The course provides theoretical foundations to understand perceptual and
cognitive processes as well as methodological know-how to concretely
investigate them. The mechanisms sustaining perception and cognition will be interpreted
as stages within an information-processing pipeline. In this respect, the
course will explain empirical phenomena observed in psychophysics and cognitive
sciences research, in the context of computational models of cognition. The
course will endow students with analytical tools to interpret behavioural
measures and their limits, as well as reflect upon the inherently probabilistic
nature of behaviour and decision-making. These concepts and tools will be
presented in the context of healthy younger and older adults.  Students will be encouraged throughout
to develop critical thinking skills such that they can judge and effectively compare
current models of information processing using psychophysical evidence in
signal detection, recognition theory and more broadly evidence in the cognitive
domains of perception, attention, and memory