Wayne State University

Cognitive, Developmental and Social Psychology

Admission Information, Requirements,and Procedures.

Introduction

This area includes students pursuing degrees in cognitive, developmental, and social psychology.  All students in this program are trained to take an interdisciplinary approach to research and tailor their coursework so that it corresponds to their personal research interests.  Thus, some students are trained primarily in one of these subdisciplines; whereas other students pursue an integration of one or more of these subdisciplines (e.g., social cognition, social development, cognitive development).  Students can also integrate their disciplinary focus with health psychology. 

The Cognitive program focuses on fundamental research on human cognition and its application to educational and human factors settings. Current research interests include speech perception; attention; memory; psycholinguistics; sign language and deafness; and gerontological studies of memory.

The Developmental program emphasizes the life-span perspective, within which students may specialize in social-emotional development, developmental psychobiology, or applied developmental psychology.  Research areas include development in high risk families, early childhood temperament, cross-cultural research with married couples, and cognitive interventions with older adults. 

The Social program focuses on theory-based basic and applied research.  Students are trained in experimental and survey research methods.  Current research interests include psychosocial factors that influence health, alleviating negative stigmatization, sexual violence, social cognition, social support, and attitude representation and change. 

Upon admission to the program, each student selects or is assigned a faculty adviser.  In consultation with their adviser, students select two other faculty members to form a mentoring committee.  Students consult regularly with their mentors regarding selection of courses, development of research and training plans, and other professional issues.

In addition to a sound foundation in the principles of psychology, students acquire valuable skills in research methodology and statistics for use in research, program evaluation, and consulting work.  Students learn state-of-the-art research methodologies in laboratory experimentation, field studies, and survey methods.  Training is provided in courses, small seminars, directed study projects, field placements, and through involvement in ongoing research programs of the faculty.

Our low student-faculty ratio allows graduate training to be tailored to each student's particular interests, abilities, and goals.  Wayne State's location in a major metropolitan area provides many basic and applied research opportunities for students through involvement in research programs being conducted throughout the University, in other educational and industrial settings, and in human service and health organizations in the region.  After completing their graduate training, our students have accepted positions at major universities and small colleges, as well as health and research institutes, family development centers, and government and public policy agencies.  Some students have developed their own businesses, focusing on program evaluation and consulting.

Curriculum

All students in the program are required to take an integrated theory course and an integrated research methods course.  Beyond these, each student tailors their coursework to meet their goals, working in consultation with their mentoring team.  They may focus on one specific area (cognitive, developmental, or social psychology) or they may integrate two or more areas.  The primary courses in each subarea are listed below.  New classes are developed as warranted by changes in the discipline and the faculty. 

Cognitive

• Psycholinguistics
• Human Cognition
• Cognitive Neuroscience 
• Neuropathology and Behavior
• Cognitive Development
• Memory and Brain
• Seminar in Cognitive Processes

Developmental

• Development of Memory
• Psychology of Infant Behavior and Development
• Lifespan Developmental Psychology
• Developmental Psychobiology
• Attachment Relationships Across the Lifespan
• Developmental Assessment: Infancy
• Social Development Across the Lifespan
• Developmental Psychology of Adolescence
• Psychological Development in the Adult Years
• Current Issues in Developmental Psychology

Social  

• Social Psychology: Research and Theory
• Attitude Theory and Attitude Change
• Social Neuroscience
• Evolutionary Psychology of Emotions
• Foundations of Health Psychology
• Social Cognition
• Social Relationships
• Seminar in Experimental Social Psychology

Specialization in Health Psychology

The field of health psychology examines the relationship between psychological and behavioral processes and physical health.  Health psychology relies on theory and research from social, clinical, physiological, developmental, and cognitive psychology.  Traditional medicine, built on an infectious disease model, is poorly equipped to handle problems of behavior and mental processes, and the field of health psychology is attempting to fill that gap.  Some important topics include the application of theories of behavior change to health habits; the role of personality, emotions, stress, and coping on health and adjustment to illness; and health disparities associated with ethnicity, class, gender, and age.

