PSY 490 - Research, Readings or Special Projects in Psychology
(Independent Study)

Course Description: Advanced students will conduct research and/or readings or projects concerning issues in psychology under the direction of faculty members. The course may be repeated. Only three hours will count within the first 36 hours of an undergraduate psychology major.

Credit Hours: Course may be taken for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours. Course credit is based on the the nature of the project and approval of the faculty project supervisor.

Prerequisites: Psy 100, junior standing, and permission of the faculty project supervisor. Students lacking junior standing may enroll in Psy 290 Supervised Study in Psychology, a lower division independent study course.

Faculty Project Supervisor: It is the student's responsibility, through discussions with individual faculty, to identify a project supervisor. You are welcome to ask any psychology faculty member, both those on the list below and those not on the list, to assist, supervise, or direct you in developing a readings or independent research project. Faculty who regularly supervise students in this course are listed below along with a brief description of their research interests. Additional information about faculty research interests can be found on their web pages.

Psy 490 Project Supervisors

Dr. Rick Grieve: Research interests in applied/clinical Psychology, especially eating disorders, muscle dysmorphia, and sport psychology.

Dr. Lance Hahn: My main research interest is focused on how we recognize and understand the meaning of a written word. While we primarily use the tools of empirical psychology in the lab, our hypotheses and methods are influenced by both computer science and neuroscience. As a result, I welcome not only psychology students but students from other disciplines who are interested psychology. The student’s role in the lab depends on his or her interests and expertise. All students will be exposed to designing experiments, conducting experiments, data analysis and effective communication. Students who are strictly interested in experimental psychology may help design, conduct and analyze data from experiments. Students interested in neuroscience may choose to review relevant literature in neuroscience. Students interested in computation or mathematics may help create computational models of behavior. We take a very multidisciplinary approach to understand the recognition of a word. Students interested in PSY 490 should feel free to contact me at Lance.Hahn@wku.edu.

Dr. Elizabeth Lemerise: My research examines aspects of social and emotional development in preschool and elementary school children. For more information, visit the Social Development Laboratory website.

Dr. Kelly Madole: Research interests include visual habituation measures of infant cognition, exploratory play as a measure of infant cognition, and developmental studies of social categorization. The goal of this course is to provide students with an opportunity for hands-on experience in cognitive developmental research. The depth of the experience depends upon the student’s current level of knowledge and the number of semesters they choose to devote to the learning experience. Students will gain expertise in one or more areas of research, depending on their schedules and level of expertise. Students will be expected to assist in general lab functions such as maintaining the infants subject database, scheduling subjects and entering data. For each credit hour of independent study, students will be expected to spend 3-4 hours per week working in the lab.  Additional  information is available here.

Dr. Farley Norman: Research interests in adult human visual perception, 3-dimensional shape perception,
cognitive representations of object shape, object recognition, perception and aging.

Dr. Steve Wininger: The majority of my research interests are in motivation and emotion. My primary focus is exercise adherence, specifically how to enhance intrinsic motivation for exercising. I also study mood regulation in general (i.e., facilitation of happiness, stress management). I have interests in sport psychology but have yet to develop a substantial research line in this area. My secondary focus is educational psychology, where I have two specific areas of interest: 1) “How can we increase learner motivation?” specifically intrinsic motivation and 2) What are good classroom assessment practices and how do these affect learner motivation? Theoretically most of my research involves the Self-Determination Theory (i.e., intrinsic motivation). A second theory I have started including in my research is Goal Orientation Theory, with an emphasis on what facilitates “task orientation”. A careful examination of the two theories should reveal that intrinsic motivation and a task orientation are closely related.