About This Department

Department: Cognitive and Behavioral Science
Insitution: Washington & Lee University
  Lexington, VA
 

The curriculum constituting a major in Cognitive and Behavioral Science is designed to prepare students for a wide variety of post-graduate positions. While our discipline had its beginning as a combination of philosophy and physiology, the emphasis on our scientific base is a cornerstone of academic psychology. Traditional areas such as learning, memory, and perception are well represented in coursework and labs as well as social psychology and developmental psychology.

In some cases, Psychology has also come to mean providing treatment or counseling and our curriculum is also designed to associate students with this portion of the field. Because of the scientific underpinnings and the necessity to critically evaluate new treatment methods, the curriculum strongly emphasizes critical reasoning and evaluation of psychological data. Such an emphasis helps students sort facts from hyperbole and is vital for those choosing graduate study or careers directly after the B.S. or B.A.