Three health-related courses are required:

• Health Psychology I  (Theory and Basic Research) 
• Health Psychology II (Assessment and Intervention)
• Most students also take Biological Bases of Behavior, although this may be replaced with another relevant course if approved by the student's mentoring committee. 

Students are also expected to conduct research related to health psychology.  This research can be conducted with department faculty as well as with faculty in medicine, nursing, allied health, medical sociology, and medical anthropology.  This specialization meets the Minor Specialization requirement described below. 

Minor Area of Specialization

In addition to their major, students also select a minor subdiscipline, which usually consists of three courses.  This minor is selected in consultation with students’ mentoring committee.  Students can minor in measurement if they want to further develop their quantitative research skills.  Students can minor in health if they want to apply their substantive focus to health issues.  Students can also develop a minor focused on courses in other areas of psychology (behavioral and cognitive neuroscience or industrial and organizational psychology) or courses in other disciplines (e.g., linguistics, gerontology). 

Research Laboratories and Field Research

Alcohol and Social Perceptions Laboratory (Dr. Antonia Abbey): Research conducted in this laboratory examines the psychological, cognitive, and behavioral effects of alcohol on people's responses to social and sexual situations.  Recent research has focused on alcohol's role in sexual assault and risky sexual decision-making that can increase HIV/AIDS risk.  Experimental and survey research methods are used in most of these studies.  

Close Relationships Laboratory (Dr. Richard Slatcher): Research in this laboratory focuses on: 1) basic relationship processes, including self-disclosure, intimacy and commitment processes, and, 2) links between close relationships, biological processes and physical health. Our lab takes a multimethod approach, using experimental, daily diary, and naturalistic observation methods to assess the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of dating and marital relationships and the physical health consequences of those relationships. Currently, we are conducting a new study with collaborators at the University of California, Los Angeles to investigate links between self-disclosure in everyday life and susceptibility to upper respiratory infections among parents of 8-12 year old children. We are also conducting a series of experiments in which we manipulate self-disclosure between pairs of couples to examine whether self disclosure can lesson cross-ethnicity anxiety among couples of different ethnicities.

Concepts and Cognition Laboratory (Dr. Lara L. Jones): The primary area of research in our laboratory examines the representation, accessibility, and integration of noun-noun concept pairs. In addition to studying semantic, associative, integrative, and mediated priming, we also investigate the underlying executive functions involved in the inference of a conceptual relation and the subsequent integration of the concepts (e.g., a WOOL SWEATER is a sweater composed of wool). Our secondary area of research in collaboration with a social psychologist falls under the general domain of personality and cognition. Recent projects have examined the influence of agentic and communal traits on voting decisions and on the self-reference effect.

Cross-Cultural Marital Research Laboratory (Dr. Glenn Weisfeld): This laboratory has a database derived from approximately 3,000 couples from Turkey, China, the United Kingdom, and Russia.  The U.S. sample has subsamples of African American and White respondents, as well as middle-class and working-class respondents.  Samples are also being obtained from Brazil and the Netherlands.  Data analyses focus on identifying cross-cultural similarities and differences in this universal social relationship.  The questionnaire has 235 items exploring a wide range of aspects of marriage.  Current analyses examine the role of children on marital satisfaction, humor, and sexual infidelity.  

Early Relationships Laboratory (Dr. Ann Stacks): Research projects in this lab focus on the role that parental and non-parental caregivers play in the behavior and emotional development of children under 5-years who are living in high-risk environments and the efficacy of parent-infant interventions.

Integrative Developmental Systems Laboratory (Dr. Ty Partridge): Research in this lab focuses on the development of theoretical and methodological paradigms to study infant and early childhood temperament and emotional development.  This research also emphasizes the application of developmental science to the study of at-risk families.  This research is intended to address the needs of the community and to assess the impact of different ecological contexts on youth development, thereby having public value and impact on basic developmental theory.

