Cognitive and Brain Science

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and likeminded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

Faculty

• Robert R. Desjarlais

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Biology, the study of life on Earth, encompasses structures and forms ranging from the very minute to the very large. In order to grasp the complexities of life, we begin this study with the cellular and molecular forms and mechanisms that serve as the foundation for all living organisms. The initial part of the semester will introduce the fundamental molecules critical to the biochemistry of life processes. From there, we branch out to investigate the major ideas, structures, and concepts central to the biology of cells, genetics, and the chromosomal basis of inheritance. Finally, we conclude the semester by examining how those principles relate to the mechanisms of evolution. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the individuals responsible for major discoveries, as well as the experimental techniques and process by which such advances in biological understanding are made. Classes will be supplemented with weekly lab work.

Faculty

• Drew E. Cressman

Open, Lecture—Spring

The formation of an individual’s life is dependent upon a complex mix of cultural experiences, social interactions, and personal health and physiology. At the center of this intricate web is the biological component unique to each of us, yet shared in some form by all life on earth—our genes. Genes contribute much to what makes each of us an individual, from hair color and body shape to intelligence and personality. In this course, we will attempt to gain an understanding of how genes and chromosomes provide the basic blueprint that leads to these unique physical and behavioral characteristics. In doing so, we will discuss the central concepts of human genetics, including: the mechanisms and patterns of inheritance, sex-linked traits, the genetics of behavior, how genes encode information in the form of DNA, the role of mutations in causing disease, human origins and evolution, and the application of various genetic technologies such as gene therapy and genetically modified organisms. Readings will be drawn from texts as well as current popular-press and peer-reviewed articles. No previous background in biology is required, other than a curiosity and desire to understand the genetic mechanisms that shape human existence and make us who we are.

Faculty

• Drew E. Cressman

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

Biology, the study of life on Earth, encompasses structures and forms ranging from the very minute to the very large. In order to grasp the complexities of life, we begin this study with the cellular and molecular forms and mechanisms that serve as the foundation for all living organisms. The initial part of the semester will introduce the fundamental molecules critical to the biochemistry of life processes. From there, we branch out to investigate the major ideas, structures, and concepts central to the biology of cells, genetics, and the chromosomal basis of inheritance. Finally, we conclude the semester by examining how those principles relate to the mechanisms of evolution. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the individuals responsible for major discoveries, as well as the experimental techniques and process by which such advances in biological understanding are made. Classes will be supplemented with weekly lab work.

Faculty

• Michelle Hersh

First-Year Studies—Year

In this seminar, we will explore the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing impact on our society. In recent years, AI research has made astonishing technical progress and has assumed an increasingly widespread and important role in many aspects of our lives. AI systems can now (to varying degrees) drive cars; recognize human faces, speech, and gestures; diagnose diseases; control autonomous robots; converse fluently in English and other languages; instantly translate between languages; beat world-champion human players at chess, Go, and other games; and perform many other amazing feats that just a few decades ago were only possible within the realm of science fiction. Especially with the public release of ChatGPT and other systems powered by "large language models," AI has become for many people a source of profound fascination, inspiration, and even dread. These developments have led to extravagant claims, hopes, and fears about the potential consequences of AI for the future. In this course, we will attempt to peer beyond the hype and to come to grips with both the promise and the peril of AI technology. We will consider AI from many angles, including historical, philosophical, ethical, and public-policy perspectives. We will also examine in depth many of the technical concepts, major debates, and achievements of the field, as well as its many failures and setbacks. Throughout the course, students will be asked to read texts, write responses, do follow-up research, give presentations, and participate in classroom discussions. This is not a programming course, and no background in computer programming is expected or required. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.

Faculty

• James Marshall

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

This lecture will present a rigorous introduction to computer science and the art of computer programming, using the elegant, eminently practical, yet easy-to-learn programming language Python. We will learn the principles of problem solving with a computer while gaining the programming skills necessary for further study in the discipline. We will emphasize the power of abstraction, the theory of algorithms, and the benefits of clearly written, well-structured programs. Fundamental topics will include: how computers represent and manipulate numbers, text, and other data (such as images and sound); variables and symbolic abstraction; Boolean logic; conditional, iterative, and recursive computation; functional abstraction (“black boxes”); and standard data structures, such as arrays, lists, and dictionaries. We will learn introductory computer graphics and how to process simple user interactions via mouse and keyboard. We will also consider the role of randomness in otherwise deterministic computation, basic sorting and searching algorithms, and some principles of game design. Toward the end of the semester, we will investigate somewhat larger programming projects and, so, will discuss file processing; modules and data abstraction; and object-oriented concepts such as classes, methods, and inheritance. As we proceed, we will debate the relative merits of writing programs from scratch versus leveraging existing libraries of code. Weekly hands-on laboratory sessions will reinforce the programming concepts covered in class.

