Psychology

Units

 

4

 

Prerequisite

 

Psychology, 1, 41, 101, or permission of instructor

 

Course Objectives

 

You will become familiar with the basic ideas and methods of developmental psychobiology as an interdisciplinary science. The aim will be a deeper understanding of behavioral development through the integration of perspectives of  biology and psychology, including the relationships of evolution and genetics to development.

 

Time

 

Class: TR 9:00-10:20 AM (1227 Haring

 

Labs: W: 10:00-11:50 AM; 12:10-2:00 PM; 2:10-4:00 PM; 4:10-6:00 PM(162 Young

 

 

Lecture Instructor

 

Jeff Schank

Office: 268D Young Hall

Email: 

Phone: 752-6332

Office Hours:  Tuesday and Thursday: 10:30 AM to 11:50 PM and by appointment

 

Lab Instructors

 

Olivia Conley

Office: TBA

Email: 

Phone:

Office Hours: TBA

 

Sinead Jiang

Office: TBA

Email:

Phone:

Office Hours: TBA

 

 

What is Developmental Psychobiology?

 

Developmental psychobiology concerns changes that take place over an individual’s lifetime, but not all changes are developmental or of topical concern to psychology. Developmental changes are irreversible, require the active engagement of the individual in its own developmental organization, involve growth, and are emergent from conditions affecting earlier stages (e.g., genetics, environmental factors, previous stages of development). Topical phenomena for developmental psychobiology include behavior, motivation, emotion, cognition, and learning. But, merely listing the characteristics of development and topics in psychobiology is not a definition of developmental psychobiology.

 

To achieve a deeper understanding we will begin by examining the complex concept of levels of organization and causation, issues in nature vs. nurture, and the synthetic perspective of epigenesis (i.e. a process of emergent development in which a developmental stage emerges from the conditions present in the previous stage including prior development up to that point, environmental factors, gene regulation and expression). An epigenetic perspective requires understanding complex issues of causation at multiple levels of organization and integrating information from multiple scientific disciplines including psychology, evolution, development, genetics.