Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary area of study that seeks to understand the workings of the human mind.

Bringing together scientific methods, techniques and perspectives from a range of disciplines—including psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science and philosophy—cognitive science examines how knowledge is acquired, systematically structured and computationally processed within the brain.

At the Department, we offer a research-based postgraduate programme in areas of Cognitive Science including mind memory systems, visual perception, psycholinguistics, intuitive judgment and decision making.

A degree in cognitive science provides a broad educational base from which to pursue further academic study as well as leading to a variety of career paths in diverse areas including: communications, marketing, information processing, medical analysis, data retrieval, human-computer interaction, web design, game development, and education.

As part of the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences (MAKS), the role of our department is to examine how human experience gives rise to knowledge structures that are able to support complex behaviours of the human mind such as speaking, thinking, perceiving and remembering. Understanding the nature of these knowledge structures—cracking the cognitive code—is the ultimate goal of the research we conduct.

At the University of Malta, our work focuses on a number of key areas that reflect the research interests and expertise of the resident academics. These include human memory, philosophy of mind, decision-making, use of language, and visual cognition. In addition, links to other departments in MAKS and across the University, as well as several international collaborative projects, allow us to explore the nature of knowledge structures from a wide range of other perspectives. An active programme of visiting academics also helps enhance the interdisciplinary nature of our work.

Cognitive science attracts students from many academic backgrounds, for example, computer science, communications, mathematics, statistics, economics, philosophy, linguistics, psychology and neuroscience. The key requirements are a keen interest in the mind and a willingness to develop the technical skills which are the basis of our scientific/computational approach to knowledge.