M.Sc. Psychology with a focus on Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience
M.Sc. Psychology with a focus on Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience
Overview
The program deepens and expands the psychology education begun in a BSc Psychology with a focus on methodological and content expertise in experimental psychology and neuroscience. The focus consists of two pillars. The first pillar is the teaching of the methodological competences necessary for a research activity in the mentioned field. In particular, these include in-depth knowledge of important relevant methods (e.g., eye tracking, EEG, fMRI), practice in programming instrumental research tools in programming languages commonly used in psychology (e.g., Python, Matlab), and practical knowledge of programming evaluation cascades in current statistical and data analytic programming environments (e.g., R).
A neurocognitive project further integrates the acquired knowledge. The second pillar initially delves into basic research topics in the area of cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive is to be understood here in the sense of information processing and includes not only attention, memory, perception, etc., but also motivation and emotion. Furthermore, the field of neuropsychology and clinical neuroscience bridges the gap between the basic contents of experimental psychology and neuroscience and their application in the field of work with and research on people with brain damage. Exemplary topics include overviews of and in-depth knowledge of neuropsychological disorders resulting from brain injury, instrumental and behavioral research methods, and relevant rehabilitation approaches.
In addition to experimental psychology and neuroscience specialization, the program deepens and expands knowledge of the methodological foundations of psychology, computer-assisted data collection, modeling and analysis of data, survey design, and answering evaluative questions. In addition, advanced psychometric principles of psychological diagnostics, in-depth knowledge of the theory, construction, and application of psychological tests, and recent developments in test theory and test construction are taught.
Orientation and goals
The program is designed for students who wish to pursue a research-oriented master's degree in psychology after a BSc in psychology. This master meets the recommendations of the DGPs for a consecutive program in psychology: A BSc in psychology is the prerequisite for this master. The research-oriented Master's program focuses on experimental psychology and neuroscience. It also teaches skills that are considered central for a psychologist, in particular psychological diagnostics and methods. Most importantly, the program deepens the practice of the research process (design, planning, implementation, evaluation) and the techniques of experimentation, especially programming, analysis, and modeling, in parallel with expanding knowledge of current research in experimental psychology, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Other practical elements include neuropsychological diagnosis, assessment, and technology-assisted rehabilitation. One focus is on the assessment of cognitive processes using and in the context of digital technologies.
In addition to developing expertise in experimental psychology and neuroscience, the program places particular emphasis on acquiring practical research and application skills. These include, in particular, the use of technology in the context of psychological research (e.g., psychophysics, eye-tracking, EEG, fMRI, VR, patient:inpatient studies), mastering the analysis pipeline (including processing, filtering, aggregating, transforming, modeling, statistically evaluating, and visualizing data), acquiring solid practical knowledge of scientific programming to drive experiments and analysis of data (currently, in particular, Python, Matlab, R). Practice using open source analysis packages.
