Psychology

Develops knowledge of psychological disorders and mental illness as well as empathy for individuals with these disorders and their families. Focus will be on disorders commonly seen in adulthood, including cognitive decline. There will be discussion of the development and presentation of disorders and the role of family, communities and other contexts. Offered every spring.

Provides a general introduction to contemporary psychological theory and research of lifespan human development. This course focuses on the cognitive, emotional and social transformations that take place during infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Students form small research teams to undertake a psychological case study of a single child. Offered every fall.

Introduction to experimental design and the analysis of research data in psychology. Topics include methods for observing, measuring and describing behavior. Students will learn to use the statistical software JASP or R in data description and analysis. Offered every semester.

This course provides an introduction to psycholinguistics, which is the study of the mental representations and processes involved in language comprehension, production, and acquisition. Class discussion will be based on academic articles, covering such issues as speech perception, lexical access, and sentence processing. Issues on bilingual language processing will also be discussed.

This course explores the neurological mechanisms that support stress reduction methodology- including pharmacological and nonpharmacological methods such as music, aromatherapy and meditation. Biological and environmental factors that may impact the development of neural systems involved in stress will also be explored, including chronic stressors such as racism, misogyny and poverty.

This course covers the mental processes that underline human thought and behavior, such as attention, memory, comprehension, reasoning, problem-solving and language. Considers established and current theoretical models, research methods and experimental results.

This course covers the physiological bases of neural communication, addiction, psychiatric disorders, sex and eating. During this course, students work in groups to try to replicate the findings of a published research article. Offered every fall.

This course examines the ways in which culture influences the ways that people think, feel and behave. Students will explore a variety of cultural contexts.

Focuses on how children’s cognitive processes and mental representations change from infancy to
adolescence. Theoretical claims, empirical findings and methodological issues are critically
evaluated. Topics include children’s visual and auditory perception, language and literacy,
learning and memory, mathematical and spatial thinking, logical and scientific reasoning, problem
solving, theory of mind and social cognition.

The first half of this course will focus on infant development from conception to toddlerhood. Topics during this part of the course will include prenatal development, neurological and motor development, language acquisition, and cognitive and socio-emotional growth. The second half of the course will focus on the psychology of death and dying. Topics will include physiological and psychological aspects of the dying process, and the psychology of grief and loss. Offered every spring.

This course will focus on psychological theories and empirical research related to the acculturation process as well as helping students gain an understanding of the lived experience of immigration related challenges.

Surveys major approaches to psychotherapy and the most important contributions of each approach to contemporary clinical work. Includes videos and case readings of actual therapy sessions. Also includes a lab in which students learn basic listening and core counseling skills.

This course explores historical controversies over health disparities—access to health care, racialization of disease, inferior treatments—and relates these disparities to social inequalities structured by race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship status. This course will also examine how racism functions as a chronic stressor that contributes to current racial health disparities in the United States.

The scientific study of what enables individuals and communities to thrive. Uses readings, lectures and discussions to investigate such topics as happiness, subjective well-being, character strength, gratitude and resiliency. Offered every fall.

This course will cover the psychological, physiological and pharmacological aspects of both legal and illegal drug use as well as abuse. The class will examine the effects of drugs on both an individual level as well as a societal level.

All majors are required to design and conduct an independent empirical research project as part of the comprehensive exam. Usually these will be experimental or correlational research designs.

This is a 0 credit experience which includes the Comprehensive Exam.