Faculty

• Michael Siff

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

What is truth? One idea is that if that something is true, if using a small collection of assumptions and a few basic rules, then we can prove our claim from those assumptions. In this course, we will focus on mathematical proof and how it represents a formal backbone on which both theoretical computer science and most of the rest of mathematics can be constructed. We will work from the ground up, starting with Boolean logic and deductive arguments and moving onto elementary number theory where we will focus on the use of induction (e.g., to establish a formula for triangular numbers) and contradiction (e.g., to prove the infinitude of primes). We will introduce a formal notion of algorithm and demonstrate how number theory can be used to explain the principles behind modern cryptography. We will study sets, both finite and infinite, and how they can be used to formalize relations and functions. We will introduce basic notions of combinatorics (a fancy word for counting) with emphasis on the import of exponential growth. (Example: If you walked into a pizza shop that offered ten different toppings, would you want to sample all of the combinations?) We will then use our improved methods of counting to develop a basic theory of probability. Near the end of the semester, we will apply most, if not all, of the earlier concepts to introduce the theory of graphs. Along the way, we will explore the interplay between discrete mathematics and computation including recursion and programming; big-oh notation and categorizing the efficiency of algorithms; and graph theory's role in circuit design. Time permitting, we will circle back to the original question and investigate the limits of proof by trying to show that some true things can never be proven! For conference, students will do a deep dive on a related mathematical or computational topic. Examples include, but are not limited to: studying the proof and applications of a famous theorem (e.g., Fermat's "little" theorem); explaining how computers can be used (without so-called "artificial intelligence (AI)") to verify the validity of a formal proof; learning to program using logic; measuring the performance of related algorithms; or designing and simulating nontrivial digital circuits.

Faculty

• Michael Siff

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

In this course, we will study a wide range of data structures and algorithms that are important for the design of sophisticated computer programs along with techniques for managing program complexity. Throughout the course, we will use Java, a strongly typed, object-oriented programming language. Topics covered will include types and polymorphism, arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, priority queues, heaps, dictionaries, balanced trees, and graphs, as well as several important algorithms for manipulating those structures. We will also study techniques for analyzing the efficiency of algorithms. The central theme tying all of these topics together is the idea of abstraction and the related notions of information hiding and encapsulation, which we will emphasize throughout the course. Weekly hands-on lab sessions will reinforce the concepts covered in class.

Faculty

• Michael Siff

Open, Lecture—Fall

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture with weekly seminars, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of placing laughter at the center of our discourse is to think and play across disciplines to explore the many contradictory ideas and experiences signified by laughter, from humor and collective joy to unease and social rupture. For weekly class assignments, students will be asked to conduct observational studies of themselves and others’ laughter patterns, make artworks inspired by stand-up, sitcoms, and slapstick comedy, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed will include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological and physiological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags. Experiential, hands-on opportunities for engaging with the course will involve expert panels, improv/comedy workshops, scientific laughter labs, and an art exhibit organized around laughter.

Faculty

• John O’Connor
• Maia Pujara
• Leana Hirschfeld-Kroen

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Our existence lies in a perpetual state of change. An apple falls from a tree, clouds move across expansive farmland blocking out the sun for days, meanwhile satellites zip around the Earth transmitting and receiving signals to our cell phones. The calculus was invented to develop a language to accurately describe the motion and change happening all around us. The ancient Greeks began a detailed study of change but they were hesitant to wrestle with the infinite and so it was not until the 17th century that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, among others, tamed the infinite and gave birth to this extremely successful branch of mathematics. Though just a few hundred years old, the calculus has become an indispensable research tool in both the natural and social sciences. Our study will begin with the central concept of the limit and proceed to explore the dual processes of differentiation and integration. Numerous applications of the theory will be examined. Weekly group conferences will be conducted in hands-on workshop mode. This small lecture is intended for students interested in advanced study in mathematics or sciences, students preparing for careers in the health sciences or engineering, and any student wishing to broaden and enrich the life of the mind.

Faculty

• Daniel King

Open, Lecture—Fall

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error. You’ve heard these terms and other statistical phrases bantered about before, and you’ve seen them interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this lecture course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course, and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis, and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Calculator and spreadsheet software will be used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with these technologies is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This lecture is recommended for anybody wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences.

