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Ph.D. Program in Experimental Psychology
Courses
Graduate Course Descriptions
201A-B-C. Quantitative Methods in Psychology
An intensive course in statistical methods and the mathematical treatment of data, with special reference to research in psychology.
204. Neurobiology of Social Development
Instructor: Carver
The goal of this class is to acquaint students with research on the neurological underpinnings of social and social cognitive development. Students will be expected to become familiar with the existing research in the area, and to understand the neural structures that comprise the limbic system, and their developmental timecourse. Students will be expected to form hypotheses about the neural correlates of aspects of social development based upon an understanding of the development of structures involved in social behavior.
205. The Psychology of Affect and Emotion
Instructor: Harris
This seminar provides a selective overview of the scientific study of affect and emotion. The course will cover readings on 1) theoretical perspectives and debates on emotion (e.g., Appraisal theories, Domasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis); 2) brain mechanisms and neuroscience of affect; 3) the complex relationship between emotion and cognitive processes (e.g., memory, attention, effects of emotion on decision making; 4) cross-cultural studies of emotion; and 5) the field’s renewed interest in characterizing specific emotions (e.g., anger, embarrassment).
206. Mathematical Modeling
Instructor: MacLeod
This course is designed to teach the basics of mathematical modeling. Topics include when, why and how to use signal detection theory (an essential theory for anyone interested in attention, perception, memory, or decision making), how to analyze reaction time distributions (instead of simply measuring mean RT), how to engage in the fine art of model comparison, and how to avoid creating models that are more complex than the data they seek to explain.
207. Behavioral Neurobiology of Birdsong
Instructor: Gentner
Over the last 20 years, birdsong has emerged as an important model system for the study of natural vocal behavior from many perspectives. This seminar presents an overview of past and current research on the behavioral and neural mechanisms of song production.
208. Seminar on Hormones and Behavior
A survey of the affects of chemical signals (hormones, neurohormones and pheromones) on behavior as well as reciprocal effects of behavior on these chemical systems. Specific topics covered include aggression, sex and sexuality, feeding, learning, memory and mood. Animal studies will be emphasized.
209. Topics in Judgment and Decision Making
Instructor: McKenzie
This seminar examines issues in the psychology of judgment and decision making. Topics include the heuristics and biases approach, over confidence, framing effects, intertemporal choice, and rationality.
210. Skill Acquisition and Development of Expertise
Instructor: Rickard
The course examines the transition from novice to highly skilled performance and the transfer of that skill to novel problems and contexts. Emphasis will be on information processing accounts of learning and performance for relatively simple cognitive tasks.
211. The Development of Social Cognition
Instructor: Heyman
This seminar will focus on the development of children’s reasoning about people. Topics will include emotional understanding, “theory of mind,” trait thinking, gender role development, achievement motivation, and cultural influences on person perception. These topics will be approached from several different perspectives within psychology, including developmental, cognitive and social.
212. Current Topics in Visual Science
Instructors: Dobkins/ MacLeod/ Anstis/ Sample
Each year a different topic in visual science is selected for in-depth review and discussion based on current readings.
213. Professional Procedures and Survival in Psychology
This course provides a forum for presentation and discussion of the basic issues associated with surviving in a professional (particularly, academic) psychology environment. It covers such issues as: 1) how to get a job; 2) how to keep a job; 3) general issues in professional survival. The course will include the presence of a number of the Psychology faculty in topic specific areas (e.g., journal editors from our faculty; faculty sitting on grant review panels, etc.). The issue of ethics will be examined and discussed relative to each topic raised.
214. Applied Developmental Psychology
This seminar deals with how developmental psychologists conduct scientific studies that have direct practical implications for children’s wellbeing. Major issues to be discussed are: child witnesses, literacy, school violence, impact of media on child development, and developmental psychopathology.
215. Language Acquisition
Discussion of the acquisition of language by young children, including such topics as its stages, mechanisms, and relation to nonlinguistic development.
217A. Proseminar in Developmental Psychology I
Instructor: Heyman
The course examines cognitive development through the school-age period. It begins with an examination of early neurological, sensory, motor, and perceptual functions and then focuses on issues in linguistic and cognitive development.
217B. Proseminar in Developmental Psychology II
Instructor: Carver
The course examines social and personality development from infancy through early adolescence. The class will first discuss general developmental theory and methods and then topics such as attachment, temperament, self-concept, aggression, family relations, play, and peers.
218AB. Cognitive Psychology (Proseminar)
Instructor: Pashler
A two-quarter survey of basic principles and concepts of cognitive psychology. This course is intended to serve as the basic introduction for first-year students. Basic areas include knowledge, memory, thought, perception, and performance. The areas are taught by faculty members who work within the specialty. Prerequisite: graduate status in psychology or consent of instructor.
