Global Arc

The purpose of the course is to provide in-depth coverage of some of the most popular statistical methods used in psychological research. This course will be particularly beneficial to students as they consider how to design and analyze their senior thesis. Also, for those students interested in graduate school in Psychology, this course will provide an extremely solid foundation for graduate-level work in research and statistics. More generally, this course will provide students with critical thinking skills that will prove beneficial in many domains. This course is open to PSY concentrators only.

The objective of this course is to provide advanced students in cognitive science, psychology, and computer science with the skills to develop computational models of human cognition. Computational modeling is one of the central methods in cognitive science research, and can help to provide insight into how people solve the challenging problems posed by everyday life, as well as how to bring computers closer to human performance for some of these problems. The course will explore three ways in which researchers have attempted to formalize cognition-symbolic approaches, neural networks, and probability and statistics.

What are the factors that affect people's scientific and religious beliefs? Are scientific and religious beliefs the same sorts of things, or do they differ in fundamental ways? This seminar will examine what cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, as well as philosophy and perhaps anthropology and sociology, can tell us about the answers to these questions. While we will focus on science and religion as distinct and consequential domains of belief, the goal is to develop a broader understanding of the varied roles of belief, how different belief are (or are not) integrated, and how beliefs change (or resist change).

This course examines how social, behavioral and cultural factors influence human behavior and the conceptualization of mental health and psychopathology, with a focus on current, controversial topics. Students will examine the ways their understanding of mental and physical health and well-being are shaped by their own values and assumptions, as well as societal constructs and structures such as the health care system. The class is designed to promote cultural competence in diagnosis, treatment and research strategies.

An examination of various topics in social and personality psychology not emphasized in other courses. The topic and prerequisites will vary from year to year.

Survey of the growth of ideas on the role of the brain in sensation, cognition, movement and mental disease, particularly in classical antiquity and 18th century to 20th century Europe. Course is composed of lectures, discussion and student presentations.

Attitudes matter. Throughout the history of the world, people have taken extraordinary steps to support a set of attitudes and beliefs that helped to bring about a better world. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King led societies to new views of human dignity by their written words and their behaviors. Every day, people advocate for their ideals. They persuade and organize in the service of bringing about a world that is closer to the paragon in which they believe.

This course explores how social psychological theory and research have been used in the interest of social change, and how social change has inspired theoretical or methodological developments in social psychology. To do so, it explores major ideas, theories, and findings of social psychology and their applied status. The course is organized around topics of social stasis and change, including conflict and peace, gender and sexuality, authority and legitimacy, identity and culture, environmental behavior, health, and economics.

The adult human brain is an amazing system: With areas of cognitive specialization that are robustly interconnected and work together in networks to support our quick and adaptive behavior. In contrast, young infants have markedly slower neural responses and few long-range connections between brain regions. We will read the primary literature and discuss pivotal questions in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience: To what extent are infants born with cognitive or neural specialization or does specialization develop? How do babies and children learn? How much does experience matter in neural and cognitive development?

An introduction to the main principles of organization of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). We will compare monkey and human PPCs, covering topics including encoding of eye movements, number and visual motion representations, processing of object information, and attentional functions. We will emphasize the pathology resulting from damage to PPC by discussing syndromes like optic ataxia and hemispatial neglect. We will present a 'hands on' science experience by drawing on current lab research, focusing on the design and analyses of 'real' experiments on the PPC with opportunities to attend ongoing functional imaging studies.