Faculty

• Daniel King

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

What is truth? One idea is that if that something is true, if using a small collection of assumptions and a few basic rules, then we can prove our claim from those assumptions. In this course, we will focus on mathematical proof and how it represents a formal backbone on which both theoretical computer science and most of the rest of mathematics can be constructed. We will work from the ground up, starting with Boolean logic and deductive arguments and moving onto elementary number theory where we will focus on the use of induction (e.g., to establish a formula for triangular numbers) and contradiction (e.g., to prove the infinitude of primes). We will introduce a formal notion of algorithm and demonstrate how number theory can be used to explain the principles behind modern cryptography. We will study sets, both finite and infinite, and how they can be used to formalize relations and functions. We will introduce basic notions of combinatorics (a fancy word for counting) with emphasis on the import of exponential growth. (Example: If you walked into a pizza shop that offered ten different toppings, would you want to sample all of the combinations?) We will then use our improved methods of counting to develop a basic theory of probability. Near the end of the semester, we will apply most, if not all, of the earlier concepts to introduce the theory of graphs. Along the way, we will explore the interplay between discrete mathematics and computation including recursion and programming; big-oh notation and categorizing the efficiency of algorithms; and graph theory's role in circuit design. Time permitting, we will circle back to the original question and investigate the limits of proof by trying to show that some true things can never be proven! For conference, students will do a deep dive on a related mathematical or computational topic. Examples include, but are not limited to: studying the proof and applications of a famous theorem (e.g., Fermat's "little" theorem); explaining how computers can be used (without so-called "artificial intelligence (AI)") to verify the validity of a formal proof; learning to program using logic; measuring the performance of related algorithms; or designing and simulating nontrivial digital circuits.

Faculty

• Michael Siff

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

Rarely is a quantity of interest—tomorrow’s temperature, unemployment rates across Europe, the cost of a spring break flight to Fort Lauderdale—a simple function of just one primary variable. Reality, for better or worse, is multivariable. This course will introduce an array of topics and tools used in the mathematical analysis of multivariable functions. The intertwined theories of vectors, matrices, and differential equations and their applications will be the central themes of exploration. Specific topics to be covered will include the algebra and geometry of vectors in two, three, and higher dimensions; dot and cross products and their applications; equations of lines and planes in higher dimensions; solutions to systems of linear equations using Gaussian elimination; theory and applications of determinants, inverses and eigenvectors; volumes of three-dimensional solids via integration; spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems; and methods of visualizing and constructing solutions to differential equations of various types. Conference work will involve an investigation of some mathematically-themed subject of the student’s choosing.

Faculty

• Melvin Irizarry-Gelpi

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

Calculus is the mathematical gift that keeps on giving—thank you, Newton and company! In this course, students will expand their knowledge of limits, derivatives, and integrals with concepts and techniques that will enable them to solve many important problems in mathematics and the sciences. Topics will include differentiation review, integration review, integration with non-polynomial functions, applications of integration (finding area, volume, length, center of mass, moment of inertia, probability), advanced techniques for integration (substitution, integration-by-parts, partial fractions), infinite sequences, infinite series, convergent and divergent sums, power series, differential equations and modeling dynamical systems, and, time permitting, parametric equations of a curve and polar coordinates. Weekly group conferences will be conducted in hands-on workshop mode. This course is intended for students interested in advanced study in mathematics or sciences, students preparing for careers in the health sciences or engineering, and any student wishing to broaden and enrich the life of the mind.

Faculty

• Melvin Irizarry-Gelpi

First-Year Studies—Fall

This seminar will explore the topic of time from a wide variety of viewpoints—from the physical, to the metaphysical, to the practical. We will seek the answers to questions such as: What is time? How do we perceive time? Why does time appear to flow only in one direction? Is time travel possible? How is time relative? We will explore the perception of time across cultures and eras, break down the role of time in fundamental physics, and discuss popular science books and articles along with science-inspired works of fiction, to make sense of this fascinating topic. Time stops for no one, but let’s take some time to appreciate its uniqueness. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities.

Faculty

• Merideth Frey

First-Year Studies—Year

This course will consider several different ways to get insight into the world of the child. You were all children once, and though memory is imperfect, memories of childhood can still be useful. Psychologists such as Ainsworth, Piaget, Bandura, Gopnik, and Vygotsky have observed children, made systematic observations, and done laboratory research. Clinicians such as Freud and Erikson add ideas that come from their work with patients. In this course, another important source of insight will be your own observations as a participant-observer in our Early Childhood Center (ECC), a school for children between the ages of two and six. The theories and experiments raise questions that you can ask of your own observations—for example, what do you notice about the emotions of young children on the first day of their classes. Fieldwork at the ECC typically gives rise to ideas for the focus of your conference project. In the past, conference work projects have taken up topics such as children’s friendship, children’s block-building, shyness, and doing a case study of an individual child. In fall, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; in spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.