219AB. Proseminar in Learning and Motivation
Instructors: A. Williams B. Schreibman
An overview of the experimental and applied analysis of behavior including topics such as the principles of operant and classical conditioning, stimulus control, choice, conditioned reinforcement, aversive control, biological and economic contexts, verbal behavior, and the modification of human behavior in a variety of applied settings.
220. Proseminar in Social Psychology
Instructor: Konečni
An introduction to social psychology. Psychology and the law, health psychology, attitudes, emotions, person perception and aggression are some of the topics to be covered.
221. Proseminar in Sensation and Perception
Instructor: Dobkins
Fundamentals of vision, audition, and other senses. Emphasis will be upon psychophysical approaches to the study of these sensory modalities, as well as some essential aspects of their neurophysiological bases.
222. Biological Psychology (Proseminar)
Instructor: Gorman
This course is designed to introduce the myriad experimental and intellectual approaches that contribute to the study of psychology from biological perspectives. “Biopsychology” is a fuzzy concept that relates to neuroscience, physiology, comparative psychology, animal behavior, ethology, etc. This proseminar will not attempt to cover the breadth of topics usually included in biopsychology textbooks. Instead, we will sample topics to illustrate particular themes. The course will move through three major conceptual issues: 1) the relationship between behaviors and their physical substrates; 2) genes, hormones, experience and development; and 3) behavior in evolutionary and ecological contexts.
223. Advanced Topics in Vision
An in-depth analysis of empirical and theoretical issues in a specialized area of vision or visual perception. Emphasis most likely will be on a topic of ongoing vision research at UCSD.
224. Parental Behavior: Evolution and Mechanisms
Instructor: Goodson
This course will broadly address evolutionary, endocrine, psychological, and neurobiological aspects of parental behavior. Topics will include the social/environmental factors which promote parental care, the role of steroid and peptide hormones in parental care, and the evolutionary forces that promote different patterns of paternal and maternal investment in young. Prerequisite: a basic understanding of brain function.
225. Topics in Neural Timing
This seminar will introduce fundamentals in chronobiology research and then address specific problems in greater detail. Proposed topics include oscillator coupling, masking, circannual rhythms, photoperiodism and non-photic influences on circadian rhythms. The seminar will read classic and contemporary literature.
227. Gender and Development
Instructor: Heyman
Topics will include methodology, gender differences, culture, the development of knowledge of sex roles, stereotype formation, gender as a social category, and the role of gender in peer relationships, family relationships, and achievement motivation. Gender development will be approached from different perspectives within psychology, including developmental, cognitive, and social. The course will draw from areas outside of psychology, including anthropology and sociology.
228. Conceptions of Intelligence
Instructor: Williams
This course surveys major issues in the study of intelligence. Issues to be considered are the structure of intelligence, its heritability, and significance for real-world behavior. Special emphasis will be given to accounts of intelligence based on elementary processes.
229. Happiness
Instructor: Christenfeld
This course will address the psychology of happiness. The discussions and readings, consisting largely of original research articles, will explore such questions as: What is happiness? How do we measure it, and how do we tell who has it? What is the biology of happiness and what is its evolutionary significance? What makes people happy – youth, fortune, marriage, chocolate? Is the pursuit of happiness pointless?
230. Comparative Social Cognition
Instructor: Goodson
This seminar will address the following questions: What do non-human animals know about the identity and characteristics of conspecifics? How do they use this information to guide their actions? How do animals modify their behavior in relation to social context? What kinds of information are culturally transmitted? What are the brain mechanisms for social cognition in non-humans, and how do they compare to ours?
233 Topics in Learning and Motivation
Instructor: Fantino
Seminar in human decision making, including topics such as research in fairness, sharing and cooperation, on illogical and non-optimal decisions, and on problem-solving.
234. Memory and Amnesia
Instructor: Wixted
This course traces the history of research into animal and human short-term memory. Classic models, current viewpoints, and their attendant epistemological presuppositions will be considered. The relationship between empirical analyses of memory in animals and humans will also be reviewed.
236. Substance Abuse
Instructor: Brown
Theory and research on the development, progression, and resolution of substance use and abuse will be reviewed and evaluated. Normal and abnormal patterns of substance involvement will be contrasted across the life span.
237. Human Rationality
Instructor: McKenzie
The traditional view of rationality is based upon abstract, content-independent rules for behavior. People sometimes violate these rules in a laboratory setting, but the violations are often systematic and appear to reflect adaptation to the environment outside the laboratory. Such findings raise questions about what it means to be rational. Readings will be empirically oriented and cover the areas of deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and choice.
