Sammy Floyd

The amount you've learned by the time you start college is astonishing. You can recognize thousands of faces, understand tens of thousands of words, and expertly navigate your environments. The flexibility of human learning is unique, even when compared to artificial intelligence. And yet, few of us have any more than an informal understanding of how this works. How and when should we study? Why can we recall lyrics from entire albums but forget every word of a foreign language that we learned at school? How do narratives, culture, and context support and shape learning? These kinds of questions have driven researchers to design countless experiments all over the world—even entering the ocean to measure underwater memories formed by scuba divers. In biweekly group collaboratives with the instructor, we will use lab activities, field trips, and film screenings to explore how different environments support memory and learning at all ages, including behavioral experiments, preschools, “memory athlete” competitions, and care centers for older individuals experiencing memory loss. We will ask how learning works according to psychology, education, linguistics, neuroscience, and cognitive development. We’ll consider the racial, ethnic, and neurodiverse contexts in which learning occurs and the meanings and motivations behind progressive and alternative education. In each field we encounter, we will often start with the same central questions: What is the evidence for each claim about how learning works? And, can we—and should we—use these insights in our own lives? Individual conference work with the instructor will begin with the second question: Students will apply theories or methods from learning science in an appropriate area of their life and evaluate the outcomes—developing critiques of existing approaches, as well as their own proposals, along the way.

By the time you read this course description, you have learned more than 40,000 English words. That’s at least an average of six words per day—and many more if you are multilingual. How is this possible? Were you born with this ability? Or did you learn it? This course is about how humans come to develop language so early and so quickly among striking environmental variation. For example, caregivers in the United States often alter and repeat their words when talking to children, while caregivers in a Tseltal Mayan community are thought to speak directly to other adults, not children. And yet, children in both settings successfully learn language on similar timescales. Importantly, no two children are alike. We will explore how the spectrum of neurodiversity sets many learners on their own communicative path. We will also consider variation in modality: Babies in deaf communities rapidly learn to comprehend and produce sign. We’ll begin by looking at the experimental data: How do you truly unlock and measure a neonate’s language abilities? Or even an adult’s? We’ll find out. Next, we’ll use play with gadgets from experimental methods, such as artificial language learning and eye-tracking, designing our own ministudies, implementing them, and collecting data. Then, we’ll propose theories of the kind of learning mechanism that can operate under such diverse inputs. We’ll evaluate the existing proposals and try to generate our own new theories of language development. We will bring these ideas beyond the seminar room, drawing connections to second-language learning in adults, early-childhood education, and social and economic structures. Students will develop conference projects that propose their own theories of language learning rooted in experimental data and in conversation with existing theories of nature vs. nurture, domain-specificity, and modality.

Human behavior is complex, comprising stories, words, narratives, movement, and more. How can we begin to understand it? This course will introduce central concepts and practices in the analysis of qualitative and quantitative behavioral and linguistic data. We will learn how interview-based and observational data have typically been collected, organized, and interpreted. Students will use various coding techniques, such as MAXQDA software, to organize and interpret meanings and structures in participants’ narratives and responses. We will also discuss various thematic analysis approaches, including interpretive phenomenological analysis, as well as various coding techniques for observational data. Finally, we will discuss various tools used in linguistic analysis, including corpora, LSA, and LIWC. Over the course of the semester, we will work with existing datasets from classic and contemporary studies. For example, how can we use data analysis to determine if people really remember a person, word, or experience rather than simply feeling recognition of it? Students will use SPSS and eventually R software to collate and visualize data and apply traditional frequentist—as well as modern, parameter-free—statistical analyses. Students will also apply and evaluate various thematic analysis approaches and will have the opportunity to draw on various tools of linguistic analysis using existing datasets. Ethical research practices will be discussed in the context of each dataset used. In collaborative groups, students will build a plan for an existing interview, observational, or linguistic dataset, carry out preliminary analyses, and propose possible interpretations. In addition to the prerequisites for this course, a prior course in college-level statistics is a plus.

