4.4.2 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, e.g.,
how information is represented and transformed in a brain or in a machine. It
consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial
intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics,
anthropology, sociology, and education. It spans many levels of analysis, from
low-level learning and decision mechanisms to high-level logic and planning;
from neural circuitry to modular brain organisation. The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the
Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence
research. In the same decade, the journal Cognitive Science and the Cognitive
Science Society were founded. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive science).
The cognitive processes such as cognitive learning, memory, creative thinking,
problem solving, decision making are being studied by psychologists and have
been contributing to the field of cognitive science. For example, many modern
organisations are using computers for routine kind of decision making.
4.4.3 Psychology and Environmental Sciences An off shoot of human factors engineering, is a relatively recent field of
psychology called environmental psychology . This is a broad area of enquiry
and interdisciplinary in nature. The focus of investigation of environmental
psychology is the interrelationship between the physical environment and human
behaviour and experience(Holahan, 1982). Since its inception, environmental
psychology has attracted scholars, researchers and practitioners from a variety
of disciplines, including sociology, geography, anthropology, medicine,
architecture and planning, as well as psychology (Craik, 1970; Prashanky and
Altman, 1979). The study of human behaviour in physical settings requires the
work of researchers in many social sciences as well as that of architects and
planners responsible for the design for the design of human settings.
According to Holahan (1982), the label “environmental psychology” should be
understood to describe the problem area of the field rather than a disciplinary
restriction. Researchers in environmental psychology investigate wide range of