PY 491 DESCRIPTIONS FOR SPRING 2018

Dr. Jeffrey Parker, Spring 2018

Course Number

PY 491

Section number

007

Overview

This seminar for advanced undergraduates considers how friendships and other formsof peer experience contribute to children's social, emotional,and cognitive growth, andability to cope with stress. Amongthe most important skills that children must acquireare those that allow them to participate effectively and responsiblyin personalrelationships with age mates. In this course, we also exploretheseskills andwhatsocial scientists understand about how these develop. We explore what it means to bewell adjusted with peers and the social tasks children and adolescents face.Finally, weexplore bullying in school as animportant contemporary issue that has been receivinggreater attention. This is a 3-credit course that can be used as credits toward thePsychologymajor and fulfills the Departmental senior seminar requirement and theCollege writing requirement.

Title: Psychology of Adulthood and Aging

Term: Spring, 2018

Section: 320

Instructor: Dr. Sheila Black

Course Description-- This course will focus on adult development from an interdisciplinary perspective and will cover issues such as caregiving, age-related changes in cognitive processes, and institutionalization. Because this class is a seminar, there will be considerable class discussion of major issues related to adult development.

Spring 2018

PY 491-001

Title: “Mental Health Issues and the Law”

Instructor: Dr. Karen Salekin

Mental Health Issues and the Law

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the topics relevant to the interplay between mental health issues and the criminal justice system. The course will focus on issues related to criminal justice, but will also cover two topics that are outside of this realm: (1) civil commitment and (2) physician assisted suicide. Psychologists who work within the legal system can assume a number of roles that include, but are not limited to, social scientists, consultants, and expert witnesses. The information in this class pertains mostly to clinical forensic psychology, but other topics are included. Information provided via lecture and reading will provide the student with a broad understanding of the interplay between mental health issues and the legal system, as well as an understanding of the evolving nature of laws that result from this interplay.

Title: Social Cognition;PY491 – section 005

Name: Dr. Hart

Brief topic description:Social cognition examines the underlying thought processes that give rise to our experiences in various domains, including impression formation, group stereotyping, attribution, the self, and numerous other judgments and decisions. Thus, social cognition represents a framework to studying social psychology that helps us place social-psychological effects in the broader context of how people think. Here, we cover various social-psychological phenomena from the perspective of social cognition.

Title: Unconscious Processing: knowing without knowing

491-002

Allison Scrivner

Description:

This course covers a wide range of topics involving unconscious processing. Topics like subliminal priming, various methods of implicit learning, unconscious decision making, implicit bias, and the impact of a variety of complications on unconscious processes will be discussed