2025-2026 Academic Year

Fall 2025

PSYC 125 Brain and Behavior w/Lab
This course will introduce the structure and function of the brain as it influences human behavior. Findings from neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and endocrinology will be considered in their relation to a number of behavioral processes such as perception, memory, and social behavior. In the laboratory, students will engage in hands-on activities to explore brain anatomy and brain-behavior relationships. Three hours classroom and three hours laboratory a week.

PSYC 480 Sem in Comparative Psychology
How are different animal minds, including human minds, alike and not alike? Do ants navigate the desert the same way you find your way around Carlisle; do misbehaving dogs feel guilty; can apes use sign language; does a pigeon think about its own thoughts? Comparative psychology is the study of how different species think and behave, and how the cognitive processes of all species, including humans, have been shaped by evolutionary pressures. Considering the pressures that shaped cognition helps improve functional applications with working animals, the care for animals used in agriculture, the validity of animal models used in neuroscience, and human understanding about the evolution of minds. Students will read, present, discuss, and propose novel research on topics like numerical cognition, memory, language, and metacognition. By the end of the semester, you will leave with a better understanding of not only human minds, but minds more broadly.

Spring 2026

PSYC 380 Rsch Meth in Comparative Psych
Permission of Instructor Required. Comparative psychology is the study of how different species think and behave, and how the cognitive processes of all species, including humans, have been shaped by evolutionary pressures. Considering the pressures that shaped cognition helps improve functional applications with working animals, the care for animals used in agriculture, the validity of animal models used in neuroscience, and human understanding about the evolution of minds. In this course, students will learn about observational and experimental research methods used in comparative psychology to answer a variety of cognitive and behavioral research questions on topics such as learning, attention, memory, and metacognition. Students will learn how best to design research methodologies that account for and capitalize upon species-typical behavior and sensory systems and discuss how techniques must be adjusted to account for different species of research subjects. We will discuss issues of validity, measurement, and research ethics as they pertain to the field. By the end of this intensive lab course, students will design and conduct a comparative psychology study, then analyze and interpret the resulting data.