Psychology

The course covers human psychological development from childhood to old age and methods used in research in development psychology. It describes theoretical perspectives on personality and related fields of application. The course consists of four modules:  Child psychology, where the psychological and biological development during childhood and how this development is affected by genetic factors and different living conditions. Some of the topics addressed are self-regulation, emotional attachment, social understanding, and friendship. Furthermore, the module covers the research methods used to generate knowledge of child development. Youth psychology where the psychological and biological development during adolescence and its relation to the surrounding environment is reviewed. The ability of the teenager to face challenges and stress factors, such as increased demands for independence and personal views are included. Module 3 covers Personality psychology and the individual differences and different personality functions of adult individuals, which are viewed from different theoretical perspectives. The theories are presented together with a critical review of methods, testing, and fields of application. Lastly. the deployments during adulthood and the aging process based on theories of developmental, personality and social psychology are reviewed. Different aspects of aging are addressed, such as stress, mental and physical health, and ill health.

The course covers key topics in personality science including (but not limited to) its overarching goals and mission within psychology, measurement, development, and prediction of real world outcomes. Topics include the scope of personality science; personality perception and assessment; the units and structure of personality; personality traits associations with life outcomes; age, gender, cultural and regional variation in personality; genetic and environmental influences on personality; main principles development; key personality theories, and personality as a unifying model for psychopathology.

This course provides an overview of the biological mechanisms behind psychology. It covers such topics as: neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, psychopharmacology, depression and its effects on the brain, neurobiology of the memory-emotion interaction, as well as clinical neurobiology of attachment. The course also provides an opportunity for hands-on experience with electrophysiological equipment.

The course covers human psychological development from childhood to old age and methods used in research in development psychology. It describes theoretical perspectives on personality and related fields of application. The course consists of four modules, this is the second module: Personality Psychology. The module covers the individual differences and different personality functions of adult individuals, which are viewed from different theoretical perspectives. The theories are presented together with a critical review of methods, testing, and fields of application.

The course examines current theoretical models of defining complex trauma and developmental trauma, as well as the main assessment and intervention tools. The course reviews developmental trauma contexts, brain development in relation to trauma, classification systems, assessment of developmental trauma, and current intervention proposals. The course provides theoretical knowledge about the major adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and, in particular, traumatic developmental conditions involving the parental caregiving system. The role of family dynamics and attachment patterns in the context of traumatic developmental frameworks is explored, and implications for relational development, self, affect regulation and, subsequently, parental function are presented. The course addresses: the definition of the constructs of complex trauma and early relational trauma; current positions and diagnostic classification systems; the clinical frameworks; the context of assessment and tools for the assessment of early relational trauma and developmental trauma; and intervention programs, with an emphasis on developmental interventions. The course requires students to have previous knowledge of the main constructs of Dynamic Psychology and Developmental Psychology, theories and tools of psychological assessment in childhood and adolescence, the theoretical and technical basis of psychological interviewing in developmental age and with parents, some knowledge of the neuro-biological basis of development and behavior, and some aspects of research methodology and data analysis in developmental and clinical settings as prerequisites.

In this course, students cover topics in human and machine inductive inference. In the first half of the course, students are exposed to the problem of induction and how the problem manifests in a range of domains such as object recognition, categorization, and learning. The focus of the course then turns to analogy and relational reasoning, areas were humans make generalizations across situations and domains with much more success and flexibility than non-human animals and conventional machine learning approaches. Students cover research in analogical reasoning as well as the development of analogical thinking and the representations that support analogy and generalization. The second half of the course focuses on computational theories of how humans and artificial (i.e., machine) systems perform induction and generalization. Students cover broadly the main approaches to representing knowledge and modelling human cognition (symbolic and connectionist models). They then cover how these approaches have been leveraged to explain human induction and learning with focus on traditional production system models, Bayesian models, neural network models, and symbolic-connectionist models.

This course addresses the historical and philosophical background to current debates in psychology. Emphasis is placed on the development of critical analysis of alternative models and levels of explanations of behavior, and the ability to relate conceptual debates in psychology to issues in the real world.

In this course, students gain an in-depth understanding of what makes consumers buy some products and not others, how various psychological characteristics influence our consumer behaviors, how companies can best try to meet consumers' wants and needs, among other topics. Building on a general understanding of marketing, this course develops a useful, conceptual understanding of psychological theories relevant to the study of consumer behavior.