Freshman seminar acquaints students with research in psychology at RIT, career opportunities available to psychology majors, assists in exploration of individual career goals and aids students in planning a curriculum strategy that will match their goals. Required course for freshman psychology majors.

Credits: 1 (offered annually)

Back to top

This course is an introduction to the scope of topics and methodology of psychology. Topics include aims, methods, neuroscience, sensation, perception, learning, memory, intelligence, motivation, normal and abnormal personality, and social psychology. Required course for psychology majors.

Credits: 4 (offered quarterly)

Back to top

This is a course on how to write scientific articles. Basic grammar and style; structure of an empirical, theoretical, or review article; and citation format will all be covered. Students will learn by writing papers, by critiquing the papers of their peers, and by taking exams. Required course for psychology majors. Cannot be taken for liberal arts credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent
Credits: 4 (offered regularly).

Back to top

Honors psychology is a state-of-the-art survey of major subfields in psychology, the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Topics include the biological basis of behavior, perception, learning, memory, intelligence, emotions, social relations, personality and psychopathology. Besides textbook reading, students will read and discuss current publications on each topic we explore.

Credits: 4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course will cover descriptive and inferential statistics. Special attention will be given to psychological applications, conceptualization, & interpretation of statistics, computer-assisted data analysis and reporting of results. This course must be taken prior to higher-level psychology courses, especially experimental psychology and track courses. Required course for psychology majors.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits: 4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

An introduction to the logic of experimental research and application of the scientific methods to the study of behavior. Emphasis on stating empirically testable hypotheses, designing and conducting experiments, and writing research papers in APA style. Required course for psychology majors.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 315, 350

Credits: 4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course explores human development from conception through adolescence. The developmental approach provides the opportunity to integrate many areas of psychological research such as cognition, personality, perception, social interaction and moral development as they apply to human development. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course examines the major assumptions, theories and implications of "growth" or humanistic psychology. Students study human beings as dynamic, complex creatures who shape themselves and their world through the choices they make each day and whose best hope for realizing their individual and collective potential is an accurate understanding of what human persons need to grow psychologically and what societal conditions seem to foster such growth. Institute elective for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor, and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits: 4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course encompasses the psychology of the span of life from young adulthood through the middle years. The developmental approach, presented in an interdisciplinary framework, provides a systematic orientation to the study of the individual during early adulthood. Institute elective for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course examines how people perceive, learn, represent, remember and use information. Contemporary theory and research are surveyed in such areas as attention, pattern and object recognition, memory, knowledge representation, language acquisition and use, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, creativity, and intelligence. Applications in artificial intelligence and human/technology interaction may also be treated. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course gives a general overview of those areas of social psychology currently under the most intensive investigation and likely to be of most interest to the student, including nonverbal communication, attraction aggression and group effects. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course covers topics of all sense modalities with emphasis on visual perception. It traces what happens to the physical stimulus as our sensory systems analyze it to produce complicated perceptions of the world around us. Many complex perceptual phenomena draw upon explanations at the physiological, psychological and cognitive levels. Required course for psychology majors in the visual perception track. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent
Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course examines the strengths and weaknesses of the major psychological theories of personality. Methods of assessing personality, research and applications of theory to real-life situations are included in the evaluation of each theory. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course examines the major categories of mental disorder not only from the descriptive point of view, but also in terms of the major theoretical explanations of the causes of disorder. The major treatment modalities also are covered. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

Industrial and organizational psychology provides consideration of principles as well as application of current research in industrial
psychology, with particular reference to personnel selection, training, motivation, morale, performance appraisal, leadership and communication. Required course for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an
elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

Students learn the skills of changing their behavior by controlling their environment and the consequences of their behavior. Elective for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course addresses the question "why do people do things?" It explores traditional motivational topics (e.g. arousal, hunger, sexual interest, emotions, drug-use, and achievement) and organizes them around recurring motivational themes. Basic biological systems are examined, followed by behavioral and cognitive approaches, emotions and finally, humanistic approaches are considered.  Course activities include experiential activities, class discussion, a motivational plan, practical applications log, and lectures.

