This course offers an introduction to the psychology of the human individual and focuses on topics having to do with adjustment, disorders, development, personality, and social environment of the person. This course also provides an overview of the history of the development of psychology and the research methods used in psychology. Through this course, students will gain an understanding of human behaviour and will learn to become critical consumers of information that is available to them through media and other sources.
This course offers an introduction to the psychology of the human individual, focusing on topics having to do with biological processes; sensation and perception; consciousness; learning; memory; thought and language; intelligence; and motivation and emotion. This course will also provide an overview of how psychology developed and the research methods used in psychology. Through this course, students will gain an understanding of human behaviour and will become critical consumers of information that is available through the media and other sources.
This course will give students the basis for understanding research design, specifically methods commonly used in psychology. Topics will include reliability and validity, surveys, experiments, and interviews. Students will be exposed to processes involved in writing a research proposal, such as the design of an experiment, literature review, and APA format. Both qualitative and quantitative designs will be addressed.
This course involves a study of developmental processes across the lifespan. It will look at the interaction between environmental and biological processes, maturation and learning factors, and how these interact with social influences in the developing person.
Social psychology is the study of human behaviour in its social context dealing with the impressions we form of others and emphasizing the influence of group membership and interactions upon important psychological processes. Topics include: non-verbal language/body language, persuasion, propaganda, attitudes, prejudice, discrimination, prosocial behaviour, love/relationships, charismatic leaders and cults.
An integrative course examing various perspectives on the study of the person.
The objectives of this course are to introduce the student to important concepts, phenomena, experimental techniques, and theoretical issues in the field of cognitive psychology. As cognitive psychology is the scientific study of how people think, this course will cover how people attend, encode, represent and understand, as well as solve problems, make decisions, and communicate their thoughts. The course will involve an assessment of current theoretical issues and experimental methodology. Whenever possible, links to real-life situations will be considered. An additional objective is to enhance your ability to critically evaluate and critique published research.
This course examines cognitive, social, and physical development from the prenatal period to late childhood. Topics include the effects of early deprivation, language development, bullying, and the effects of different parenting styles.
An in-depth study of adolescent development with special reference to adolescent identity from a female and male perspective, and with attention to the relationship of physiological, cognitive and sociological dimensions.
This course will examine theory and research in the psychological study of emotion and motivation. Topics will include theories of emotion such as basic emotions and cognitive appraisal theories, culture and emotion, cognition and emotion, empathy, goal construal, and self-determination theory of motivation.
Many environmental problems are caused by the mismatch between activities we undertake to meet our needs and the processes necessary for ecological maintenance. As the science of human behaviour, psychology can be an important contributor to developing sustainable environmental practices. This class will consider psychological theory and research on factors that can potentially influence whether we behave responsibly or irresponsibly with respect to the natural environment. The goal is to develop effective strategies to facilitate private and public pro-environmental behaviour, based on a clear understanding of human nature.
The objective of this course is to examine various facets of human memory using research from cognitive and neuroscience perspectives. In addition to class lectures, students are expected to read and give in-class presentations on a variety of journal articles on various topics, such as working memory, declarative and non-declarative long-term memory systems.
Psycholinguistics is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire language. The focus of this course is on how individuals construct a mental representation of a text. We will examine how this mental representation is affected by the structure of language, the arrangement of sentences, readers’ general knowledge about the world, schema, reading perspective, and personal characteristics of the reader.
An in-depth examination of consciousness as it is viewed from a particular perspective in Psychology. Individual faculty will present current ideas and research on consciousness in their area of interest (e.g. Neuropsychology, Cognitive, Humanistic, Transpersonal, Non-Western, etc.). This is not a survey course.
This course explores the nature of writing about the Holocaust through a study of literary and other texts that implicate readers in the psychological aspects of the Holocaust. Readings will include psychological studies, as well as literary and historical texts, and will highlight the complexity of studying the Holocaust.
A survey of recent theory and research in the area of infant cognition. Topics will include research in attention, memory, metacognition, language, and decision making in older adults.
This class examines a wide range of cognitive research and considers its implications for and applications to applied psychological practice (e.g., psychotherapy, patient education, assessment, forensics). Cognitive areas including memory, attention, category judgment, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, and metacognition.