Understanding the learning process is basic to a great many human activities. Unlike many psychological processes, understanding learning is difficult without some understanding of the behind-the-scenes activities of neurons that make learning possible. The purpose of the course is to explore a set of mechanisms that could provide an understanding of how the mind and the environment interact in the learning process. These mechanisms will be examined not only in terms of their contribution to flexible and useful information processing, but also in terms of why some conditions are more or less supportive of effective learning.

Four major groups of mechanisms will be studied:

• Managing potentially overwhelming input
• Selective Learning
• Knowledge integration
• Control mechanisms that modulate all of the above mechanisms, creating differential reactions to the important vs. the unimportant, to the relevant vs. the irrelevant.

This is a conceptually-oriented course; it does not assume a background in mathematics or programming. There are no prerequisites. A wide variety of people take this course, including students from Architecture and Urban Planning, Business Administration, Computer Science, Education, Engineering, Information, Natural Resources and Environment, and Nursing.

For more information, please contact S. Kaplan: skap@umich.edu

This course will not be taught again before 2007.