Social Cognition Laboratory (Dr. Rusty McIntyre):  This lab focuses on social-cognitive research.  There are currently, three lines of research: 1) how attitude-relevant actions affect attitude-behavior consistency and resistance to change; 2) the process, effects, and amelioration of stigmatization for Arabs, Blacks, Women, and members of lower socioeconomic groups; and, 3) the process of role model identification.  The laboratory is equipped with multiple computers for the presentation of stimuli and recording reaction data, a group testing/interaction room, and a staff office. 

Psycholinguistics Laboratory (Dr. Lee Wurm):  This laboratory conducts research in speech perception, language processing, and memory. The lab is equipped for digitizing and analyzing speech samples. Sound-attenuating booths provide audio recording capabilities and quiet environments for testing subjects. Specialized software packages are used for acoustic analysis, waveform editing, and artificial speech synthesis. Large lexical databases are available for computer searches. Students may conduct experiments that incorporate auditory and/or visual stimulus presentation, and that require a variety of different response types, including button-presses, vocal responses, pushing/pulling of levers, paper-and-pencil, and typing.  

Faculty

Antonia Abbey, Professor and Area Chair
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1982
Interests: Women's health, sexual assault, sexual risk-taking, alcohol’s role in sexual assault & sexual risk-taking; perceptions of sexual cues; substance abuse prevention.

Marjorie Beeghly, Associate Professor     
Ph.D., University of Colorado, 1981.
Interests: Infants’ socio-communicative and socio-emotional development; parent child interaction, risk and resilience, atypical development.

Ira J. Firestone, Professor
Ph.D., New York University, 1966
Interests: Environmental psychology, attitudes, substance abuse.

Joseph Fitzgerald, Professor
Ph.D., West Virginia University, 1974
Interests: Gerontology, adult development, adolescent development, memory and the legal system.

Lara Jones, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2007
Interests: Semantic priming, mediated priming, relational integration; personality and cognition .

Melissa Kaplan-Estrin, Associate Professor
Psychology Department Associate Chair
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana, 1974
Interests: Infant development, risk and protective factors in infancy.

Sheldon G. Levy, Professor
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1963
Interests: Political psychology, collective behavior, mass media, quantitative correlates of war.
 
Rusty McIntyre, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Texas Christian University, 2004
Interests:  Attitudes, role models, stereotype threat.

Ty Partridge, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Wichita State University, 1998
Interests: Biology-behavioral relationships, developmental systems theory, child temperament, statistical and computational modeling.

Hilary H. Ratner, Professor
Vice President for Research
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, 1979
Interests: Memory and cognitive development.

Patricia Siple, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of California at San Diego, 1975
Interests: Memory and language processing, cognition, sign language, deafness.

Richard Slatcher, Assistant  Professor
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2007
Interests: Close relationships, marriage and health, self-disclosure, intimacy processes in dating and marital relationships, stress, effects of family environments on child health

Ann Stacks, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2002
Interests: social-emotional development of children under age 8 living in high-risk environments

Glenn E. Weisfeld, Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1978
Interests: Ethology and evolutionary psychology, dominance, marital satisfaction, adolescents.

Lee Wurm, Associate Professor
Ph.D., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1996 Interests: Speech perception and psycholinguistics.

Emeritus Faculty:

Sheldon Alexander, Professor
Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1958
Interests: Justice and fairness, attitudes, organizational behavior.

Affiliated Faculty with Primary Appointment in Another Area:

Douglas Barnett, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1993
Interests: Child Clinical, the development of human attachment relationships, child abuse and neglect, urban families, children with chronic health conditions, child and family intervention.

Scott Moffat, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Western Ontario, 1998
Interests: Cognitive, structural, and functional brain changes associated with aging.

Paul Toro, Professor
Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1983
Interests: Community psychology, homelessness and poverty, prevention, program evaluation, cross-cultural research.

Admission Information, Requirements, and Procedures.