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Department of Experimental Psychology | |
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| University of Cambridge > School of the Biological Sciences > Department of Experimental Psychology |
Experimental psychology has been taught at Cambridge for more than a century. It was probably in 1877 that James Ward proposed a laboratory should be established in Cambridge to study psychophysics, the relation between the physical properties of stimuli and experienced sensations. This proposal is said to have been rejected by the governing body of the University on the grounds that it would 'insult religion by putting the soul in a pair of scales'. However, in 1897, William H.R. Rivers was appointed University Lecturer in Physiological and Experimental Psychology; Rivers was to become eminent as a neurologist, psychologist, anthropologist, and psychiatrist. In 1901 Psychology acquired a room, in 1903 a property in Mill Lane, and in 1912 the Psychological Laboratory proper opened. Research and teaching in experimental psychology has gone on to the present day.
The Department of Experimental Psychology is celebrated for its teaching; students are taught by researchers of international excellence and many of its past students have gone on to prominent positions in psychology and related fields throughout the world. The Department scored 24/24 in its last Teaching Quality Assessment conducted by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
The University of Cambridge is unusual in that undergraduates are not admitted explicitly to read psychology. Rather, the subject is taught as an experimental science at second- and third-year level within the Natural Sciences Tripos. All undergraduates at Cambridge study for the B.A. degree - even those studying the sciences. The Department also contributes to a range of other biological science courses within the University, including Evolution and Behaviour, Neurobiology, and Neuroscience. For further details of our undergraduate courses and the undergraduate admissions procedure, see www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/pages/undgrad.html, which includes feedback and comments from past students.
The Department admits graduates to study for research degrees. These include the Ph.D. (requiring three years of research), the M.Sc. (two years), and the M.Phil. (one year). The Department does not offer a taught course in clinical psychology. For details of graduate teaching, opportunities for graduate study, and the graduate admissions procedure, see www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/pages/graduate/.
The Department was given the highest score, in the last Research Assessment Exercise conducted by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2008. The research staff include university teaching officers (lecturers, readers, and professors), postdoctoral research associates, research assistants, laboratory staff, and graduate students. They conduct psychological and neuroscientific research into topics including sensory perception, attention, memory, language, cognitive development, psychopathology, computational models of psychological processes, associative learning, animal cognition and behaviour, and drug addiction.
For a list of university teaching staff, see www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/pages/academic.html. For a list of research groups, see www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/pages/research.html.
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