239. Psychology of Sport
Instructor: Christenfeld
This seminar will focus on the applications of social psychological principles and findings to the understanding of sports.
241. Groups
Instructor: Christenfeld
This course examines the role of groups in buffering stress, validating attitudes, improving efficiency, consolidating power, permitting loafing, rejecting deviates, and insulating its members from unpleasant outside influence. Prerequisite: consent of instuctor.
243. Sound and Music Perception
Instructor: Deutsch
This course will deal with anatomy and physiology of the ear, central auditory pathways, and neurological disorders of sound and music perception.
244. Special Topics in Psycholinguistics
Instructor: Ferreira
Discussion of the psychological reality of grammatical models, competence versus performance, learnability and innateness in theories of language acquisition, and questions of autonomy of “modularity” of grammatical versus semantic processing. Studies of lexical accessing, sentence comprehension, sentence production, and acquisition will all be considered, as well as some recent work in aphasia.
245. Aphasia
Research and theory on language breakdown in brain-damaged adults is surveyed. Topics include an historical overview from linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience (especially brain imaging techniques). Credit may not be received for both Psychology 245 and Cognitive Science 251.
247. Neuroendocrinology of Social Variation
Instructor: Goodson
Students will read and discuss primary literature on the general topic of how steroid and peptide hormones contribute to the production of social variation and diversity. This diversity includes seasonal variation, intersexual variation, and divergence between species in patterns of sociality and space use, pair-bonding and mating tactics, aggression, and use of communication signals.
248. Psychology and the Law
This seminar surveys topics in psychology and the law. Emphasis will be on both applied and basic issues.
252. Seminar on Cognitive Neuroscience
Instructor: Ramachandran
This is a series of weekly seminars on current trends in neuropsychology. The seminars will deal with the concept of “localization” of function in different parts of the brain and the effects of damage to these parts on cognitive functions such as perception, memory and language. Active student participation will be encouraged in preparing these seminars.
253. Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroimaging
This seminar in cognitive neuroscience focuses on modern approaches to cognitive psychology as revealed through cognitive neuroimaging. A major goal of the course is to evaluate what (if anything) neuroimaging evidence has added to classic cognitive models/evidence in major areas of cognition (working memory, categorization, executive processes, decision-making, emotion, and memory).
254. Functional Brain Imaging
Instructor: Rickard
Principles of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the human brain, focusing on recently developed techniques for brain activation on mapping. Includes principles of NMR and imaging, anatomic MRI, and a detailed survey of functional imaging techniques and data analysis.
258. Delay of Gratification
Instructor: Christenfeld
This course will review the research on delay of gratification. We will cover what makes it in general so tough, what situations make it possible, who can do it, and what the implications of this ability are. We will draw from research in social, personality, and animal psychology as well as economics.
259. Social Psychology/Psycho-aesthetics
Instructor: Konečni
This course will be an intensive examination of social psychology (legal decision-making, emotion, aggressive behavior) and the psychology of visual art and music (psycho-aesthetics).
261. Proseminar in History of Psychology
Instructor: Williams
This course will consider the intellectual context in the 19th century from which psychology developed as an independent discipline. Emphasis will be on early German psychology and evolutionary theory. The second part of the course will consider the histories of different areas of psychology (e.g., behavioral, cognitive).
262. Functional Construction of the Vertebrate Brain’s Social Behavior Network
Instructor: Goodson
The vertebrate brain contains a network of strongly interconnected structures that play essential roles in the regulation of social behavior. In this seminar we will read and discuss primary literature that details the structure and behavioral functions of this network.
263. Psychopharmacology
Instructor: Koob
This course will explore the basic neuropharmacological mechanism of action of the major classes of drugs, including neuroleptics, stimulants, anti-depressants, minor and major tranquilizers, and sedative hypnotics. It will focus on the use of behavioral techniques for evaluating the neural mechanisms by which these drugs act.
265. Social Psychology and Medicine
Instructor: Kulik
Concentrates on what psychology has to contribute to the understanding of illness, its treatment and the social context in which these processes occur. Topics: Psychological factors in the etiology and treatment of illness, doctor-patient roles, and communication.
271. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Instructor: Anagnostaras
This seminar will span the study of Learning and Memory from an interdisciplinary Neuroscience perspective: the goal will be to gain a broad perspective on memory. The course will also touch on dysfunctions of learning and memory such in amnesia, mental retardation, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. The course will end with exciting developments in the field, including the possibility of genetic and pharmacological enhancement of memory and intelligence.
272. Selected Topics in Cognitive Psychology
Instructor: Pashler
We will examine recent research on selective and divided attention in human beings. Topics will include task-switching, dual-task performance, visual and auditory attention, neural mechanisms of different aspects of attention and, and interactions between attention and learning.
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