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All psychology programs are looked after by our friendly and helpful administrative team
who are located in the school office on the sixth floor west of the main building.
The east side of the sixth floor
is where one of the university's largest lecture theatres - the Sumpner Lecture Theatre -
is located and this is frequently used for psychology lectures.
Lectures to very large groups take place in the Great Hall on the upper ground level
and there are many smaller lecture theatres variously located around the main building.
The School of Life & Health Sciences offers a single honours BSc Psychology degree
and joint honours degrees in Psychology and Business,
Psychology and English Language and Psychology and Sociology.
All our undergraduate Psychology degrees are accredited by the British Psychological Society.
The single honours degree can be studied over three years full-time
or four years full-time with an integrated placement year.
All our psychology joint honours undergraduate degrees
are studied over four years full-time with an integrated placement year.
We also have a range of postgraduate programmes
in the areas of health psychology - BPS accredited stage 1 training
towards becoming a health psychologist - and cognitive neuroscience.
Both undergraduate and postgraduate psychology activities
are carried out over four areas of our campus - the Main Building,
South Wing, the Aston Brain Centre and the Aston University Day Hospital.
The undergraduate degree programme integrates theoretical psychology
with the modern-day techniques of psychological investigation.
The first two years focus on theoretical aspects
and developing expertise in a broad range of research methodologies.
Here students gain knowledge of the major techniques that contemporary psychologists use
from brain scanning techniques to questionnaire design.
In the final year, these skills are applied to the practical application of psychology.
Most of the final year research projects take place in our dedicated laboratories
which are situated in the main building, on 6th floor West.
This facility has been purpose-built and is well equipped for undergraduate students
and also for MSc and PhD student research.
It contains a driving simulator, an eye tracker,
a room with a two-way mirror, and equipment to measure physiological responses and capture motion control.
We are very proud of our driving simulator
as it has been used in many studies in evaluating driver fitness,
especially in relation to common sources of distress, such as problems with relationships,
career and even illness such as anxiety and depression.
Where people look on the road is an important way of understanding how they're going to behave
and the study of eye-tracking is one way to investigate this very important cognitive variable.
The eye tracker - also situated in these labs -
measures the point of gaze - a fixation - as well as the motion of your eyes relative to your head.
The eye tracker has been used in a wide range of final year project research
that has addressed a number of questions, in areas such as cognitive linguistics
and in product design in marketing psychology. However while these two
approaches are important in psychology,
Aston University encourages a very broad approach in research
so we also have extensive facilities to carry out naturalistic-, observational-
and focus group-based research.
To this end we are one of the few psychology laboratories in the country
to have a dedicated two-way mirror observational suite.
Here it's possible to observe people completely anonymously
when they are interacting with each other and then to use this information to
understand more about how we behave in our natural social ecology.
In addition, health psychology is a major research area for us.
We investigate disease management, disease prevention,
human development across the lifespan and reproductive health behaviour.
The south wing houses another dedicated and specialized psychology facility
which is the nutrition and behaviour laboratory.
Here the psychological impact of nutritional components,
dietary supplements and whole foods can be studied.
Furthermore, research into the effectiveness of weight management programmes,
form feeding and excessive eating studies is carried out.
The nutrition and behaviour laboratory also has access to the on-campus electroencephalagram - EEG.
Our multi-channel magnetoencephalography - MEG - brain imaging
situated in the Aston Brain Centre and our magnetic resonance imaging - MRI system -
in the Aston University Day Hospital.
Aston is world-renowned for Brain Imaging Research
and we make great efforts to ensure that all undergraduates as well as postgraduates
gain knowledge of these important techniques, with opportunities offered to
participate in research that use them.
Electroencephalography - EEG -
and Magnetoencephalography - MEG - are both brain imaging techniques used to
measure the magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain
and can be used for research purposes that require an understanding
of a very fast cortical function. Functional magnetic resonance imaging -
fMRI - is also used to identify which area of the brain is implicated in a particular task.
The EEG, MEG and fMRI
individually are powerful research tools; however
it is when they are used together that real insights can be made into
understanding the cognitive mechanisms involved in our everyday behaviour
and also understanding what happens when these mechanisms go wrong.
To this end staff at the neurophysiology clinic regularly see patients referred
from Birmingham Children's Hospital
and Great Ormond Street Hospital, who come with a variety of problems such as epilepsy.
The Aston Brains Centre Sleep Research programme
aims to provide a better understanding of the science behind sleepiness
by using state-of-the-art techniques, particularly neuroimaging and MEG scanning.
A better understanding of how the brain functions in patients with narcolepsy
and those who sleepwalk will provide new insights into these common conditions.
The psychology group also has a dyslexia and developmental assessment unit
located in the Aston Brain Centre. This unit offers a service to staff,
students and the community by performing assessments and reviews.
Dyslexia and other developmental disorders are also an area for research
in the School of Life & Health Sciences. for more information about our psychology programmes
and research, please visit our website.