Psychology

In this course, students gain insight into a variety of approaches to ensuring that children grow up healthy and with opportunities to become contributing members of society. The historical roots, current issues, and future challenges related to children’s well-being are addressed. Students gain diverse knowledge and form opinions on a broad spectrum of related topics, including family life, the influence of the turbulent 20th century on youth and education, regional and national differences in educational systems, preventive youth health care, public policy on social services and divorce support, parental leave, and day care provision. Students learn about alternative educational approaches, such as those developed by Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Célestin Freinet, and A. S. Neill. Site visits to relevant museums and exhibitions deepens students’ theoretical learning. The course incorporates guest talks in order to foreground the place of family, schools and child development across societies and cultures.

This course examines sensory and perceptual processes, with an emphasis on psychophysical and scaling methods and experimental techniques. Contents include: psychophysics and scaling, sensory systems, perceptual development, constancies and illusions, and attention.

Theoretical-practical course of the basic cycle whose purpose is for students to understand and explain the relationship between the functioning of the nervous system and human cognition, understanding it as a result of the interaction of widely distributed neural networks. 

This course comprehensively introduces the biological basis of human “mind” and “behavior.” The course covers topics such as the neural basis of sensation and perception; learning; attention; memory; language, and emotion. The course also encourages thinking critically about how the brain and the environment interact.

This course examines the relationship between neuro-biological processes and psychological processes. It focuses on the organization of the nervous system, the role of the neurobiological process in sensory experiences, sleep, attention, arousal, motivation, emotions, learning, memory and language. 

This course looks at the process of first language acquisition by examining the social and cognitive mechanisms that drive language learning in the first few years of life. It is designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of first language acquisition with a focus on spoken language in typical healthy children. The course starts with an exploration of pre-verbal communication in infancy and tracks verbal development during toddlerhood into middle childhood. Overarching issues in linguistic theory, in the form of competing explanations of language acquisition patterns, will be discussed and key debates and current research in the field will be examined.

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

This course delves into psychology and behavior when faced with risk, cognitive biases, and decision making. It discusses emotions and their relevance to economic phenomena and examines the works of Smith, Kahneman and Tversky, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and other names in psychological and behavioral economics.

This course examines various types of psychological disorders falling under psychiatric nomenclature and other behavioral models. It covers theories and research concerning the origin, diagnosis and treatment of these disorders.