Cognitive Psychology with a Year Abroad

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes: how we perceive, attend to, remember, think, use language and solve problems. It sits at the heart of psychology as a discipline, asking what mental mechanisms underlie intelligent behaviour and how they can be studied empirically. The field has produced some of the most influential models in all of science, from theories of working memory to accounts of decision-making under uncertainty, and it has direct applications in areas from education and human-computer interaction to clinical treatment and artificial intelligence.

At the University of East Anglia, this four-year programme focuses on the cognitive branch of psychology while giving you a thorough grounding in the scientific foundations of the discipline. You will study perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning and the cognitive neuroscience that links mental processes to their biological substrates. Research methods and statistical analysis are central throughout, as cognitive psychology is built on experimental evidence, and you will develop practical skills in designing and conducting studies.

The title describes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study at an international partner institution and engage with cognitive psychology research and teaching in a different context. The typical entry tariff is 136 UCAS points.

Graduates move into research, clinical psychology training (which requires further postgraduate study), educational psychology, human factors engineering, user experience design, marketing analytics, technology product development and a wide range of applied settings where understanding human cognition is valuable. The scientific training and quantitative skills that cognitive psychology develops are also directly relevant to data science and artificial intelligence careers. Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in psychology, neuroscience, clinical psychology or cognitive science.