Head of Unit: Professor Klaus Oberauer

Welcome to the Cognition Lab at University of Zurich

Started in February 2009, we investigate human cognition. Our main goal is to understand why intellectual abilities are limited – in short: why are we not smarter than we are?

We focus on working memory, a system with limited capacity that makes the information that we need for our current thinking available. Previous research has shown that the capacity limit of working memory is the main limiting factor for our reasoning ability, and therefore we try to illuminate the structure and processing of that system. To this end we use experiments, correlational studies, and mathematical modelling of cognitive processes (e.g., simulations with neural networks).