Prerequisite: 0514-210

Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

This course will view death from a social-psychological perspective. After dealing with topics such as the leading causes of death, attitudes toward death, suicide, and American funeral practices, it will focus on such questions as how people can better cope with their own mortality and that of loved ones, and how people can help others face death, and help themselves and others during periods of bereavement. Elective for psychology majors. Part of the psychology concentration and may also be taken as an elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

Examines the relevance and applicability of present psychological theory and research to the understanding of the development and behavior of women. Major topics include psychological and biological sex differences, psychological theories of women's development, the relationship between female personality development and various sociocultural factors, women's place in society, women and their bodies, and women and mental health. May be taken as an elective. Cross-listed with women's and gender studies.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent
Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

This course examines religions as cultures that, like other "ways of life," face the task of attracting or creating new members, maintaining their loyalty, providing them with a coherent world view and satisfying their basic needs. Suggests how psychological processes such as identity information, attribution, self-actualization, brainwashing, conflict, denial, projection and
repression may be applied and misapplied in efforts to understand religious belief and behavior. Elective for psychology majors. Part
of the religious studies concentration, the psychology concentration and minor, and may also be taken as an elective.

Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

The program requires that students complete a cooperative education experience for two quarters between the sophomore and senior years of course work.  The co-op experience is in a psychology-related field and does not carry academic credit.

Back to top

This course presents different topics in psychology, focusing on current research areas. It is taught in a seminar format, and uses original articles and classroom discussion to cover material related to the topic. The topics covered vary from year to year, but include evolutionary psychology, positive psychology, drugs and behavior, rumor psychology, intelligence, sexuality, morality, health psychology or other topics of interest to faculty and students not covered in other courses. This course can count towards any of the psychology tracks. Students may take this course for liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-Requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered annually)

Back to top

This course will examine current psychological, physiological and neuropsychological research on attention. We will examine orienting, visual search, filtering, and vigilance. You will learn about a wide variety of topics related to current thinking about attention, our capacity for information processing, and how these relate to brain function. A unifying theme will be to examine how we perceive information that is not presented at fixation. Thus, there will be a focus on picking up information from the visual periphery. We will cover research based on psychophysical studies, standard experimental psychology techniques and advanced brain imaging methods. 

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits: 4 (offered in the Spring Quarter)

Back to top

Perhaps the most significant cognitive capacity of human beings is their use and understanding of language. This course examines the
structure of language and its relationship to thought, and surveys contemporary theory and research on the comprehension and production of spoken and written language. Applications such as artificial speech recognition are discussed. The course also surveys the psychological literature on reasoning and problem-solving and
examines attempts in artificial intelligence to simulate human performance in these areas. Required information processing track course for psychology majors. Students may take this course for liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 443
Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

Explores judgment and decision-making processes and focuses on the social and cognitive aspects of complex information processing. Topics include selective perception, memory and hindsight biases, framing effects, heuristics and biases, social influences, group processes and common errors. Required course for psychology majors in the visual perception and information processing track. Students may take this course for liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 443

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course reviews current memory research within a larger historical perspective. It presents the multistore or modal model of memory with an in-depth examination of the evidence used to support the model. It also includes topics such as memory structures, levels of processing, implicit and explicit memory, schemas, signal detection theory and global memory models. Theories of learning are clearly meaningful for the study of memory. With the new developments in connectionist models of learning, theories of learning again assume importance in scientific study. Required information processing track
course for psychology majors. Students may take this course for liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 443)
Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course explores human color perception from the psychophysical perspective with coverage of relevant optics, neurophysiology, and vision science. Among the topics covered are theories of color vision, congenital and acquired color vision deficiencies, and evolution of color vision. Required for psychology majors in the visual perception track. Students may take this course for liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 445

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course will survey topics in depth and motion perception. A foundation for understanding the physiological basis of depth and motion perception will be established. Students will read, critically analyze, and discuss research articles on depth perception, including pictorial depth cues and stereopsis. Students will read, analyze and discuss research on motion perception, including current theories and models of motion detection. Students will gain a solid background in these areas of perceptual research and become well-versed in the language and process of scientific discourse in experimental psychology. 

