Although relatively modest in size, the Cognitive Research Group encompasses a wide variety of research interests, ranging from highly theoretical pursuits through to several different avenues of applied research. Among the more theoretical pursuits an interest in the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres of the brain is probably the main research theme shared by staff with primary interest in this group. Recent and current investigations of hemispheric function include linguistic and emotional processing, implicit and explict memory, lexical representation, and sentence comprehension. Other areas of theoretical interest include cognitive development and individual differences in intelligence, personality and cognitive performance, intra-individual differences in cognitive performance, goal monitoring and maintenance, cognitive processes in musical perception, cognitive processes in arithmetic, and creativity.

Research into topics relevant to a somewhat more applied perspective is also carried out by members of this research group. For example, some current and planned research programmes are targeting essentially clinical problems such as the relationship between alexithymia and traumatic brain injury, conscious and non-conscious cognitive processes associated with anxiety and depression, and neurocognitive effects resulting from methamphetamine dependence. Other applied research programmes are oriented toward human factors and involve studies of human performance in the context of shiftwork, circadian disruption, fatigue, environment stressors, and psychopharmacology.