Psychology 1001 is the first course of a two-part introduction to the discipline of Psychology. These two courses are stand alone courses (although working together). They can be taken in any order.
Psychology 1001 is about the biological basis of behaviour. This course will provide you with a basic introduction to the scientific concepts, problems, and methods of psychology. We will cover topics related to several sub-fields of the discipline such as the biological bases of psychological processes (e.g., neuroanatomy, genetics/epigenetics, etc.), learning, motivation, emotion, perception and sensation, cognition, memory, and language.
This course will provide a basic introduction to the field of health psychology. The term "Health Psychology" is often used interchangeably with "Behavioural Medicine" or "Medical Psychology".
This course, which is interdisciplinary in its content, mainly focuses on how biological, psychological, and social factors interact to influence health and illness. This is known as the ͞biopsychosocial model. More precisely, the course will cover the biopsychosocial model of health and illness from a life-span perspective.
Examples of topics covered in this course include: Body systems and psychophysiology, psychoneuroimmunology, stress, stress-related disorders, coping and resilience, social support, health enhancing/compromising behaviours, women’s health, infants’ health, Canadian health-care system, physician/patient relationship, medical adherence to treatment, physiology of pain, pain management, chronic conditions (e.g., heart disease, diabetes mellitus, cancer), disabilities, quality of life, end of life (grief, death), positive emotions/health.
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), a growing field, examines the bidirectional communications among the nervous, the endocrine, and the immune system.
This course is a senior undergraduate research seminar in PNI that will examine how interactions among behaviour, the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system influence health. The broad focus will be on relationships between brain, behaviour, and immunity from a life-span perspective and on their implications for disease management within various areas of behavioural medicine (e.g. cardiology, oncology, obstetrics, pediatrics, stress-related disorders like depression, substance use such as smoking).
A key project in the course involves students developing and presenting a mock PNI research proposal to a health funding agency considering allocating a grant. This seminar will consist of readings, student-led discussions, & two oral presentations (related to the key project).
Psychological measurement and individual differences expands on concepts from Research Design and Analysis to further enhance knowledge of research, data collection, data analysis, data confounds, and interpretation.
The course explores scales and scale construction and the analysis of resulting data. Emphasis is placed on ensuring valid and reliable measurements. A statistical software package (SPSS) is used. Approaches to assessment in various fields of psychology are discussed in depth.
Perinatal Health Psychology is a third-year level course about the biopsychosocial factors and experiences of women and men during the transition to parenthood, from preconception to three years postpartum. This specialized course integrates knowledge from health and behavioural sciences, namely psychoneuroendocrinology, obstetrics and gynecology, maternal-fetal medicine, psychiatry, nursing, midwifery, developmental and clinical health psychology. Topics covered include: access to prenatal care, infertility, complicated grief after pregnancy or perinatal loss, perinatal mood disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, psychosis) and infant brain development, fetal growth, preterm birth, developmental origins of health and disease or DOHaD (e.g., fetal programming by epigenetic processes after environmental exposures such as parental lifestyle, nutrition, smoking, alcohol, obesity, and/or endocrine disruptor chemicals/toxins), attachment theory and early parenting.
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