Psychology

Field Description

Human Development and Psychology are distinct disciplines yet there is clear interplay among the topics. Psychology is often thought of as a “hub science” that connects many areas of scholarship (including human development, neuroscience, and cognitive science) while human development is interdisciplinary, with scholarship that blends psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and sociology. Overlap in the academic disciplines means the two fields have always had similar training approaches and degree requirements for their students. In order to facilitate greater cohesiveness among our students, the graduate fields of Human Development and Psychology have merged into one field. The dominant strengths of the department lie in the four broadly defined areas of development, cognition, neuroscience, and social and personality psychology. This exciting new field is housed in Martha Van Rensselaer and Uris Halls and offers three PHD degrees and two MA degrees.

Research facilities in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall feature fully equipped labs directed by individual faculty members who are conducting observational and experimental studies in memory and neuroscience, affect and cognition, law and child witnesses, language acquisition and spatial cognition, human mating, risky and rational decision-making, non-traditional learning styles, quantitative methods and AI technology; the Cornell fMRI facility; a shared EEG Lab, and other specialized facilities on campus. In the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, students become involved in translational research projects aimed at enhancing human development, health and well-being at every stage of the human experience.

Research facilities in Uris Hall feature special labs for research in problems of perception and cognition; a social-psychology laboratory equipped for experimental and observational studies; electrophysiological, histological, and chemical laboratories; surgery facilities; facilities for the maintenance and behavioral study of vertebrate and invertebrate laboratory animals; an audiovisual studio equipped for the study of teaching; laboratory computers and interacting terminals with the capacity to control equipment in experiments and to do online processing and complex data analyses; and other specialized facilities, both on campus and at various off-campus locations.

All students develop an independent program of study in consultation with their Special Committee. The Special Committee oversees requirements that are established by the field. PHD students must choose three primary members of the Special Committee by the end of the first year; students are encouraged but not required to select at least one member (not the chairperson) from a field other than psychology. The Director of Graduate Studies appoints a fourth member, whose function is to ensure that the student obtains adequate breadth of training. MA students are accepted with a two-member special committee already in place.

Requirements for PHD students include a first-year review and annual meetings of the Special Committee to review the student's progress; a research paper completed by the end of the first year and an oral report of the research presented to a meeting of students and faculty members; a one-year course in statistics and experimental design; at least ten hours a week of supervised teaching experience for at least two semesters; grant writing seminar, the Admission to Candidacy examination, which should be taken by the end of the third year (a Graduate School requirement); a written dissertation proposal, which must be accepted at a meeting of the Special Committee called for that purpose; and the doctoral dissertation itself with a final examination on the dissertation (Graduate School requirements).

Requirements for MA students include a total of 30 graded credit hours (15 per semester); a thesis proposal; a funding proposal when applicable; analysis and writing of the master’s thesis; successful completion of the required oral thesis defense (M Exam); and submission of the master’s thesis to the Cornell Graduate School.

Contact Information

Website: http://www.psych.cornell.edu/
Email: pac34@cornell.edu or ma84@cornell.edu
Phone: Uris Hall: 607 255-3834; MVR 607-255-4661

211 Uris Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

G201B Martha Van Rensselaer Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Data and Statistics

Doctoral Program Statistics

Field Manual

Manual

Subject and Degrees

Psychology

Psychology (Ph.D.) (Ithaca)

Concentrations by Subject

Psychology

behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
perception, cognition and development
social and personality psychology

Faculty

Adam Keith Anderson

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development

Vanessa Kimberly Bohns

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: personality and social psychology

Charles Brainerd

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: cognitive development; social and personality development; cognitive neuroscience; memory and cognitive development; mathematical modeling; psychology and law

Daniel Casasanto

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development

Marianella Casasola

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: infant cognitive development and early word learning; interaction between cognition and early language learning

Stephen John Ceci

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: theories of intelligence; cognitive development; children and the law; children's testimonial competence

Morten H Christiansen

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: language of acquisition and processing; neural network models of language and statistical learning; neurophysiological (ERP) measures of statistical learning; language evolution

Thomas A. Cleland

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
Research Interests: olfactory perception as a complex system; coordinating behavioral; physiological, pharmacological, and computational studies of sensory sampling; learning and memory; biological neural networks

Timothy John Devoogd

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
Research Interests: neural basis of female bird song discrimination; interplay between the hippocampus and other brain areas in spatial memory; behavior and brain evolution

Shimon Edelman

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: human and machine cognition; visual recognition; natural language processing

David James Field

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: theories and models of sensory coding and visual processing; visual perception; relations between the structure of the natural environment and the representation of that environment by sensory systems

Thomas Dashiff Gilovich

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: everyday judgment and decision making; critical thinking and belief; egocentrism, optimism, pessimism, satisfaction and regret; behavioral economics; gambling

Michael H. Goldstein

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience; perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: human experimental psychology

Cynthia Hazan

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: development and function of emotional bonds between adult sexual/romantic partners; human mating from an attachment theory and evolutionary perspective

Will Hobbs

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: Perception, Cognition and Development

Adam J. Hoffman

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: Perception Cognition and Development

Amy R. Krosch

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology

Neil Anthony Lewis

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology

Christiane Linster

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
Research Interests: neural basis of sensory information processing

Jane Mendle

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development; social and personality psychology
Research Interests: Child Psychopathology

Shaun B. Nichols

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: Social & Personality

Laura Niemi

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology

Alexander Ophir

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience

David A. Pizarro

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: moral judgment; moral intuitions (especially concerning moral responsibility, and the permissibility or impermissibility of certain acts); biases that affect moral judgment

Valerie Reyna

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development
Research Interests: cognitive development; social and personality development; memory; judgment; and decision making

Harry G. Segal

Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
Concentrations: Psychology: social and personality psychology
Research Interests: personality and social development

David M. Smith

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
Research Interests: learning and memory; context processing; episodic memory; spatial navigation; attention

Robert J. Sternberg

Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
Concentrations: Psychology: perception, cognition and development

Barbara Jean Strupp

Campus: Ithaca
Concentrations: Psychology: behavioral and evolutionary neuroscience
Research Interests: determining the nature and underlying neural basis of developmental cognitive disorders; prenatal cocaine exposure; early lead exposure; transgenic models of developmental disorders

Khena Swallow