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COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES

Psychological and Brain Sciences professor Janette Herbers, PhD, does research in her lab.

The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences is home to undergraduate and graduate programs and world-class research in the family of sciences concerned with behavior, thought and experience.

At the core of our programs and activities is a scientific approach to understanding human nature and human experience. Our community of students, scholars and researchers includes Psychology majors (either a BA or BS track), majors in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, graduate students in our research-focused MS program, graduate students in our Human Resources Development program, approximately twenty full-time faculty members, and additional faculty expertise in a wide range of psychological science and practice. We work together in the classroom and on our research projects at the forefront of Psychology and Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience..

GRADUATE PROGRAM

Tolentine Hall 334
Villanova University
800 Lancaster Ave
Villanova, PA 19085

Chair: Michael Brown, PhD
Staff: Eileen O'Donnell; Louise Carbone

NEWS & EVENTS

New Book Challenges Conceptions About Scientific Thinking Development in Children

Young children have remarkable capacities for causal reasoning, which are part of the foundation of their scientific thinking abilities. A new book by Assistant Professor Deena Skolnick Weisberg, PhD, traces the ways young children’s sophisticated causal reasoning abilities combine with other cognitive, metacognitive and social factors to develop into a more mature set of scientific thinking abilities. MORE...

Nature vs. Nurture and Alcohol Use

Psychological and Brain Sciences Professor Benjamin Sachs, PhD, and his students Elisabeth Dimitratos and Leah Waltrip explain correlations they have found between gender, stress and alcohol use. MORE...

Villanova Research Team Explores How COVID Masks Impact Speech

A team of psychologists from Villanova University has published research showing how various types of masks affect speech recognition in different levels of background noise. MORE...

Master's Research Leads to Fulbright, Publication

Shama Huq ’21 MS, earned a Fulbright award to conduct research in the lab of Rosemary Bagot, PhD, at McGill University exploring the role of the brain’s vHIP-NAc pathway in mediating early life stress effects. In addition, Huq recently had her first lead-author paper accepted for publication in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Master's Student Wins 2022 Villanova 3MT Competition

Psychology master's student Sam Sinemus took first place in the University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition in the Mullen Center for the Performing Arts earlier this year for his presentation "The Impact of Modeling Mental States on Goal-Directed Conversations." Sinemus advanced to the Northeast Regional Competition. MORE...

EDUCATION WITH IMPACT

 

AN EDUCATION IN THE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES promotes intellectual curiosity and rigor; instills the fundamentals of critical insight, mature judgment and independent thinking; and strengthens students’ sense of their moral responsibility for others and for the betterment of society.