Faculty

• Charlotte L. Doyle

First-Year Studies—Year

Sensory perception is a vital component of the creation and experience of artistic works of all types. Investigation of sensory systems has been foundational for psychologists and neuroscientists developing understanding of brains, minds, and bodies. Recent work in brain science has moved us beyond the Aristotelian notion of five discrete senses to a view of the senses as more various and interconnected, with each other, and with the fundamental psychological categories of perception, attention, emotion, memory, imagination and judgment. What we call “taste” is a multi-sensory construction of “flavor” that relies heavily on smell, vision, and touch (mouth feel); “vision” refers to a set of semi-independent streams that specialize in the processing of color, object identity, or spatial layout and movement; “touch” encompasses a complex system of responses to different types of contact with the largest sensory organ—the skin; and “hearing” includes aspects of perception that are thought to be quintessentially human—music and language. Many other sensations are not covered by the standard five: for example, the senses of balance, of body position (proprioception) and ownership, feelings of pain arising from within the body, and feelings of heat or cold. Perceptual psychologists have suggested that the total count is closer to 17 senses than five. We will investigate all of these senses, their interactions with each other, and their intimate relationships with human emotion, memory, and imagination. Some of the questions we will address include: Why are smells such potent memory triggers? What can visual art tell us about how the brain works and vice versa? Why is a caregiver’s touch so vital for psychological development? Why do foods that taste sublime to some people evoke feelings of disgust in others? Do humans have a poor sense of smell? Have the effects of COVID changed our views of its importance? Why does the word “feeling” refer to both bodily sensations and emotions? What makes a song “catchy” or “sticky”? Can humans learn to echolocate like bats? What is the role of body perception in mindfulness meditation? This is a good course for artists who like to think about science and for scientists with a feeling for art. This is a collaborative course. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities, the main collaborative activity being a sensory lab where students will have the opportunity to explore their own sensory perceptions in a systematic way, investigating how they relate to language, memory, and emotion. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences. 

Faculty

• Elizabeth Johnston

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

What makes linguistic communication possible? Do other primates “talk”? How do we understand messages from one another despite uncertainty and noise? In this course, we will consider central questions about language: Are we the only ones who have it? When did we learn it? How does artificial intelligence mimic it? This course will start with an introduction to comparative research with other species (nonhuman primates, whales, and insects), allowing students to consider many possible forms of communication. Next, we will look at humans. What can studies with babies and children tell us about the nature of our communication system? Finally, we will explore how large language models, such as ChatGPT, produce text that might look and feel like human writing. What have these models learned, and how should we study them? Students should come prepared to engage with the topic of communication from multiple perspectives, including empirical/scientific and critical. Through weekly small-group conferences, students will develop projects that relate the course to their collective interests, such as learning and communicating in Toki Pona (a philosophical artistic-constructed language), researching the limits of artificial intelligence language models, observing and analyzing children’s communication, or designing a behavioral intervention study that implements and evaluates different communication practices.

Faculty

• Sammy Floyd

Open, Seminar—Fall

This seminar is intended as a broad survey of the different branches of psychology, with an examination of their underlying principles and organizing major theories from a “critical” perspective. A critical perspective suggests an integration of “normative” perspectives on behavior and mental processes with an empirically informed analysis of societal, cultural, and structural effects such as social categorization of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class on these matters. We will begin with a brief history of psychology as a science, unpacking the benefits and the costs of a positivistic scientific approach to the study of behavior, moving through neural, sensing, and perceiving approaches to self, then development, cognition, personality, and ending with the definition and treatment of psychological disorders. Conference work can focus on deeper analyses within a particular area of psychology of interest to students.

Faculty

• Linwood J. Lewis

Open, Lecture—Fall

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture with weekly seminars, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of placing laughter at the center of our discourse is to think and play across disciplines to explore the many contradictory ideas and experiences signified by laughter, from humor and collective joy to unease and social rupture. For weekly class assignments, students will be asked to conduct observational studies of themselves and others’ laughter patterns, make artworks inspired by stand-up, sitcoms, and slapstick comedy, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed will include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological and physiological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags. Experiential, hands-on opportunities for engaging with the course will involve expert panels, improv/comedy workshops, scientific laughter labs, and an art exhibit organized around laughter.

