Psychology

This course examines important conceptual frameworks and theory within social psychology and the social sciences generally. Māori perspectives and exemplars will be a significant emphasis within the course. 

This course provides a study of the developmental psychology of school-age children and the influence of education on their development. It begins with discussion of the general theories of development before exploring physical and psychomotor development, cognitive development, development of communication, language, and personality, and social development. The course also examines the changes in learning and motivation in education as well as development in the educational contexts of school, family, peers, media, and technology. 

This course enhances students’ knowledge of emotion science and their capacity to evaluate empirical data and current emotion theories, show how findings from a range of methodologies contribute to our understanding of emotion and strategies for enhancing emotional wellbeing, and enables students to discuss and evaluate contemporary research in written and oral formats, both independently and in groups. 

This course is focused on the topic of infant and early childhood cognition, and draws on our knowledge of the developing brain and findings from neuroimaging. It begins with an introduction to the field of infant cognitive development, an overview of brain development, and current methodology for studying infants and their brains. The course covers a new topic each week, including both domains of knowledge (objects, number, faces, social reasoning, morality) and mechanisms of early learning (information expectation, information seeking, statistical learning). The course provides a state of the art on cognitive development and focuses on the most recent research that has transformed our understanding of what and how infants learn.

This course introduces students to current models within clinical psychology and describe the role of clinical psychology within a range of mental health services. Students are introduced to prevailing models within clinical psychology and examine approaches to the aetiology, assessment, formulation, intervention, and evaluation of psychological presentations across the life span.

This course aims to develop a new perspective to increase students’ ability of dealing with complex matters from life and work. We introduce a system thinking derived from ancient Dao philosophy and modern quantum physics, which yields a methodology to be applied to such daily topics as keeping positivity, raising the ability of focusing the attention and of persistence, facing a difficulty, etc. These topics are discussed from a rational and system perspective, which involves a design of a series of methods to work out a solution. The scope is then shifted from personal topics to those of society, with the same system thinking methodology. We intend to create a platform for students to learn how to understand complex systems from both theory and practical sides.

This course analyzes the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health in society. There have been consequences of the pandemic for mental health in the human population. Considering the potential scale of this problem, there is growing need for medicine to integrate knowledge from related subjects, such as psychology, criminology, psychotherapy, and neuroscience, to precisely understand the mechanisms of ill health. This course brings together the discoveries of science with the life stories behind diagnoses to clarify the mechanisms that drive mental health symptoms. In the book, The Myth of Normal, Dr Gabor Maté makes the claim that society is built on a hidden assumption of generational trauma. Trauma disrupts the connection between mind and body. This psychophysiological problem can be diagnosed by doctors as physical and mental health conditions. While diagnostic labels help individuals understand mental health problems to an extent, the individual remains a member of society and its many challenges. Therefore, this course draws upon research taking place at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health to understand resilience in the context of different challenges, such as adolescence, socioeconomic deprivation and war. The course illustrates the mechanisms by which life experiences impact the mind, including the impact of the pandemic on the disconnect between mind and body.

This course provides an introduction to sport and exercise psychology and associated psychological theories and methods. Theories relate to various contexts, including elite sport, sport and exercise at the broader community level, and sport and healthy lifestyle.

Based on the theory of gender research, this course introduces the physiological basis and causes of differences between the sexes, analyzes the social pressures faced by men and women in real society and the disharmony caused by differences in life, and helps us understand the history of the development of gender status, the differences between the sexes in physiology, psychology, behavior, etc., and the theories and skills of getting along between the sexes.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course content includes:

1) From health-related quality of life to dimensions of psychological well-being: the conceptual framework and their process of assessment in clinical psychology.

2) The unifying concept of euthymia and its psychological evaluation.

3) The science of clinimetrics and clinimetric criteria for Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs).

4) Clinimetric approach to the definition and clinical assessment of psychological distress.

5) The experience of psychological suffering: the concept of mental pain and its clinimetric evaluation.

6) The concept of demoralization and its detection based on clinimetric criteria.

7) The Hamilton Rating Scales and the clinical assessment of depression.

8) Somatization, illness denial and the clinimetric domain of psychosomatics.

9) The clinimetric domain of clinical pharmacopsychology.

By the end of the course, students know the theoretical paradigms of mental health as a multidimensional construct and are able to use the appropriate rating scales for a comprehensive assessment of mental health according to clinimetric criteria.