Research design, including experimental and correlation design; internal versus external validity; measurement; writing a research report; graphic and statistical methods for summarizing data; sampling; and special problems such as experimenter effects, reactivity of measurement, and others. The use of hypothesis testing and data analysis in research.

The study of how humans (and some other animals) see. Topics include color vision, depth perception, form and pattern vision, visual learning and development, eye movements, diseases of the visual system, illusions, and other visual phenomena.

Explores questions of consciousness What is it? How does it develop? Are infants and animals conscious? Why did consciousness evolve? Includes a review of historical background, including the ideas of Jaynes, Paiget, James, Freud, and others. Contemporary topics may include the role of language and other representational systems, blindsight, subliminal perception, priming and other implicit cognitive phenomena, hypnosis, confabulation and attribution, dreaming, multiple personality and conceptions of self and free will, from simultaneous perspectives of phenomenology, behavior, and neuroscience. Specific topics governed by class interests.

Do animals use language or have a culture? Can birds count? Do animals use tools and understand how they function? How do ants navigate their environment to find food and then return to their nest? How animals perceive, attend to, process, store, and represent information from their environment. Research on animal learning and behavior as a framework for investigating cognitive processes in animal learning. Quantitative versus qualitative nature of differences between people and non-human animals. Multidisciplinary approach including the fields of anthropology, physiology, philosophy and biology.