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About Us

The study of psychology has a distinguished history at Brown, beginning with the appointment of Edmund Delabarre in 1891 and the conferring of its first graduate degrees in psychology a year later. Since then, the Department of Psychology has been home to six members of the National Academy of Sciences, five graduate students who were later elected to the Academy, and three members of international academies. (Delabarre is 2nd from the right in the photogaph below.)

Faculty in the department have included a number of pioneers of experimental psychology: Leonard Carmichael and Herbert Jasper, who collaborated at Brown in the earliest electroencephalogram (EEG) studies in this country; Donald Lindsley and McV. Hunt, who continued the tradition of electrophysiological research; Walter Hunter and Harold Schlosberg, who established Brown’s graduate programs in animal learning and cognition; and Lorrin Riggs and Carl Pfaffmann, who gave Brown a position of national prominence in vision and sensory psychology.

As the department enters its second century, it remains mindful of its tradition of excellence in experimental psychology, its emphasis on training graduate students for careers as researchers and teachers in psychology, and its commitment to providing undergraduates with formative research experiences early in their careers. The department’s research mission encompasses a wide range of phenomena and levels of analysis, organized in pursuit of three broad goals. One is to deepen our understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms of sensation, perception, learning, and emotion. A second is to probe the biological and evolutionary foundations of animal and human behavior, including communication, parent-offspring attachment, and sleep. And a third is to clarify the social perception and assessment of individuals and groups.

These areas of inquiry employ diverse research methodologies, including psychophysical methods in the study of vision, fMRI in the neuropsychology of human emotion and age-related dementia, single-unit recording, and analyses of molecular mechanisms in the study of animal learning.

Interdisciplinary Studies

The dynamism of the department is evident in the success of the interdisciplinary centers and programs it has supported. The Center for Cognitive Sciences developed rapidly from its initial base in the Department of Psychology into the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences. The Department of Psychology also played an important role in the interdisciplinary Center for Neural Sciences, which has evolved into the Department of Neuroscience, with several psychology faculty members serving in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience.

Eight psychology faculty members serve in the Brain Sciences Program, which brings together 75 faculty from 10 different departments to promote collaborative theoretical and experimental study of the brain from the molecular to the behavioral and cognitive level. The Child Study Center evolved into the Center for the Study of Human Development, which brings together faculty from the departments of Psychology, Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, and Psychiatry and Human Behavior.

Graduate Training

The department’s graduate program is designed to educate and train scientists and scholars who will make contributions to society through research and teaching. With a student-to-faculty ratio of less than 2 to 1, students work closely as colleagues with distinguished faculty, from the first year of the program up through the completion of their graduate training.

Another important feature of the graduate program at Brown is its flexibility: Students select advisors whose research is in their area of interest, and they may change advisors as their research interests change. In collaboration with their advisors, graduate students then plan a curriculum that best suits their individual research and teaching goals.

To achieve the necessary depth of knowledge for a career as a scientist and scholar, students take core courses in behavioral neuroscience, sensation and perception, cognitive processes, and social psychology. Students also take additional graduate seminars in their primary area of research interest, both within the Department of Psychology and in other departments and programs, including Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Neuroscience, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, and Education.

Productive careers in research also require a deep understanding of the phenomena, theories, and methods in a focused area. Psychology graduate students become involved in research early, and continue this involvement throughout their graduate careers. One important component of the research training is the first-year project, which students begin in collaboration with a research advisor by the end of their first semester, and which culminates with a written and oral report given by the student at the beginning of the second year. Research training continues with the preliminary examination, which consists of a major integrative paper with a critical survey of the literature and a proposal for future research. The doctoral thesis is the culminating experience for the Ph.D. candidate. It is an original contribution to psychological knowledge based on extensive research, typically over a two-year period. Research usually begins in the third year, supervised by the faculty advisor and two other faculty members on the dissertation committee. The oral examination on the thesis completes the formal requirements for the Ph.D. The success of this approach is reflected in the outstanding accomplishments of our graduate alumni.

Teaching and Undergraduate Research

Teaching is a natural extension of research and scholarship; it is one important vehicle for sharing knowledge with others so that society as a whole can benefit. Because many Brown Ph.D.s become teachers as well as research scientists, guided experience in undergraduate teaching activities is required. These teaching activities include supervising laboratories, course administration, tutoring, supervising research, and running laboratory sections in Introductory Psychology and Quantitative Methods. Where appropriate, students give a lecture to an undergraduate class to further develop their teaching skills.

Involvement in teaching at Brown is particularly rewarding because of Brown’s special character as a University/ College. Courses are generally small and all faculty – from the most junior to the most senior – participate in teaching at all levels.

Undergraduates also participate in research projects with faculty and graduate students, thus adding to the dynamism of the department. Each year, 10 to 15 undergraduates complete senior honors projects. Each project involves two semesters of research with a member of the faculty, a written thesis, and an oral defense. Often, these research projects are on topics that are related to those being worked on by graduate students. Many of the honors projects have been of sufficiently high quality that they have been published in scientific journals, providing undergraduates with invaluable experience with the peer-review process.