Cognitive and Behavioral Science
Why Study Cognitive and Behavioral Science?
Many students are drawn to the Cognitive and Behavioral Science (CBSC) major because of its multidisciplinary foundations, rich linkages to other sciences, and applications within diverse career paths. Our department has strong connections with the interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program on campus; CBSC and neuroscience majors work side by side in CBSC Department labs.
Our curriculum emphasizes research training because it provides students with durable skills that benefit any future professional path: critical thinking, teamwork, quantitative skills, data management and analysis, and problem solving.
Personalized Education
The W&L CBSC curriculum encourages individualization of the major:
- Join a faculty member’s research team. The team experience provides a close-knit academic home on campus and allows you to spread your wings in a professional research context. Some lab members, especially those who are selected as W&L Summer Research Scholars, become credentialed in research by presenting the lab’s findings at a professional conference and/or earning authorship on a published article.
- Choose a capstone experience that fits your goals. Capstones allow students to synthesize and expand their knowledge base while exploring an avenue for applying it in the real world. Students may complete an independent senior research thesis, an applied science internship, or a community-based research project.
- Explore applications of psychological science through Community-Based Learning (CBL) courses. For instance, tailor-made applied science capstone placements allow students to explore diverse career paths and professional settings (e.g., Blue Ridge Court Services, Woods Creek Montessori School, Western State Hospital, Rockbridge Area Health Center, Thomas Jefferson Coalition for the Homeless). In a recent CBL Spring Term course, W&L students collaborated with members of the Eagle’s Nest Clubhouse, a local psychiatric rehabilitation center, to create a mural on their campus.
Sample Courses
Statistics & Research Design
Students learn the basics of collecting, interpreting and presenting data in the behavioral sciences. Data from a variety of sources, such as questionnaires, psychological tests and behavioral observations, are considered. Students learn to use and to evaluate critically statistical and graphical summaries of data. They also study techniques of searching the literature and of producing written reports in technical format. Individual projects include oral presentations, creating technical graphics and publishing on the internet.
Cognition & Emotion
This course challenges the notion that cognition and emotion are fundamentally opposing psychological systems and explores how they function together to influence attention, memory, thinking and behavior in our social world. Coverage includes contemporary theory, research, experimental design, and application on topics regarding both healthy individuals and those with psychological disorders.
Psychoactive Drugs & Behavior
An introduction to broad psychological perspectives of drug use, misuse and abuse. The pharmacological and physiological actions of psychoactive drugs, as well as personality and social variables that influence their use, are considered. Emphasis is given to historically significant and currently popular drugs of abuse.
Psychology Mythbusters
In this course, students learn how to test psychological myths and to determine a status: confirmed, plausible or busted. We explore a variety of myths, including the existence of the unconscious mind, relationship myths, brain myths, psychology and law myths, social myths, personality myths and mental-illness myths. Students critically evaluate psychology myths by gathering and writing about empirical evidence; designing, running and analyzing an experiment on a particular psychology myth; and making class presentations.
The Marijuana Question
This course explores how the basic and clinical pharmacology of cannabis and cannabis products interconnects with policy and practice in the realms of public health, legislation and law enforcement; how these interconnections have informed shifting public attitudes toward the use of cannabis in medical and recreational contexts; and how incomplete understanding of cannabis effects in key knowledge domains demands coordinated initiatives in basic, clinical and public health research to foster formulation of coherent and effective public policy going forward.
Sleep, Health & Society
Current Advances in Psychological Science: Sleep, Health and Society addresses an underappreciated health emergency. Sleep (or the lack thereof) is increasingly becoming recognized as a major health concern at the societal level, leading to poor physical and mental health. This course examines the basic functions of sleep and how deficiencies in sleep lead to poor health at the population level. Students participate in discussion groups, perform a self-study of sleep, and design a sleep improvement campaign.
Meet the Faculty
At W&L, students enjoy small classes and close relationships with professors who educate and nurture.