Why is linguistic communication so important to us? Do other primates have language? How do humans understand messages from one another despite uncertainty, distraction, and ever-changing environments? In this course, we will consider central questions about language: Are we the only ones who have it? When did we learn it? What does artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT actually learn? And what exactly is the point of so-called “small talk”? In this course, we will start with an introduction to comparative research with animals, allowing us to consider other forms of communication. Next, we’ll turn to our own species, examining what findings from studies with babies and children can tell us about the nature and goals of communication. Finally, we’ll confront the artificial elephant in the room: neural networks. What kind of language have they learned, and how can we study it? In class, we will discuss the advances and consequences of AI. Students should come prepared to engage with the topic of communication from multiple perspectives. Through small-group conferences each week, students will develop projects that relate the course to their collective interests, such as learning and communicating in Toki Pona (a philosophical artistic-constructed language), researching the limits of AI language models, observing and analyzing children’s communication, or designing a behavioral intervention study that implements different communication practices for their peers.

By the time you read this course description, you have learned more than 40,000 English words. That’s at least an average of six words per day—and many more if you are multilingual. How is this possible? Were you born with this ability? Or did you learn it? This course is about how humans come to develop language so early and so quickly among striking environmental variation. For example, caregivers in the United States often alter and repeat their words when talking to children, while caregivers in a Tseltal Mayan community are thought to speak directly to other adults, not children. And yet, children in both settings successfully learn language on similar timescales. Importantly, no two children are alike. We will explore how the spectrum of neurodiversity sets many learners on their own communicative path. We will also consider variation in modality: Babies in deaf communities rapidly learn to comprehend and produce sign. We’ll begin by looking at the experimental data: How do you truly unlock and measure a neonate’s language abilities? Or even an adult’s? We’ll find out. Next, we’ll use play with gadgets from experimental methods, such as artificial language learning and eye-tracking, designing our own ministudies, implementing them, and collecting data. Then, we’ll propose theories of the kind of learning mechanism that can operate under such diverse inputs. We’ll evaluate the existing proposals and try to generate our own new theories of language development. We will bring these ideas beyond the seminar room, drawing connections to second-language learning in adults, early-childhood education, and social and economic structures. Students will develop conference projects that propose their own theories of language learning rooted in experimental data and in conversation with existing theories of nature vs. nurture, domain-specificity, and modality.

We have never known as much about the minds of infants and toddlers as we do now. Babies are better than adults at distinguishing faces of other races, perform spontaneous experiments with their toys, and even starting to learn language in utero. But how did we discover all of this? In this course, you will learn about classical and cutting-edge methods for studying learning and reasoning. This course will be a deep dive into multiple measures of behavior, starting with measurements of looking behaviors (e.g., real-time eye tracking, habituation paradigms, head-turn methods), reaction time measures, and naturalistic tasks and interviews with toddlers and children. We will also review the promise of neural methods (fNIRS, fMRI, psychophysiological), as well as their challenges. For each of these methods, we will explore how they shape ongoing debates about how best to design experiments, analyze data, and build inclusive theories that reflect human diversity. In the culminating project, you will design an experiment to test a novel research question, using one of our behavioral methods such as eye tracking or reaction time, and revise the proposal after peer review. During conference work, you’ll learn to use the method, implement the experiment, collect preliminary data, and present your findings in seminar. By the end of the course, you will have a strong understanding of several central research methods in psychology, your own perspective of the strengths and limitations of different approaches, and the tools to critically evaluate and communicate about published findings.

How does the human mind represent the world? And how do these representations vary across people? Could knowing a different language change how we experience time or even how we see color? Even seemingly simple concepts like “in” vs. “on” mean different things in different cultures, and words like “one” and “two” may not be linguistically universal. Indeed, the very course description that you are reading makes culturally-specific assumptions about psychology and implicitly assumes objectivity. At the same time, humans seem to share certain core experiences, such as perceiving events, creating categories, and recalling the past. Which aspects are shared, and which are unique? In this course, we will draw on research from psycholinguistics, cognitive development, and cultural psychology to learn cognitive science in a larger context. Critically, we will consider how each of those fields have been severely constrained by an emphasis on white, Western, industrialized experiences. We will investigate the broader social and ethical consequences of these assumptions and explore insights and challenges that emerge when we step out of this limited perspective. We’ll draw on primary and secondary sources, including research articles, literature, videos, raw experimental data, and audio recordings. Students will develop projects in conference work that combine their interests with the course content, such as designing an experiment to test cross-linguistic differences in visual attention, analyzing vocabulary from languages other than English, or replicating and reinterpreting an existing experiment using culturally-responsive practices.

