Cognitive Psychology
Jamie Longwell
Graduate Admissions Coordinator
402-472-3229
238 Burnett Hall
jlongwell1@unl.edu
Core Faculty
Area Adviser: Dr. Lesa Hoffman
The specialization in cognitive psychology is designed for students who have interests in human information processing and cognition, such as perception, attention, memory, human learning, or decision making, as well as quantitative methods more generally. The cognitive specialization is designed to be flexible and tailored to individual student interests and career goals. For example, students may choose a program that is aimed at an academic career emphasizing both research and teaching, or a program with a more applied emphasis in human factors or related areas. The range of faculty interests permits establishment of close research collaborations with faculty.
The cognitive area encourages applications from students whose research interests align with or complement those of current faculty and students. These topics include: visual attention, perception, and oculomotor behavior (Dodd), development of spatial cognition and memory (Schutte), autobiographical memory, eyewitness memory, and errors of memory (Belli, Bornstein, Dodd), cross-modal and multimodal pattern recognition and memory (Dodd), cognitive aspects of survey responses (Belli), suggestibility and neuroimaging (Belli), legal and medical decision making (Bornstein), development of cognition across the lifespan (Bornstein, Dodd, Hoffman, Schutte), applications of cognitive psychology to teaching (Garbin), and the development, evaluation, and application of advanced quantitative methods within psychological research (Garbin, Hoffman).
For students who wish to gain additional quantitative expertise, the cognitive program provides an excellent menu of courses within our department, including both classical and modern analytic methods. Additionally, many students choose to take quantitative methods courses from other departments including Sociology, Statistics, Survey Research and Methodology, Political Science, and Educational Psychology to supplement their breadth in both quantitative and qualitative methodology. Students who wish to pursue academic careers have numerous and diverse opportunities for gaining teaching experience in many areas of psychology, including quantitative methods. In addition, students who are interested in pursuing research in applied cognition or the cognitive aspects of human factors are encouraged to take relevant courses or independent study in other departments (e.g., Industrial and Management Systems Engineering (human factors), Curriculum and Instruction, Speech Pathology and Audiology, Survey Research and Methodology).
Core Faculty for the cognitive specialization include: Robert Belli, Brian Bornstein, Michael Dodd, Calvin Garbin, Lesa Hoffman, and Anne Schutte. Other psychology faculty members whose interests include aspects of cognition include Jeffrey Stevens (Neuroscience and Behavior), Scott Stoltenberg (Neuroscience and Behavior), William Spaulding (Clinical Psychology) and John Flowers (Professor Emeritus, Cognitive Psychology).
For a current description of the Cognitive Program Requirements, please click here.
