PSY7421 examines the two intertwined domains at the heart of contemporary psychology — cognition (how people think, perceive, attend, remember, and learn) and affect (how people experience and regulate emotions, moods, and feelings) — and especially the rich interactions between them. The course grounds students in major theoretical frameworks and empirical research, with emphasis on demonstrating how cognitive processes and emotional experience are not separate systems but deeply interconnected influences on human behavior, decision-making, and psychological well-being.
Cognition, emotion, and their interaction
Core topics
- Cognitive architecture: Models of how the mind processes information — attention (selective, divided, sustained), working memory (Baddeley's multicomponent model), long-term memory systems (episodic, semantic, procedural, implicit), and the cognitive operations of perception, mental representation, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making
- Affective science: Theories of emotion — basic emotion theories (Ekman), appraisal theories (Lazarus, Scherer), dimensional models (valence/arousal), constructionist accounts (Barrett) — and research on the neural bases of emotion, emotion regulation strategies, and the relationship between affect, mood, and the broader concept of subjective well-being
- Emotion-cognition interaction: The bidirectional relationship between affect and cognition — how emotional states influence attention, memory consolidation and retrieval, risk assessment and decision-making, creativity, and social judgment; and how cognitive appraisal processes shape emotional responses. Research on mood-congruent memory, affect-as-information, emotional interference, and hot vs. cold cognition
- Memory encoding, storage, and retrieval: The conditions under which information is encoded into long-term memory — elaborative encoding, spaced practice, retrieval practice effects, emotional enhancement of memory consolidation — and the constructive nature of memory retrieval, including eyewitness memory, false memories, and trauma memory
- Language, thought, and cognition: The relationship between language and thought — linguistic relativity, the role of inner speech in cognition, how conceptual categories are organized in semantic memory, and how language shapes (and is shaped by) cognitive and affective processes
- Applied implications: How cognitive-affective psychology informs evidence-based interventions — the theoretical basis for cognitive behavioral therapy (Beck's cognitive model, the role of cognitive distortions), emotion regulation therapies (DBT's biosocial theory), and the cognitive science of learning in educational and training contexts
PSY7421 assignments include theoretical analyses, empirical literature critiques, and applied case papers
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Cognitive theory analyses, empirical critiques, applied case papers.
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Frequently asked questions
For decades, emotion and cognition were studied in relative isolation — "hot" emotional processes versus "cold" cognitive processes. Contemporary research has overturned this separation decisively. Emotion regulation failures are central to depression, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, and PTSD — conditions that psychologists routinely treat. The therapeutic approaches with the strongest evidence base (CBT, DBT, ACT) all target the intersection of cognition and emotion: changing maladaptive thought patterns alters emotional experience; building emotion regulation skills changes how cognition operates under stress. Understanding the science behind these interventions — why they work at the theoretical and mechanistic level — makes doctoral psychologists more effective practitioners and better able to adapt empirically-supported treatments to individual clients. PSY7421 provides that scientific foundation, grounding therapeutic practice in the basic science of how minds actually process experience.