Business Psychology
This module introduces students to the key findings and theories concerning how people think, feel and behave in organizations. It is equally relevant to students wishing to gain an understanding of business psychology at the university level as it is to students keen on developing hands-on skills that can be applied in organisational settings. The module focuses on topics such as motivation, negotiations, group and network dynamics, social status, influence, and individual personality. The module features interactive lectures, research exercises, and experiential activities, including individual negotiations, group problem-solving, and using data analysis to make strategic business decisions.
Developmental Neuroscience and Neurology
The brain develops rapidly during the fetal and early postnatal period. While some aspects of development are genetically guided, others are activity-dependent. This means that special patterns of spontaneous electrical activity are required to correctly wire up the brain. This partly explains why fetal and neonatal brain injury can result in life-long negative consequences. Brain injury can result in either suppressed electrical activity or excessive electrical activity in the form of seizures. As a result, fragile early brain networks do not receive the carefully balanced patterns of electrical activity which they need to develop correctly. In this module you will learn about this critical foundation of normal brain development, and how it can go wrong.
How the Brain Works and What Can Go Wrong
The brain is an amazing object which controls human lives – it is a complex inter- connection of neurons which store our memories and knowledge and has a complex brain chemistry. However, our brains can sometimes go wrong- either because there is something wrong with our genetics or brain chemistry or due to some injury to the brain and central nervous system at some at some point in our life. Brain dysfunction can have a major impact upon an individual’s ability to live and interact within their environment, depending on where the injury or dysfunction occurs. The brain is also affected by the environment and many genetic vulnerabilities in individuals do not necessarily result in dysfunction unless there is a maladaptive or threatening environment e.g. such as in schizophrenia.
This module will look at what we know about healthy brains – how the brain is structured, the different types of brain cells, localisation of function and neurochemistry of different brain areas, communication within the brain and how we investigate the brain in week 1. In weeks 2 and 3 the module will look at dysfunction in relation to vison, hearing, movement, memory, thinking, emotion and behaviour. UCL is ranked as second in the world for neuroscience and students will get to hear about the amazing world class research that takes place within the Faculty of Brain Sciences and its constituent parts: the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, the Division of Psychiatry, the Institutes of Ophthalmology and Neurology and the Ear Institute.
Language and the Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics
This module is an introduction to Psycholinguistics, an interdisciplinary field of study which aims to understand how humans learn, represent, comprehend, and produce language. It will begin by asking what it means to know a language and explore the nature of our linguistic competence. Students will examine core properties of mental representations and processes involved in acquiring and understanding language, and how linguistic processes unfold in real time. Finally, students will explore issues in perception, production and acquisition in three core domains: speech sounds, words, and sentences. The experimental studies discussed in the lectures and seminars include those which employed eye tracking and EEG in reading, comprehension and lexical decision tasks, as well as semantic and syntactic priming in comprehension and production tasks.
Psychology in Action
Our aim is to develop students’ psychological literacy through the cycle of enquiry and evidence. Students will be introduced to key conceptual issues, methodological approaches and significant findings in scientific psychology, their historical background, and the kinds of empirical evidence on which these findings are based. We will take simple questions, and cut across traditional disciplines looking for answers.
