Psychology (PGDip PGCert)

Course Structure

1. Cognitive and Social Aspects of Development (20 level 7 credits) provides you with a socio-cultural view of development and how education impacts on development and cognition. Topics covered include paradigms for analysing cognitive developmental theory, reasoning, memory and executive function; culture and cognition, socialisation, and identity; children in schools; gender roles in development; and language development in relation to reading and writing.
2. Social Psychology (20 level 7 credits) considers the major themes in social psychology and how these influence society and social interaction. Discussion will focus on key articles in the literature. Themes include group dynamics, social identification, social influences, attraction, altruism, leadership role, prejudice and attitudes.
3. Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience (20 level 7 credits) explores the functional organisation of the brain from a cognitive perspective. The module examines our current understanding and recent advances in a number of key cognitive processes and their underlying biological substrates. Topics cover basic neuroanatomy as well as issues such as perception, attention, memory, language, reading and writing skills, and emotional processing.
4. Experimental Method and Statistics for Psychology (20 level 7 credits) develops your knowledge of statistical concepts and techniques of analysis. It covers standard and advanced statistical theory and methods, providing an opportunity to develop statistical expertise in descriptive and inferential statistics. This module is also an introduction to multinomial and multivariate analysis, and analysis of data using a statistical computer package (SPSS).
5. Intelligence and Individual Differences (20 level 7 credits) advances your knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methods in psychology, with particular reference to cognition, intelligence and individual differences. The syllabus covers qualitative methods, ethnography and case studies in psychological research; the interview as a method of data collection; theoretical and methodological approaches in the analysis of interviews; intelligence and psychological testing; the use of computational models of cognitive processes and psychometric methods; and critical analysis of research papers and methods.
6. Personality and Psychological Disorders (20 level 7 credits) advances your knowledge of theory and research methods in psychology with particular reference to personality, individual differences and psychological disorders. The syllabus covers approaches to personality research and the methods used to measure personality; theory and methods used in emotional processing and in research focusing on psychological disorders; cultural variations in behaviour and experience and issues of gender and ethnicity.
7. Research Design Skills (10 level 7 credits) provides a structured framework within which you will identify your dissertation topic, critically review relevant previous research, and develop a workable design for your empirical project. The module ensures that you carry out the theoretical and methodological groundwork for your research-based dissertation and provides milestones for project development and an opportunity to gain tutor and peer feedback.
8. Research based dissertation (50 level 7 credits) is 6-8,000 words long. It is an extended and supervised piece of work reporting new empirical data. It is always grounded in a thorough review of the relevant scientific literature and normally requires experimental data collection. The aim of the dissertation is to allow you to develop your own ideas in a specific domain of psychology and to provide you with experience in research design, data collection, analysis and interpretation. You will also have the opportunity to work alongside an experienced academic from the Psychology Department. The content consists of individual tutorials with project supervisors and individual work.