Psychology

This course explores the application of psychological principles, theories, and methods of research in studying religious behavior, cognition, and motivation, as well as the role of religion in human life. The course draws on the contributions of other fields of psychology and focuses on the attitudes, values, and experiences of people and their relationship with the supernatural. Topics covered include: the emergence of psychology of religion; approaches to the study of psychology of religion; religious experience; morality; coping and adjustment; and functions of religion in adult life.

This course provides a broad foundation for the study of human social behavior. Topics such as attitudes, social cognition, interpersonal relations and group processes are discussed. One aim of this course is to introduce students to the theories and research of social psychology. A second aim is to help students appreciate how the findings of social psychologists are relevant and applicable to the day-to-day situations in our lives.

This course analyzes the complex nature of language from its structural, functional, and processing dimensions. It explores the functional architecture of the language processing system and the processes involved in comprehension and production.

Autobiographical memory is the ability to remember and reconstruct the past. This course focuses on how people remember their lives, and how cultural factors influence autobiographical remembering. In this context, the course discusses research in cultural differences on cognition and autobiographical memory, especially in cultural life scripts and life stories, as well as childhood amnesia and the reminiscence bump.

This course explores the theoretical background of the development of the neural basis of cognitive function, and basic knowledge of neural development of cognitive functions and methods to study the neural mechanism of cognitive development. The course considers questions such as: What is the nature of developmental change? What are the brain mechanisms underlying cognitive, perceptual, social, and emotional development during infancy and childhood? The course evaluates implications of findings from developmental cognitive neuroscience for broader scientific issues including nature vs. nurture, critical periods in development, and the modularity of mental functions. An integral part of the course is careful consideration of the major methods of developmental cognitive neuroscience including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), recordings of evoked response potentials (ERPs), and behavioral marker tasks. The course devotes particular attention to the unique challenges of applying these methods to the study of infants and children in typical and atypical development. The course requires students to have basic knowledge on general cognitive functions such as perception, attention, language, and memory as a prerequisite.