Program Overview

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Our BSc Psychology with Cognitive Neuroscience (including foundation Year) will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your academic skills to support your academic performance. This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study three academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory academic skills module, with additional English language for non-English speakers. After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our Department of Psychology. Psychologists conduct experiments to study cognitive abilities such as how we perceive others, how we make decisions, how we remember or how we speak. Cognitive Neuroscientists link these questions directly to underlying brain processes: they make use of brain imaging techniques to answer which brain areas support these abilities. They also use time-sensitive imaging methodologies to explore the exact timing of these processes. Together, researchers from both disciplines aim to map the relationship between brain and behaviour. You’ll be introduced to contemporary research questions from different fields including vision, hearing, memory, and language. You’ll develop a thorough understanding of how these questions can be answered, what the current state-of-the-art knowledge is, which methodologies are best suited to study which questions, and how different subfields work together to further our understanding of what may seem like simple questions but are in reality complex endeavours. You’ll be immersed in a supportive, interactive, and methodical hands-on environment. If you want to understand the brain processes that allow us to answer how we think about the world, how we interact with the world and how we experience the world, then psychology with cognitive neuroscience at Essex is for you. We provide one of the most immersive and exciting experiences of studying the human mind in the UK. We focus on the big questions so that you embark on a journey into the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals. Satisfy your curiosity by learning from innovative researchers at the cutting edge of psychological science. At Essex we take a multi-method approach, working beyond traditional boundaries to combine different expertise and share fascinating techniques and intriguing theories. You cover core areas in psychology and cognitive neuroscience including:

• Brain and behaviour
• Methods in cognitive neuroscience
• Applied psychology
• Language, memory and perception
• Developmental psychology

In your first year you will study six exciting new modules that address major challenges that society faces today. They will be explored from different perspectives and with different methodologies. At Essex, you will learn psychology from the start, and we will give you the skillset you need to be successful. We embed key skills such as research methods and statistics into topics you’ll be interested in. You’ll be taught topics one-by-one in blocks which allows you to consolidate your knowledge. You will continue to develop these skills during your second year. In your third year you will specialise in areas that really interest you. This will allow you to excel at studying psychology. You learn from our researchers and can work together in the same space via our Research Experience Scheme (RES) which gives you the opportunity to work one-on-one with a psychologist as their research assistant. Our SHOUTS scheme allows you to use your skills and creativity to make our department a better place and promote what we do beyond Essex, through social media, activities and events. Why we're great.

• 90% of our psychology graduates are in employment or further study (Graduate Outcomes 2023)
• We are 21st in the UK for overall student satisfaction for psychology (National Student Survey 2022)
• Our Research Experience Scheme (RES) gives you the opportunity to work one-on-one with a psychologist as their research assistant

Our expert staff

Our psychology lecturers include award-winning teachers and prize-winning researchers who are international experts in their own research areas. Our staff carry out research into areas of psychology that fall under our three key themes: thinking about the world , interacting with the world , and experiencing the world . These three themes help tie your knowledge together as they directly feed into our modules, where you can study how we remember things, what captures out attention, how relationships work, what our emotions do with us, or the impact of culture on ourselves and others.

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Specialist facilities

By studying within our Essex Pathways Department for your foundation year, you will have access to of the facilities that the University of Essex has to offer, as well as those provided by our department to support you:

• We provide computer labs for internet research; classrooms with access to PowerPoint facilities for student presentations; AV facilities for teaching and access to web-based learning materials.
• Our new Student Services Hub will support you and provide information for all your needs as a student.
• Our social space is stocked with magazines and newspaper, and provides an informal setting to meet your lecturers, tutors and friends.

Our Department of Psychology is committed to giving you access to state-of-the-art facilities in higher education housed entirely within our purpose-built psychology building on our Colchester Campus:

• Dedicated laboratories including a virtual reality suite and an observation suite
• Specialist areas to study visual and auditory perception, developmental psychology and social psychology
• Our Babylab is the leading infant lab in the east of England that explores perceptual, emotional, and cognitive processes in infants
• Our multimillion-pound Centre for Brain Science (CBS) allows staff and students to investigate brain activity, including electrophysiology (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The CBS also includes a range of facilities that allow to measure eye movements and physiological responses (eg heart rate, skin conductance).

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Your future

A psychology with cognitive neuroscience degree, especially one accredited by the British Psychology Society, will provide you with the foundations needed for specialising in diverse areas, including educational psychology, consumer, or health psychology. Many of our psychology graduates choose careers outside traditional psychology fields. The skills you learn during your degree opens doors to careers in medical imaging , human resources, and people-focussed careers such as a Senior Assistant Psychologist or special educational needs. Our psychology graduates have progressed in diverse careers across the public, private and third sectors, including working for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust , and Prison and Probation Service, mental health charity MIND, and organisations like the BBC and the University of Oxford Visit our psychology careers page to find out more about your career opportunities and discover the variety of career paths our recent graduates have taken. We also work with our University's careers services to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities. “After graduating from Essex I secured a job as a fleet reporting analyst at Bridgestone UK, which involves using different sources to extract and manipulate data to suit stakeholders’ requirements. I really enjoy establishing trends and seeing decisions being implemented based on data. I also enjoy working with the different stakeholders to find solutions. I am highly numerate in my current job and also have extensive computer skills; these are skills I acquired from studying at Essex. In the future I plan to move into data insights and analytics, which stems from my psychology degree, where I hope to use data-driven solutions to inform policy and forecasting.” Samuel Webb, BSc Psychology with Cognitive Neuroscience, 2018