Introduction to the field of psychology. Provides a survey of basic concepts, theories, and research methods. Topics include: thinking critically with psychological science; neuroscience and behavior; sensation and perception; learning; memory; thinking, language, and intelligence; motivation and emotion; personality; psychological disorders and therapy; and social psychology.

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 considered.

This course will serve as an introduction to research methods in psychology, with the goal of understanding research design, analysis and writing. Topics include examining the variety of methods used in psychology research, understanding research ethics, developing empirical hypotheses, designing experiments, understanding statistical concepts, interpreting results, and writing research and review papers in APA style. This is a required course for all psychology majors, and is restricted to students in the psychology program.

This course is intended for students in the psychology major to integrate material covered in earlier courses and examine broad topics in Psychology. The specific topics covered will vary from semester to semester. This course is an opportunity for faculty and students to examine issues that transcend sub-disciplines in psychology. Students will read original research and examine influential theories relevant to the topic.

This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate experimental research expertise, while being guided by faculty advisors. The topic to be studied is up to the student, who must find a faculty advisor before signing up for the course. Students will be supervised by the advisor as they conduct their literature review, develop the research question or hypothesis, develop the study methodology and materials, construct all necessary IRB materials, run subjects, and analyze the results of their study. This course will culminate in an APA style paper and poster presentation reporting the results of the research. 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, will extend the theoretical understanding of their previous work (or of the previous work of another researcher), and go well beyond any similar projects that they might have done in any of their previous courses.

This course is for students involved in a faculty-led laboratory research experience in psychology that can be considered original in nature. Note that this course cannot be used in place of the co-op requirement. This course is graded as pass/fail only. This course can be taken as 1-4 credits. Each credit is worth 37.5 hours of research during the semester (examples include testing human or animal subjects in the lab, participating in lab meetings, presenting research at conferences, working on a publication, etc.).

This course will survey theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the nature of the mental processes involved in attention, object recognition, learning and memory, reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, and language. The course presents a balance between historically significant findings and current state of-the-art research. Readings that have structured the nature and direction of scientific debate in these fields will be discussed. The course also includes discussions of methodology and practical applications. Students will have opportunities to develop their research skills and critical thinking by designing research studies in cognitive psychology.

Practicum open to MSc Experimental Psychology students. This course gives the student first-hand experience in the field of Psychology. The experience may involve a specific research project or other relevant professional development projects independent of the student’s thesis research. Students are closely supervised by a faculty member and will develop skills and gain experience in relevant advanced research and professional development in Experimental Psychology.