Reddit mentions of Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind

I'll have a go, but do also try /r/cogsci.

I'm just finishing up my undergrad in industrial psychology and I've been looking around for cognitive science programs for a while.

For a career as a cognitive science researcher you will probably need post-graduate training in cognitive science.

As far as I can tell, cognitive science departments typically accept students for graduate programs with all kinds of backgrounds. Students with bachelor degrees in philosophy, psychology, biology, computer science, linguistics or even mathematics all stand a decent chance.

Cognitive science is interdisciplinary and few universities do interdisciplinary research well. So, cognitive science professors are used to taking in students with biased background lacking in some respect.

So, you don't necessarily need to change majors to pursue cognitive science at post graduate level. If you can take a couple of courses in neuroscience, cognitive or experimental psychology and philosophy of mind, that would improve your chances.

If you don't want to pursue graduate studies, then out of all the undergraduate majors that feed into cognitive science programs, computer science and mathematics are likely going to give you the strongest employment prospects. So you don't necessarily want to change majors.

I think of cognitive science as really just psychological science done properly. Ideally, you could just switch to psychology subjects and hit the ground running, but mainstream psychology is a cesspool of pseudoscientific rubbish. Your very valuable background in mathematics, computer science and engineering will count for almost nothing in most psychology departments.

So I reckon you should finish with a major in computer engineering (perhaps taking a couple of extra courses to fill in some of the gaps) and then pursue graduate training at a strong cognitive science department, if you can.

Also if you haven't yet, have a look at these books:

Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind

Cognitive Science: A Philosophical Introduction

Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science

A History of Modern Experimental Psychology: From James and Wundt to Cognitive Science

The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science

The Oxford Handbook of Computational and Mathematical Psychology

(All available for free at gen.lib.rus.ec)

Also Cambrigde university press will be publishing a new handbook of mathematical and computational psychology soon, so keep your eye out for that.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences is a good general cognitive science journal you should check out too.

If you find some of the work inspiring, look at the people who did the research up and see where they are working.