Cognitive science is a science that studies mind and intelligence, including the intelligent activities from sensory input to complex problem solving, from human individuals to human society, and the nature of human intelligence and machine intelligence. It is the result of the interdisciplinary development of modern psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology and even natural philosophy. The purpose of cognitive science research is to explain and explain how people process information when they complete cognitive activities.

The rise of cognitive science marks that the research on human centered mind and intelligent activities has entered a new stage. The development of cognitive science will further make a great contribution to the intellectualization of information science and technology. Cognitive science is a new frontier science. Studying intelligent information processing theories and methods with cognitive mechanism, exploring the cognitive process and neural mechanism of brain information processing, exploring and implementing new neural computing models, and establishing physically realizable computing models will surely inject new vitality into the development of information technology. Cognitive science is an important part of intelligent science, which studies the brain and mental activity processes of human perception, learning, memory, thought, consciousness and so on.

Higgins R L began to use the term "cognitive science" in 1973. It is generally believed that cognitive science was formally established in 1979. Over the past 50 years, the mainstream and research approach of cognitive science have gradually evolved from the solution of specific mental problems to the theoretical forms of the first and second generations with different styles. Mental computing theory with representation  computing as the core has become the basic core of the first generation program of cognitive science. The second generation of cognitive science takes body related cognition, embedded cognition, extended cognition and generative cognition as its core concepts, sometimes referred to as the 4ec program. In the narrow sense, the concept of body related cognition takes the body as the physical place for the carrying and regulation of cognition, with special emphasis on the important role of multimodal perception of the body movement system in cognition. On the basis of the generalized concept of body involvement, it is emphasized that the basic link of interpreting cognition should be the coupling of brain, body and environment, and cognitive subjects actively interact with the environment.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) jointly proposed "Convergence Technology to improve human quality", taking nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science as the four cutting-edge technologies in the 21st century, and cognitive science as the top priority development field, advocating the integrated development of these four technologies, and describing such a scientific Prospect: convergence technology is guided by cognitive science, Because once we can understand thinking at the four levels of how, why, where and when, we can make it with nanotechnology, realize it with biotechnology and biomedicine, and finally manipulate and control it with information technology to make it work. This will have a great impact on human society. On January 28th, 2013, the European Union launched its flagship "human brain program", which will invest 1 billion euros in research and development in the next 10 years. The goal is to use supercomputers to fully simulate the human brain in multiple segments and layers to help understand the function of the human brain. On April 2, 2013, the United States announced a major plan, "brain research using advanced and innovative neural technology", a brain research program that will last about 10 years and a total of $1billion. The goal is to study the functions of billions of neurons, explore human perception, behavior and consciousness, and hope to find ways to treat Alzheimer's disease (also known as Alzheimer's disease) and other brain related diseases. The China brain program has initially formed a research pattern for the basis of brain cognitive principles, major brain diseases, and brain like intelligence.

This book systematically introduces the concepts and methods of cognitive science, reflects the latest research results in the field of cognitive science, and comprehensively explores the nature and laws of human intelligence and machine intelligence. The book is divided into 15 chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction, which introduces the rise and research content of cognitive science. Chapter 2 discusses the neural basis of brain cognition. Chapter 3 discusses psychological representation. Vision and hearing are important information input and output channels, and the relevant processing is placed in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 respectively. Chapter 4 deals with vision and attention. Chapter 5 focuses on hearing and speech. Chapter 6 discusses cognitive linguistics. Chapter 7 focuses on learning and introduces modern learning theories and methods. Memory is the basis of thinking. Chapter 8 focuses on memory mechanism. Thinking is the core of cognition. Chapter 9 focuses on the form and type of thinking, and how to reason and make decisions. Chapter 10 deals with intellectual development. Chapter 11 briefly introduces emotional problems, which have attracted more and more attention. Chapter 12 discusses consciousness and introduces the latest research progress. Chapter 13 discusses the cognitive model. Chapter 14 introduces cognitive simulation, and constructs a new intelligent system under the guidance of the latest research results of cognitive science. In today's society, social cognition has a distinctive flavor of the times, which is summarized in Chapter 15.

The research work of this book has been supported by the National Key Basic Research and Development Program "Cognitive Computational Model of Brain Computer Collaboration" (no.2013cb329502), "Content Understanding and Semantic Representation of Unstructured Information (images)" (No. 2007cb311004); Support for NSFC Key Projects "Big Data Mining Based on Cloud Computing" (no.61035003), "Research on Intelligent Computing Model Based on Perceptual Learning and Language Cognition" (No.60435010), "New Theories and Methods of Web Search and Mining" (no.60933004); Support for the National 863 High-Tech Project "Massive Web Data Content Management, Analysis and Mining Technology and Large-scale Demonstration Applications" (no.2012aa011003), "Software Autonomous Healing and Self Recovery Technology" (no.2007aa01z132); This book cannot be written without the contributions and support of colleagues in the Intelligent Science Laboratory of the Institute of computing technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The mechanical industry press has given great support to the publication of this book, and I would like to thank you at the same time.

This book can be used as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, cognitive informatics, intelligence science, intelligent robots and other courses, as well as a reference book for researchers engaged in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, cognitive informatics, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, intelligent science, intelligent systems, intelligent control, intelligent robots and other fields.

Cognitive science is a frontier discipline in research and development, and many concepts and theories need to be explored. In addition, the author's level is limited and the writing time is short, so there may be fallacies in the book. Please correct them.