Prerequisites: BLOCKED CLASS. EVERYONE MUST JOIN WAITLIST TO BE ADMITTED Broad survey of psychological science including: sensation and perception; learning, memory, intelligence, language, and cognition; emotions and motivation; development, personality, health and illness, and social behavior. Discusses relations between the brain, behavior, and experience. Emphasizes science as a process of discovering both new ideas and new empirical results. PSYC UN1001 serves as a prerequisite for further psychology courses and should be completed by the sophomore year.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 and a statistics course (PSYC UN1610 or the equivalent), or the instructor's permission. Corequisites: PSYC UN1421 Introduction to the techniques of research employed in the study of human behavior. Students gain experience in the conduct of research, including design of simple experiments, observation and measurement techniques, and the analysis of behavioral data.
Corequisites:
PSYC UN1420
This course will help students acquire a toolbox of research skills, including knowledge on how to conduct a literature review; generate research questions/hypotheses; write a research proposal; conduct data cleaning, analysis, and visualization; administer surveys; create behavioral tasks; and practice reproducible science. Through scaffolded assignments and peer review, students will be led through the process of creating a research proposal to help demystify the research process.
An introduction to basic concepts in cognitive psychology. Topics include theories and
phenomena in areas such as attention, memory, concepts and categories, language, reasoning,
decision making, and consciousness.
Prerequisites: an introductory course in psychology. Models of judgment and decision making in both certain and uncertain or risky situations, illustrating the interplay of top-down (theory-driven) and bottom-up (data-driven) processes in creating knowledge. Focuses on how individuals do and should make decisions, with some extensions to group decision making and social dilemmas.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 or equivalent introductory course in Psychology This course provides an in-depth survey of data and models of a wide variety of human cognitive functions. Drawing on behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging research, the course explores the neural mechanisms underlying complex cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, and decision making. Importantly, the course examines the logic and assumptions that permit us to interpret brain activity in psychological terms.
This course will provide a broad overview of the field of social neuroscience. We will consider how social processes are implemented at the neural level, but also how neural mechanisms help give rise to social phenomena and cultural experiences. Many believe that the large expansion of the human brain evolved due to the complex demands of dealing with social others—competing or cooperating with them, deceiving or empathizing with them, understanding or misjudging them. What kind of “social brain” has this evolutionary past left us with? In this course, we will review core principles, theories, and methods guiding social neuroscience, as well as research examining the brain basis of processes such as theory of mind, emotion, stereotyping, social group identity, empathy, judging faces and bodies, morality, decision-making, the impact of culture and development, among others. Overall, this course will introduce students to the field of social neuroscience and its multi-level approach to understanding the brain in its social context.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 or PSYC UN1010 or the instructors permission. Examines the principles governing neuronal activity, the role of neurotransmitter systems in memory and motivational processes, the presumed brain dysfunctions that give rise to schizophrenia and depression, and philosophical issues regarding the relationship between brain activity and subjective experience.
Study of behavior in organizational and business-related settings. Examination of such topics as employee motivation and satisfaction, communication patterns, effective leadership strategies, and organization development.
Many of us know a second language. How we use it varies – some use it occasionally, others routinely. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has shed light on the mechanisms associated with the various types of bilingualism, and has shown that using two languages affects a variety of cognitive abilities, starting in infancy and continuing until an old age. The primary findings of recent research in cognitive neuroscience are reviewed and discussed in this course. Bilingualism also has a political facet – governments decide what languages are used in public institutions and taught in schools. This course also evaluates scientific findings on bilingualism for their potential implications on informing parents, educators, and policy makers.
Music is present in every culture around the world and it plays important roles in human existence. In this course, we discuss the impact of music on mental and cognitive health and explore contexts in which music is used.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001, and the instructors permission.
A systematic review of the evolution language covering the theory of evolution, conditioning theory, animal communication, ape language experiments, infant cognition, preverbal antecedents of language and contemporary theories of language.
The aim of this course is to examine the biological bases of individual differences in behavior. We will start by examining how individual differences in behavior and health are shaped by gene-environment interactions. We will complement these studies with the endophenotype approach and discuss its role in our contemporary views of complex disorders. We will then introduce behavioral epigenetics studies that are suggested to mediate the effects of gene-environment interactions at different levels of analysis. We will continue by discussing how these topics shape and are shaped by developmental programming. We will end the semester by discussing the major debates around these topics as well as their implications in real life and public policies. By covering these topics, students are expected to gain a better understanding of how our behavior is i) formed and shaped by gene-environment interactions over time, ii) influenced by the underlying physiological and epigenetic mechanisms, and iii) changed by developmental processes. With this information, the students are expected to view individual differences in behavior in a perspective that is highly interdisciplinary and dynamic.
Prerequisites: at least two of the following courses: (UN1001, UN1010, UN2280, UN2620, UN2680, UN3280) and the instructor's permission. Developmental psychopathology posits that it is development itself that has gone awry when there is psychopathology. As such, it seeks to understand the early and multiple factors contributing to psychopathology emerging in childhood and later in life. We will use several models (e.g. ones dominated by biological, genetic, and psychological foci) to understand the roots of mental illness.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1001) Instructor permission required. A seminar for advanced undergraduate students exploring different areas of clinical psychology. This course will provide you with a broad overview of the endeavors of clinical psychology, as well as discussion of its current social context, goals, and limitations.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1001) Instructor permission required. A seminar for advanced undergraduate students exploring different areas of clinical psychology. This course will provide you with a broad overview of the endeavors of clinical psychology, as well as discussion of its current social context, goals, and limitations.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission required; contact emccaski@barnard.edu. An introductory course in neuroscience like PSYC 1001 or PSYC 2450. Analysis of the assessment of physical and psychiatric diseases impacting the central nervous system, with emphasis on the relationship between neuropathology and cognitive and behavioral deficits.