In this research seminar, students will gain valuable experience through a weekly seminar meeting focused on research methods, research ethics, and contemporary research questions and approaches; a weekly lab meeting with one of the faculty members leading the research seminar; and individual and group conference meetings with faculty supervisors on a regular, as-needed basis. The seminar component will include readings on, and discussions of, research methods and ethics—both broad and specific to the research in which students are involved—as well as the discussion of contemporary research articles that are relevant to student and faculty research projects. All faculty and students involved in the research experience will take turns leading the discussion of current research, with faculty taking the lead at the beginning of the semester and students taking the lead as their expertise develops. Weekly lab meetings will also involve reading and discussing research articles and research-methods papers specific to the topics of research being undertaken by each student and faculty member. Students will be expected to learn the current research approaches being employed by their supervising faculty member, contribute toward ongoing research in the form of a research practicum, and develop and implement their own independent research projects within the labs in which they are working. Faculty supervising each lab will also be available to meet with students, both individually and in small groups, on an ongoing basis—as needed and at least every other week—in addition to the regular weekly, hour-long lab meeting. Students participating in the Psychology Advanced Research Seminar will be expected to attend and actively participate in weekly full-group seminars, weekly lab meetings, and regular (typically, at least biweekly) individual and group conference meetings; keep an ongoing journal and/or scientific lab notebook; select and facilitate group and lab discussions of relevant contemporary research articles (at least once for each meeting type); work at least 5 hours within a lab and/or community setting, as appropriate for their projects; contribute toward ongoing research and practice within their lab or community settings; develop, implement, and report on (in the form of a short paper prepared for possible publication and a poster at the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Poster Session) an independent research project; and provide their colleagues with ongoing verbal and written feedback on their projects.

The primary objective of this course is to provide students with additional instruction on professional learning for conducting research in psychology. This seminar will, therefore, be a useful companion to the completion of an independent research project as part of a senior thesis, research seminar, or conference project in psychology or related fields. Students may also develop their own independent research project within this course. Seminars will take place weekly and will be conducted in a workshop format that will allow students to learn about and apply various concepts in research related to open science practices, finding funding/grant writing, collecting and analyzing data, and more. Students participating in the course will also be expected to attend and actively participate in weekly lab meetings; develop an individualized training plan; keep an ongoing journal and/or scientific lab notebook; select and facilitate group and lab discussions of relevant contemporary research articles (at least once for each meeting type); work within a lab and/or community setting, as appropriate for their projects; contribute toward ongoing research and practice within their lab or community settings; develop, implement, and report on (in the form of a short paper prepared for possible publication and a poster at the SciMath Poster Session) an independent research project; and provide their colleagues with ongoing verbal and written feedback on their projects. Students will be responsible for working collaboratively with their colleagues to further develop their understanding of each of the topics covered in class. By the end of the semester, students will be more conversant on, and knowledgeable of, common practices for conducting research in psychology; their work will result in a final project report, be it a thesis, independent study, or other conference project.

Why is communication so important to us? We appear to understand messages from one another despite uncertainty, distraction, and ever-changing environments. Within milliseconds, we are often able to formulate a relevant response. In this course, we will consider central questions about communication: Are we the only ones who do it? When did we learn it? What does artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT actually learn? And, what exactly is the point of so-called “small talk”? In this cognitive psychology course, we will start with an introduction to comparative research with animals, allowing us to consider other forms of communication. Next, we’ll turn to our own species, examining what findings from studies with babies and children can tell us about the nature and goals of communication. Finally, we’ll confront the “artificial elephant” in the room: neural networks. What kind of language have they learned, and how can we study it? In class, we will discuss the benefits and consequences of AI. Students should come prepared to engage with the topic of communication from multiple perspectives, including psychological, quantitative, and humanistic. Through small-group conferences each week, students will develop projects that relate the course to their collective interests, such as learning and communicating in Toki Pona (a philosophical artistic-constructed language), hosting a campus debate on the ethical consequences of artificial-language models, observing and analyzing children’s communication at the Early Childhood Center, or designing a behavioral intervention study that implements nonviolent communication practices.