PSLU/PSEU 1000- Introductory Psychology (3) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
This course first surveys psychology's origins, history, and broad themes, as well as psychology's chief research methods. Biological bases of human behavior are examined. Attention is then directed to how people sense and perceive their world and themselves, both at conscious and unconscious levels; how people learn, remember, think, and communicate; how people are molded by innate and acquired motives, emotions and personality traits all across the human life span; and how inner and outer influences shape people's coping or maladaptive responses to stressful events, their development of psychological disorders and resultant need for some form of psychotherapy, and their social behavior.
PSLU/PSEU 2700 -Infant and Child Development (4) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
The aim of this course is to draw on theory and research to examine physical, cognitive, and psychosocial features of human development. Examined in this course are major themes and theories of child development and the empirical methods of exploring them, with emphasis given to: genetic factors and the way they interact with various prenatal and perinatal events to affect postnatal development; the impact on infancy and childhood of such factors as temperament, intelligence, and experiences during sensitive periods of development; differing modes of learning and cognition; and the influence of the family, peers, and the media.
PSLU/PSEU 2710 -Adolescent and Adult Development (4) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
This course draws extensively on research and diverse theories to examine physical, cognitive, and personality features of development during adolescence and adulthood. Attention is given to the way that several interactive influences - gene-environment, person-environment, and mind-body ones - conduce to an individual's adaptive or maladaptive growth and change. Attention is also given to continuity vs. discontinuity of development, and to the factors which may account for differences as a function of one's personality, gender, and culture.
PSLU/PSEU 2800 - Theories of Personality (4) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
This course examines personality issues and diverse views of the structure, functioning, and development of personality in terms of several psychoanalytic, social-cognitive, social-psychological, and trait theories of personality.
PSLU/PSEU 3720 - Psychology of Women (4) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
In terms of theory and research, this course focuses primarily on women, but also examines gender issues in terms of factors that conduce to female-male similarities and differences. Topics include the origins in mythology and religion of negative stereotypes of females; life-span development of females (and, to some extent, of males) in biological makeup, physical and sexual growth and functioning); questions of intimacy, parenting and reproduction; various types of cognitive ability and achievement; social roles and relationships; personality traits; mental and physical health; and questions of violence and exploitation.
PSLU/PSEU 4310 - Aging and Society (4) Syllabus via Blackboard, eRes, or email.
This is a cross-disciplinary course that draws on research and theory - primarily from psychology but secondarily from other disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science) - to explore healthy vs. less healthy biological, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning in aging females and males. Attention is given throughout the course to environmental and intrapersonal conditions that conduce to normal versus abnormal development, to various types of social relationships, to the interrelationships between physical and psychological health, and to the factors that promote optimal aging and adjustment.