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered in the Winter Quarter)

Back to top

The course provides background to the development of current psychological perspectives. It examines beliefs, practices, achievements and limitations of various systems of psychology from Greek times to the late 20th century. Part of the psychology concentration and minor. Students may take this course as liberal arts or institute elective credit.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210 or equivalent

Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

This course is an introduction to the neurobiological basis of cognition and behavior. Topics include hemispheric specialization,
localization of function, brain injury, neuro-psychological testing, and functional neuro-imaging. Emphasis is on higher brain functions such as language, memory, and visuo-spatial processing, with an evolutionary perspective. Laboratory work focuses on EEG correlates of attention and cognition. Part of the biopsychology track for the psychology majors. This course is open to qualified non-majors as a
liberal arts or institute elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400
Credits:  4 (offered occasionally)

Back to top

A comprehensive introduction to the biological foundations of schizophrenia, depression, autism, bipolar disorder, Tourette's syndrome, and other mental disorders. Topics include neuropsychological testing, etiology, and structural and functional neuroimaging. Laboratory work will focus on language and cognitive function in one or two of these disorders. Part of the biopsychology and clinical psychology tracks for the psychology degree program.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 447

Credits:  4 (offered Spring Quarter)

Back to top

The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the field of clinical psychology. The course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interested in learning more about this specific field. Students will learn about the primary tasks of a clinical psychologist, including fundamentals of assessment, clinical research, conceptualizing problems, and psychotherapy. In addition, students will learn about the educational and professional behavior, and controversial issues within the field. Part of the clinical psychology track for psychology majors. This course is open to qualified non-majors as a liberal arts or institute elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 447

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course will explore the theories, methods, and applications of psychological testing. The advantages and drawbacks of psychological testing in general, and selected tests in particular, will be emphasized. The use of tests in clinical and other applied areas of psychology is based on several assumptions. First, assessment is apt to be more useful if based upon reliable and valid information.
Second, improving one's knowledge of tests will help students gather meaningful information about people and environments. Third, it is desirable to design intervention plans based on accurate assessment data, and to use data to evaluate intervention outcomes. Required course in the clinical psychology track for psychology majors. This course is open to qualified non-majors as a liberal arts or institute
elective.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400, 447 Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course will explore the theory and methods used to evaluate interventions in the field of clinical psychology and related human services. Topics to be covered will include within subjects/single subjects experiments, between-subjects experiments/clinical trials, and general program evaluation. Two primary objectives are to help students develop an appreciation for the importance of scientific evaluations of psychotherapy and other interventions and to develop skills for evaluating the efficacy of clinical interventions. Part of the clinical psychology track for the psychology degree program.

Pre-requisites:  0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered Spring Quarter)

Back to top

A comprehensive introduction to psychoactive drugs. Topics include pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, synaptic transmission, drugs of abuse and drugs used in the treatment of mental disorders. Part of the biopsychology track for the psychology degree program.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered Spring Quarter)

Back to top

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to psychophysiology. Students will learn about various psychophysiological measures and their use in the study of topics such as attention and emotion. Topics may include mind-body interaction, somatic and autonomic nervous system function, central and peripheral physiological measures (e.g. EKG, EMG, cardiac reactivity, skin conductance responses), psychophysiological research methods, and applied psychophysiology. Required course in the biopsychology track for
psychology majors.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate independent, experimental research expertise. Students
are guided by faculty advisors in conducting experimental research on an issue of their choice. This course will culminate in an approved
APA style introduction and methods sections for the student's senior project. Students will be supervised by the instructor as they
conduct their senior project literature review, write the introduction, develop the research question or hypothesis, develop the study methodology and materials, construct all necessary IRB materials, and write a methods section. Restricted to psychology
majors only.

Pre-requisites: 0514-210, 350, 400

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top

This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate independent, experimental research expertise. Students
design the method, run subjects, and analyze the results of their study. Students write up the project in APA format. Passing this write-up qualifies the students for the writing requirement in psychology. Because senior project is the culmination of a student's scientific research learning experience in the psychology major, it
is expected that the project will be somewhat novel and will extend the theoretical understanding of their previous work. Each student will be supervised by the instructor as they collect data, analyze those data, write the results, discussion, and abstract sections of
their project and present the study. Grades will be based upon entire manuscript (including introduction and methods section).
Restricted to psychology majors only.

Pre-requisites: 0514-596

Credits:  4 (offered regularly)

Back to top