Faculty

• John O’Connor
• Maia Pujara
• Leana Hirschfeld-Kroen

Open, Lecture—Fall

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. —William James, 1887, Habit

We all want happy lives filled with meaning and satisfaction. Yet, for many of us, happiness can be difficult to obtain with regularity or to sustain over a long period of time. Happiness is more than a feeling; rather, it is a state of well-being that should last a lifetime. Like exercising to improve physical health, it takes sustained cognitive effort to improve our mental health and engage in practices to promote well-being. We can look to evidence from the fields of psychology and neuroscience that tells us that we are mentally unprepared to: 1) predict what will make us happy, and 2) engage in behaviors that are known to make us happier. This course will cover the psychological and brain-based factors for why happiness feels so fleeting and what we can do to build better and more effective habits that have been shown to lead to longer-term maintenance of a positive mood and well-being. Students will read foundational work in the field of positive psychology by Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Edward Diener, Daniel Kahneman, and others. We will also discuss studies in neuroscience that show how behavioral interventions in positive psychology can impact the brain’s structure and function—just like building stronger muscles during exercise. Through small-group conferences, students will apply evidence-based practices, such as bringing order and organization to their daily lives, expressing gratitude, and building social bonds (i.e., “cross training” for the mind) in activities called “Rewirements.” For the final project, called “Unlearning Yourself,” students will learn to undo or replace a detrimental habit (e.g., overspending, social-media use, poor sleep hygiene, complaining, or procrastinating) by establishing a plan to cultivate evidence-based practices for sustained well-being. By the end of this course, students will have gained the ability to sift through the ever-booming literature on positive psychology and neuroscience to identify the practices that work best for them, along with an appreciation for the notion that finding and keeping happiness and well-being requires intentional practice and maintenance. Students should come prepared to engage in meaningful self-work.

Faculty

• Maia Pujara

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

How does the human mind represent the world? How do these representations vary across people? Could using a different language change how we experience time—or even how we see color? Seemingly straightforward concepts such as “in” versus “on” mean different things in different cultures; and words such as “two” and “three” may not be linguistically universal. Indeed, this very course description makes culturally-specific assumptions about psychology and implicitly assumes objectivity. At the same time, humans seem to share many central experiences, such as perceiving events, creating categories, and recalling the past. In this course, we will draw on research from psycholinguistics, cognitive development, and cultural psychology to learn cognitive science in a larger context. Critically, we will consider how these fields have been affected by a focus on Western, white, industrialized experiences. The course will investigate the broader social and ethical consequences of these assumed perspectives and explore insights and challenges that emerge when we step out of them. We will draw on primary and secondary sources, including scientific research articles, literature, and recordings. Students will develop projects in conference work that combine their interests with the course content, such as designing an experiment to test cross-linguistic effects on visual attention, analyzing vocabulary from languages other than English, or developing proposals to redesign existing experiments using culturally-informed practices.

Faculty

• Sammy Floyd

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

Psychological trauma has been described as unspeakable, so cognitively disorganizing and intense that it is difficult to put into words the experience and the emotions that it evokes. Yet, the language that survivors use to describe their traumas provides insight into the psychology impact of trauma and the process of recovery. This course will begin with an overview of theories of trauma, resilience, and post-traumatic growth, as well as an introduction to the study of trauma narratives and how language reflects emotional and cognitive functioning. We will then explore different aspects of the cognitive, emotional, and biological impact of undergoing a trauma and how these changes are reflected in the language that trauma survivors use as they speak and write about their experiences. We will consider works by experts on trauma and language, including Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and James Pennebaker, as well as current research in the field of trauma and trauma narratives. Through these readings, we will address topics such as what makes an experience traumatic, how representations of trauma in popular culture color our perceptions of trauma and recovery, the role of resilience and growth following a trauma, and what we can learn from attending to the content and structure of language. This course will be of interest to students who are curious about how the words we use reflect our cognitive and emotional functioning, especially for students interested in pursuing topics such as these at an advanced or graduate level.

Faculty

• Emma Forrester

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

Play provides us with an amazing and informative lens for observing the development and complex inner lives of young children. Yet, play is being threatened by increasing amounts of time spent on technology and a growing societal focus on scheduled activities and academic goals. This course will offer an introduction to the many fascinating aspects of play, including the importance of unstructured free play, how play shapes the brain, sensory processing and self-regulation in play, outdoor play, cultural contexts of play, and humor development in play. Through readings, video illustrations, and discussion of student fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center, we will explore the many ways in which play contributes to the complex social, cognitive, emotional, and imaginative lives of children. This course will provide a foundation for Early Therapeutic Approaches for Young Children and Families (PSYC 7220). Fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center is required for this course.

