institute was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship.

Another area of application for Potsdam’s cognitive sciences can be found in patholinguistics. Children with speech impediments shall be treated more successfully and the use of more effective methods shall enable stroke patients to regain their speaking abilities more quickly.

In a research training group young scientists analyze psychosocial problems of adolescents. In an extensive study over a longer period, they investigate the development of about 3,500 children and adolescents between 5 and 17 years of age who are from Potsdam and its environs. The aim of this study is to identify the factors that may lead to learning and performance problems in individual cases, to aggressive behavior or eating and weight disorders.

Cognitive sciences also include the psychomotor and sports medical investigations of complex motion sequences in top athletes and the investigation of mathematical competences and their preconditions. Cognitive scientists are making new connections across the disciplines to German and Romance studies in order to find out how emotion and language influence one another.

Finally yet importantly, the area of excellence is concerned with the dialog between humans and machines: computer linguists translate into programs the rules that humans use to formulate their thoughts. They are facing what is possibly the most difficult challenge for computer scientists: giving machines our language.

For more details please consult
Cognitive Sciences Area of Excellence (Homepage)

Photo: Karla Fritze, Unicom/ Photocase, Hannelore Gensel

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