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
What are the agents of developmental change in human childhood? How has the scientific community graduated from nature versus nurture, to nature
and
nurture? This course offers students an in-depth analysis of the fundamental theories in the study of cognitive and social development.
Modern theories attempt to characterize the human mind in terms of information processing. But machines that process information do not seem to feel anything; a computer may for instance receive inputs from a video camera, yet it would be hard to imagine that it sees or experiences the vividness of colors like we do. Nobody has yet provided a convincing theory as to how to explain the subjective nature of our mental lives in objective physical terms. This is called the problem of consciousness, and is generally considered to be one of the last unsolved puzzles in science. Philosophers even debate whether there could be a solution to this problem at all. Students in this course may be recruited for participation in a voluntary research study. Students who choose not to participate in the study will complete the same course requirements as those who do, and an individual's choice will not affect their grade or status as a student in the course.
This course will survey historical and modern developments in machine intelligence from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, and from intellectual movements such as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, connectionism, machine learning, and deep learning. The emphasis is on the conceptual understanding of topics. The course does not include, nor require background in, computer programming and statistics. A crucial aspect of the seminar is for students to become informed consumers of applications of artificial intelligence.
Success in a social world requires understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings, a process typically referred to as
mentalizing
. Yet, other people’s mental states are not directly observable: you cannot see a thought or touch a feeling. Nonetheless, humans are quite proficient in inferring these invisible states of mind. How do we accomplish these mentalizing feats? In this course, we will answer this question from multiple angles, relying heavily on neuroscience and psychology research. The seminar will discuss recent and classic studies that reveal how humans effectively interpret the people around them, as well as when and why they make mistakes.
This seminar will consider the evolution of language at the levels of the word and grammar, in each instance, phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Since humans are the only species that use language, attention will be paid to how language differs from animal communication.
Prerequisites: For undergraduates: one course in cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience, or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Metacognition and control processes in human cognition. Basic issues include the cognitive mechanisms that enable people to monitor what they know and predict what they will know, the errors and biases involved in self-monitoring, and the implications of metacognitive ability for peoples self-determined learning, behavior, and their understanding of self.
Prerequisites: For undergraduates: courses in introductory psychology, cognitive or developmental psychology, and the instructors permission. Core Knowledge explores the origins and development of knowledge in infants and children, with an additional emphasis on evolutionary cognition. In this course, we will examine evidence from cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics to look at the childs conception of objects, number, space, language, agency, morality and the social world. We will look at which aspects of knowledge are uniquely human, which are shared with other animals, and how this knowledge changes as children develop.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN2235) or an equivalent course on judgment and decision making ,AND the instructors permission This course reviews current research in the domain of decision architecture: the application of research in cognitive and social psychology to real-world situations with the aim of influencing behavior. This seminar will discuss recent and classic studies, both of decision theory and of applied decision research, to explore the effectiveness—as well as the limitations—of a selection of these behavioral “nudges.”
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Examines current topics in neurobiology and behavior.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Examines current topics in neurobiology and behavior.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1001 or PSYC UN1010) and a course in developmental psychology, and the instructors permission. The focus of the seminar is on human development during the fetal period and early infancy. We will examine the effects of environmental factors on perinatal perceptual, cognitive, sensory-motor, and neurobehavioral capacities, with emphasis on critical conditions involved in both normal and abnormal brain development. Other topics include acute and long term effects of toxic exposures (stress, smoking, and alcohol) during pregnancy, and interaction of genes and the environment in shaping the developing brain of high-risk infants, including premature infants and those at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
This seminar provides an overview of the mechanisms and behaviors associated with neural plasticity. Students will obtain a basic working knowledge of the different types of neural plasticity, and how these affect cognition and behaviors.
This course will use clinical studies and experimental research on animals to understand the impact of stress during various periods of development on brain function and behavior. We will address the long- and short-term consequences of stress on cognition, emotion, and ultimately psychopathology through investigating how various stressors can induce neurobiological and behavioral outcomes through genetic, epigenetic, and molecular mechanisms in the brain.
Frontiers of Justice is designed to encourage students and equip them with the skills to become active and effective “Change Agents” within their academic institutions and larger communities.. Oriented by the question,
What does justice look like?
, this course aims to raise political and social awareness and engagement with the challenges facing New York City and strengthen ties between Columbia University, disadvantaged communities, and city government agencies and community organizations. Through sharing ideas about how to make structural and systemic change in ways that integrate science, law, politics, history, narrative and community engagement, the course is intended to support students in working to break down racial and ethnic barriers and toward a more fair and just society.
Monday seminars are open to the public and take place in Schermerhorn Hall on alternate Mondays in room 200B Schermerhorn from 12:10-1:30pm. The seminar series semester schedule can be found
here
.
Members of the staff, graduate students, and outside speakers present current research.