Faculty

• Cindy Puccio

Advanced, Seminar—Fall

In this research internship course, students will gain research experience through active engagement in a psychology research lab with a member of the psychology faculty. This will involve an internship within a research lab on campus, including a weekly lab meeting, a weekly collaborative meeting across labs, ongoing contributions towards research and practice within their lab and/or community settings, additional individual and group meetings as needed, and additional synchronous and asynchronous research work. Weekly lab meetings will involve reading and discussing research articles and research-methods papers specific to the topics of research being undertaken by each student and faculty member. Students will be expected to learn the current research approaches being employed by their supervising faculty member and to contribute toward ongoing research in the form of a research practicum. They may also have the opportunity to develop and implement their own independent research projects within the labs in which they are working, depending on lab priorities. Students will be expected to make progress on research projects between meetings, as determined in collaboration with their primary supervising faculty.

The weekly collaborative cross-labs meeting will include readings on, and discussions of, research methods and ethics—both broad and specific to the research in which students are involved—as well as the discussion of contemporary research articles that are relevant to student and faculty research projects. All faculty and students involved in the research experience will take turns leading the discussion of current research, with faculty taking the lead at the beginning of the semester and students taking the lead as their expertise develops. 

Students participating in the course will be expected to attend and actively participate in weekly collaborative cross-labs meetings and weekly lab meetings; keep an ongoing journal and/or scientific lab notebook; select and facilitate group and lab discussions of relevant contemporary research articles (at least once for each meeting type); work within a lab and/or community setting, as appropriate for their projects; contribute toward ongoing research and practice within their lab or community settings; report on their ongoing lab research in the form of a short paper prepared for possible publication and a poster at the Science and Math Poster Symposium; and provide their colleagues with ongoing verbal and written feedback on their projects. Students will be responsible for working collaboratively with their colleagues to further develop their understanding of each of the topics covered in class.

Faculty

• Kim Ferguson
• Linwood J. Lewis
• Maia Pujara
• Sammy Floyd

Open, Seminar—Spring

By the time you read this course description, you have most likely learned more than 40,000 English words. That is at least an average of six words per day—and many more if you are multilingual. How is this possible? Were you born with this ability, or did you learn it? This course will be about how humans come to develop language so early and so quickly among striking environmental variation. For example, caregivers in the United States often alter and repeat their words when talking to children, while caregivers in other communities speak almost exclusively to other adults. And yet, children in both settings successfully learn language on similar timescales. How is this possible? At the same time, no two children are exactly alike. The course will explore how the spectrum of neurodiversity sets many learners on their own developmental and communicative path. We will centrally consider how language learning must be flexible to modalities by learning about babies in deaf communities who rapidly learn to comprehend and produce sign. Crucially, we will always begin by looking at data and methods: How do you actually measure a neonate’s language abilities? Or an adults? Each week, we will try out some of these experimental methods, such as artificial-language learning, and work with mini-studies to collect our own data. The conference project will ask students to propose their own theory of the kind of learning mechanism that can operate under such diverse inputs. The existing proposals will be evaluated to generate critiques and improvements. The course will bring these ideas beyond the seminar room, drawing connections to second-language learning in adults, early-childhood education, and social and economic structures. Conference projects will root novel theoretical proposals of language learning in data and will be developed in conversation with existing theories of nature versus nurture, domain-specificity, and modality.

Faculty

• Sammy Floyd

Open, Lecture—Spring

In recent decades, dialogues among architects, designers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have markedly increased in frequency, leading to the creation of a new field of interdisciplinary study: neuroarchitecture. The formation of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in 2002 intensified and facilitated these communications across disciplinary boundaries. The architecture-neuroscience conversation is productive in both directions. Advances in contemporary understanding of the neural dynamics of constructive perception can inform architects; for example, mapping of neural pathways can provide points of access to the variety of largely unconscious processes that contribute to humans’ responses to the built environment. On the other hand, consideration of the complexities and specificities of buildings created by architects, engineers, and builders encourages neuroscientists and psychologists to advance their understandings of how a host of cognitive and emotional processes are integrated. The study of the responses of brains and bodies to buildings brings together work on sensory perception, attention, emotion, imagination, memory, planning, spatial navigation, aesthetics, and language. We will listen in on these lively architecture-neuroscience conversations by sampling from the wealth of new cross-disciplinary writings, such as Ann Sussman and Justin Hollander’s Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment and Michael Arbib’s When Brains Meet Buildings: A Conversation Between Neuroscience and Architecture. A vital component of this course will be furthering the conversation by applying the concepts discussed in our readings to our own lived experience of the built environment. Many of the examples presented in weekly lectures will come from the instructor's experiences with the cities of New York and Edinburgh. The examples that students bring to our weekly seminars will draw on their own lived experience of diverse environments. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the design of healthy, sustainable buildings can enhance well-being. 

