Teaching
(Anthropology 3383). Offered every Fall semester.
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Examines the influence of evolved cognitive dispositions (the way natural selection engineered the human mind) on the transmission of cultural knowledge. Dispositions present from early childhood make certain kinds of cultural knowledge particularly easy to acquire and therefore culturally stable. We also consider the evidence for differences in cognitive processes triggered by different social environments. Emphasis is on empirical studies and experimental methods in the study of cultural similarity and differences.
(Psychology 4099) Offered every Fall semester.
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Why are human minds the way they are? How can we explain who people find attractive, why they form parties and coalitions, under what conditions they can cooperate or fight? This course introduces evolutionary accounts of aspects of perception, memory, decision-making and emotional systems.
(Psychology 4625) Offered Spring 2010.
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This course is about how people create and remember their personal life histories. The topics include basic research issues in autobiographical memory, as well as theoretical and practical aspects of the subject. We examine the development of memory, amnesia, eye-witness testimony, biases in recollection, memory distortions, emotion and memory as well as the influence of memory on decision-making. This is a writing-intensive course.
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What is unique about humans? And what is universal among human beings? Is human nature the product of a specific genome, or is it shaped by human cultures? Does it make sense to think of nature as the opposite of nurture? We will consider aspects of human nature in domains such as family and gender, politics, religious extremism, ethnic identity and morality, from the viewpoints of cultural anthropology, philosophy, evolutionary biology and psychology.
(Psychology 221) Now taught by Larry Jacoby
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In this course we introduce students to the many aspects of memory and the many effects of its workings on individual and social life. Topics include individual memory systems, episodic and semantic memory, working memory, memory systems in the brain, amnesia, memory and self, autobiographical memory, historical events and personal memories, remembered events and the construction of collective identity, processes of knowledge transmission.
(Psychology 4301)
We will briefly describe the classical Piagetian paradigm in cognitive development, but mainly focus on recent experimental findings and theories in a variety of domains of cognitive development: how children acquire number concepts, how they develop intuitions about animacy and agency, how they develop mind-reading (aka "Theory of Mind"), whether development requires strong prior biases, whether it requires general association algorithms or on the contrary specialised principles. Emphasis is on experimental findings.