The Graduiertenkolleg Kognitionswissenschaft (Doctoral Program in Cognitive Science) was an interdisciplinary institution at the University of Hamburg, supported by the DFG, between 1990 and 1999. It has now reached its scheduled end.

It was maintained by the university's departments of philosophy and social sciences, linguistics, psychology and computer science, and supported by the Institute for Cognitive Research at the University of the Forces at Hamburg (Universität der Bundeswehr) and the Institute of Psychology at the University of Braunschweig.
 

Subject matter and objectives

The subject of cognitive science is, in its broadest sense, the human mind. Cognitive science addresses the cognitive, communicative and perceptual abilities of human beings. Which structures govern processes of thinking? What does it mean to be able to understand a language and under what conditions does a person count as a competent speaker? How do humans recognize and carve up their environment on the basis of sensory impressions? How do they learn to do all this? These questions are studied from different scientific perspectives in philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and computer science. The common basis for research is the assumption that cognitive processes can be accounted for as information-processing processes. Due to the influence of its constituting sciences, the methodological variety of cognitive science is enormous. It ranges from purely theoretical investigations to empirical verification with the aid of experiments and computer modelling.

The aim and central objective of the Doctoral Program was the well-balanced connection of scientific instruction and research in Cognitive Science. The education in the Doctoral Program was made up of two components. On the one hand, the students had the opportunity to visit regular courses of the university to deepen their knowledge in specific areas and to broaden their knowledge with respect to the interdisciplinary perspective of the program. In addition, the Doctoral Program offered autumn courses of one week per year in co-operation with two other Doctoral Programs (Freiburg and Saarbrücken). A course-plan designed individually for each doctoral student served to educate in several disciplines at once.

On the other hand, the students carried out the work on their theses in close contact with their interdisciplinary team of supervisors in the context of six research groups. Integrating doctoral students in interdisciplinary research groups offered them a regular forum for the exchange of ideas under thorough guidance of corresponding professors and lecturers at all stages of their course of studies.

The manifold doctoral projects of the doctoral students as well as the participating professors and lecturers encouraged the development of important interdisciplinary contributions to cognitive science. By its conception of scientific instruction and research the Doctoral Program in Cognitive Science succeeded in establishing intrapersonal interdisciplinarity out of interpersonal interdisciplinarity.

Taken together, 64 doctoral students joined the program (Philosophy: 14, Linguistics: 16, Psychology: 14, Computer Science: 17). In addition, 20 scientists joined the program in postdoctoral positions.

If you have any questions, contact grkk-koord@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

Graduiertenkolleg Kognitionswissenschaft
Universität Hamburg
Vogt-Kölln-Str. 30
D-22527 Hamburg

Tel.:+49 40 / 42883 2382
Fax: + 49 40 / 42883 2385

 

Scientific program: Research groups


 

Some posters in English by doctoral and postdoctoral students of the Doctoral Program in Cognitive Science

 
Annekatrin Klopp Differences in visual and haptic grasping space and near scale space perception
Annette Leßmöllmann Pragmatics of Space
Angela Nachtigall Visual analogical reasoning
Barbara Kaup The Representation of Negated States of Affairs
Claudia Ruff The Grammaticalisation of Possession: Comparing the Acquistion of Possessive Constructions in German- and Italian-speaking children
Cristina Trujillo The Role of Sonority in Second Language Acquisition
Olaf Ziebell Top-down Processes in early vision
Pilar Larranaga Ergative Languages, Accusative Languages: the Acquisition of Case by Bilingual Children
Rik Eshuis Prototypical Spatial Relations
Steffen Egner Modeling the Role of Visual Attention in Object Recognition
Soenke Ziesche Processes of Perspectivation during Language Production
Laszlo Nagy Prag: A Model for Processing Conditional Utterances
Jens von Berg A formal mapping model for striate cortex
Emile van der Zee Language and Space

 
 

Graduiertenkolleg Kognitionswissenschaft
Universität Hamburg
Vogt-Kölln-Str. 30
D-22527 Hamburg 		Tel.: 040 / 42883 2382
Fax: 040 / 42883 2385
e-mail: grkk-koord@informatik.uni-hamburg.de
Last change: September 2000