Faculty

• Elizabeth Johnston

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

We have never known as much about the minds of children as we do now. Using the same tools, our understanding of adult cognition has also led us to surprising conclusions: Babies are often better than adults at distinguishing faces of other races, and toddlers perform spontaneous scientific experiments with their toys. This research has also raised questions: Why do adept adult readers seem to skip over entire words? Can we simultaneously entertain multiple possible interpretations of the sentences that we see and hear? And, as the movie Frozen forces us to consider: How do we finish each other’s sandwiches? In this course, students will learn about classical and cutting-edge methods for studying learning and reasoning. This course will be a deep dive into multiple measures of behavior, starting with measurements of looking behaviors (e.g., real-time eye tracking, habituation paradigms, headturn methods), reading time, reaction time measures, and naturalistic tasks and interviews with toddlers and children. We will also review the promise of neural methods (fNIRS, fMRI, EEG), as well as their constraints. For each of these methods, we will explore how they shape ongoing debates about how best to design experiments, analyze data, and build inclusive theories that reflect human variation. In conference projects, using one of the studied behavioral methods, students will design an experiment to test their own research question, revise the proposal after peer review, and analyze and present their findings in an APA-style scientific paper. During lab sessions and conference meetings, students will learn to use their chosen behavioral method, implement the experiment, and collect preliminary data. By the end of the course, students will have a strong understanding of several central research methods in psychology, their own perspective of the strengths and limitations of different approaches, and the tools to critically evaluate and communicate about published findings.

Faculty

• Sammy Floyd

Intermediate/Advanced, Graduate Seminar—Spring

This course will explore several therapeutic approaches for young children and their families, with a particular emphasis on the theory and technique of play therapy. While this course will focus most on Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT), we will also look at the methodology of other types of approaches, such as filial therapy, cognitive behavioral play therapy, and DIR/Floortime therapy. In addition, course material will highlight cultural considerations, therapeutic work with parents and caregivers, challenges in treatment, self-reflection, self-regulation, sensory processing, interoception, and analysis of clinical case studies. Readings, class discussions, group play-based activities, and video illustrations will provide students with both a theoretical and introductory clinical basis for play-based therapeutic work with young children in early intervention approaches.

Faculty

• Cindy Puccio

Advanced, Seminar—Spring

In this research internship course, students will gain research experience through active engagement in a psychology research lab with a member of the psychology faculty. This will involve an internship within a research lab on campus, including a weekly lab meeting, a weekly collaborative meeting across labs, ongoing contributions towards research and practice within their lab and/or community settings, additional individual and group meetings as needed, and additional synchronous and asynchronous research work. Weekly lab meetings will involve reading and discussing research articles and research-methods papers specific to the topics of research being undertaken by each student and faculty member. Students will be expected to learn the current research approaches being employed by their supervising faculty member and to contribute toward ongoing research in the form of a research practicum. They may also have the opportunity to develop and implement their own independent research projects within the labs in which they are working, depending on lab priorities. 

The weekly collaborative cross-labs meeting will include readings on, and discussions of, various concepts in research related to open science practices, finding funding/grant writing, collecting and analyzing data, as well as the discussion of contemporary research articles that are relevant to student and faculty research projects. All faculty and students involved in the research experience will take turns leading the discussion of current research, with faculty taking the lead at the beginning of the semester and students taking the lead as their expertise develops. 

Students participating in the course will be expected to attend and actively participate in weekly collaborative cross-labs meetings and weekly lab meetings; keep an ongoing journal and/or scientific lab notebook; select and facilitate group and lab discussions of relevant contemporary research articles (at least once for each meeting type); work within a lab and/or community setting, as appropriate for their projects; contribute toward ongoing research and practice within their lab or community settings; report on their ongoing lab research in the form of a short paper prepared for possible publication and a poster at the SciMath Poster Symposium; and provide their colleagues with ongoing verbal and written feedback on their projects. Students will be responsible for working collaboratively with their colleagues to further develop their understanding of each of the topics covered in class.

Faculty

• Kim Ferguson
• Sammy Floyd

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

Why have trans bodies become central to brain imaging studies? Can facial recognition technologies identify queerness? Why do animals such as “gay penguins” attract outsized scientific and cultural attention? More broadly, how did science come to position itself as an authority on sex, gender, and sexuality, and how does that history shape our lives today? This interdisciplinary course will examine how science has defined queerness—and how queer critiques have reshaped it in return. It will trace sex and sexuality science from racialized theories of evolution and sexual dimorphism to contemporary biomedical and computational technologies that claim access to bodily truths. The course will ask how critique can be put into practice when struggles for queer survival and rights have often depended on recognition by scientific and state institutions, and whether science itself can be reworked through queer commitments. The course will combine social theory with hands-on engagement across disciplines through field trips, artistic and activist encounters, and interdisciplinary readings. Students will examine how knowledge is produced not only in laboratories and clinics, but also through art and digital media, using these sites to reflect on the stakes of scientific classification in everyday life. Throughout, we will emphasize the political construction of scientific knowledge and consider how queer inquiry might transform both science and the worlds it helps make. Conference projects may include archival research on the history of sex; ethnographic or interview-based studies; critical analyses of biomedical or computational technologies (such as medical devices or artificial intelligence); or fieldwork in museums, labs, clinics, or community organizations. Students may also design interdisciplinary projects that rethink scientific methods, classification, or public science through queer and trans critique.

