171 - 180 of 205 results for: PSYCH

How will culture influence the human mind? Is culture a superficial overlay on the basic, universal computational machine called the mind? Alternatively, is culture a crucial constitutive element of the mind? If so, what are specific mechanisms underlying this constitution process? And what theoretical framework do we need to make a visible progress on these questions? More generally, how can we start discussing meaningfully and productively about various problematic dichotomies such as mind versus body, culture versus biology, and nurture versus nature? An emerging field of cultural neuroscience has the potential of addressing these and other important questions and thus bridging natural, behavioral, and social sciences of the human mind.nnThis seminar reviews the field of cultural neuroscience. It starts with a discussion of some theoretical foundations of the field, including cultural psychology, cognitive and social neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and population genetics (PART 1). We will then discuss several specific content domains with a focus on cross-cultural variations in brain responses (PART 2). The seminar will conclude with a discussion on gene x environment interaction in varying cultural contexts (PART 3). nnStudents can take the seminar for credit. One unit for attending all five sessions, two units for all five session and a short paper.

Current topics in memory as explored through computational models addressing experimental findings and physiological and behavioral investigations. Topics include: explicit and inplict learning; role of MTL structures in learning and memory; and single versus dual processes approaches to recognition. May be repeated for credit.

Topics such as experiment design, stimulus presentation, counterbalancing, response collection, data analysis, and plotting. Programming experiments. Final project programming a complete behavioral experiment relevant to student's research.

Current research topics including epidemiology and phenomenology of affective disorders, psychological theories of depression, gender differences in affective disorders, cognitive and social functioning of depressed persons, psychobiology of affective disorders, depression in children, postpartum depression, suicide issues in the treatment of depression, and cultural aspects of affective disorders. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Psychology or consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit

This graduate seminar will take a social-cognitive perspective on motivation and emotion. Meetings will be discussion oriented, and each meeting will focus on a different question of theoretical and applied significance. Prerequisite: 207 or consent of instructor.

The course will examine the basis of numerical and mathematical abilities, and the acquisition and learning of mathematical skills, drawing on experimental and modeling studies. Topics will include numerosity, counting, basic arithmetic, and fractions, as well as algebraic and geometric reasoning as well as insight into mathematical and scientific problems. Roles of rules, procedures and symbolic, spatial, and sensory-motor representations; relationship between skill and understanding; nature of discovery and insight in mathematical reasoning; the relationship between insight and proof. Open to PhD and Masters students and to Juniors and Seniors who have completed an introductory level course in cognitive or developmental psychology.

Do psychology and cognitive science need formal theories and/or explicit computational models? What insights should such things provide? What is the proper relationship between different theoretical and modeling approaches? Between different levels or kinds of analysis? Where do informally stated theories fit in and what are the roles of formal and computational modeling approaches in relation to other less explicitly specified forms of theorizing? This seminar will explore these issues and compare different formal and computational model variants, especially connectionist and probabilistic models, within 3-4 different target domains. Possible target domains include categorization, property induction, causal learning, perceptual decision making, language acquisition, semantics and pragmatics, and mid-level vision.

How do we reason about other people and ourselves? Is human behavior in social situations a set of ad-hoc and irrational responses--or can we understand humans as making rational inferences under uncertainty about the people they are interacting with? This project-based seminar will re-examine classic findings from social psychology and affective science through the lens of rational analysis and probabilistic models. In collaboration with instructors, students will develop projects focused on making testable theoretical models of classic tasks and literatures with the goal of creating a publishable end product. Phenomena under consideration include but are not limited to: cognitive dissonance, attribution theory, mindset theory, stereotyping, and emotion perception.

Theory and research in gerontology. Normal and abnormal changes that occur in biological, cognitive, and psychological aging. Emphasis is on the environmental factors that influence the aging process. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Psychology or consent of instructor.