Faculty

• Carlo Sariego

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

What does the future of health and medicine look like, and who gets to imagine it? This course will introduce students to the social study of science, medicine, and technology by exploring how medical knowledge is produced across hospitals, laboratories, activist movements, community clinics, art spaces, and imagined futures. We will examine both medical utopias and dystopias, moments when science promises care and progress, as well as moments when it produces harm or exclusion. A key focus of the course will be how knowledge is produced not only by experts, but also by communities. We will examine alternative and grassroots health movements (from the Black Panthers and ACT UP to disability activism and feminist texts like Our Bodies, Ourselves) alongside mainstream medical institutions and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, longevity drugs, and GLP-1s. We will take seriously how medical knowledge is built and used in real-world settings, and how scientific authority influences everyday decisions about bodies, care, and risk. Students will develop practical skills in analysis, research, and writing while learning how to think across disciplines in ways that are useful for pre-med, clinical work, public-facing careers, and future study. Students will learn introductory field methods and research skills through conference work that investigates how scientific and medical knowledge circulates across different spaces, from social media and emerging reproductive technologies to protest art, public health campaigns, and community-based expertise. The course will culminate in a collaborative research project modeled on a mini academic conference, where students will present original work on how science and medicine operate in everyday life. By the end of the course, students will understand science and medicine not as neutral fields, but as social forces that can both heal and harm.

Faculty

• Carlo Sariego

First-Year Studies—Fall

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture with weekly seminars, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of placing laughter at the center of our discourse is to think and play across disciplines to explore the many contradictory ideas and experiences signified by laughter, from humor and collective joy to unease and social rupture. For weekly class assignments, students will be asked to conduct observational studies of themselves and others’ laughter patterns, make artworks inspired by stand-up, sitcoms, and slapstick comedy, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed will include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological and physiological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags. Experiential, hands-on opportunities for engaging with the course will involve expert panels, improv/comedy workshops, scientific laughter labs, and an art exhibit organized around laughter. Students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences, as part of regular class time, alongside corequisite First-Year Studies Project (ARTS 1000), which will meet weekly as a group.

Faculty

• John O’Connor

Open, Lecture—Fall

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture with weekly seminars, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of placing laughter at the center of our discourse is to think and play across disciplines to explore the many contradictory ideas and experiences signified by laughter, from humor and collective joy to unease and social rupture. For weekly class assignments, students will be asked to conduct observational studies of themselves and others’ laughter patterns, make artworks inspired by stand-up, sitcoms, and slapstick comedy, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed will include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological and physiological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags. Experiential, hands-on opportunities for engaging with the course will involve expert panels, improv/comedy workshops, scientific laughter labs, and an art exhibit organized around laughter.

Faculty

• John O’Connor
• Maia Pujara
• Leana Hirschfeld-Kroen

Open, Concept—Spring

This course will explore the principles of color theory through the material and conceptual practice of quilt making. Through hands-on textile projects, foundational quilt making techniques, including fabric selection, cutting, piecing, hand and machine sewing, will be introduced alongside investigations into color interaction, perception, composition, and meaning. Drawing on writings and theories of Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten, and Josef Albers, the course will examine color as both a physical phenomenon and a visual language. Readings and discussions will connect historical color theory to the work of textile artists and quiltmakers, including Anni Albers, the Gee's Bend Quilters, Nancy Crow, Rosie Lee Tompkins, Faith Ringgold, Bisa Butler, Yvonne Wells, and Sheila Hicks. Particular attention will be given to the ways color operates within textile traditions, contemporary fiber art, abstraction, improvisation, and visual storytelling. Studio exercises will focus on value, contrast, color harmony, color relativity, optical effects, and spatial relationships. Quilt making will serve as a framework for exploring how color functions across disciplines and cultures, while encouraging experimentation with pattern, structure, and materiality. Critiques, readings, and artist case studies will support the development of a deeper understanding of color as an expressive and communicative element in visual art. By the end of the semester, students will have a working knowledge of fundamental color theory and basic patchwork techniques, as well as a series of textile studies that integrate technical skill, visual inquiry, and creative experimentation.

Faculty

• Amy Pryor