Structure and Curriculum
Organisation
The official regulations of the Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences detail our organisational concept in regard to the following points:
a) Internal organisation (programme spokesperson and deputy spokespersons, administrative committees, terms of office, etc.)
b) Admissions and selection processes (including equal opportunity considerations)
c) Advisory concept, including individual advising agreements
d) Evaluation concept
Qualification
The BaGrACS programme is based on the following points of focus:
Introduction to “Affective and Cognitive Sciences”
- Definition of affect/emotion and cognition
- Is separation appropriate?
- Is separation possible?
- Foundations of affective sciences
- Foundations of cognitive sciences
Affective Sciences
- Behavioural and physiological methods
- Research milestones and related findings
- New theories, ideas and methods
- Particular areas of focus:
- Perception of facial appearance; attractive, threatening, trustworthy
- Emotional processing of social stimuli
- Bodies’ sexual allure
- Purchase decisions
- Emotion generation and emotion regulation
- Individual deviation in the processing of affective stimuli
- Cognitive principles of fear and fear management
- Application prospects for cognitive emotion research
- Non-verbal behaviour analysis
- Psychophysiological profiles of emotions and pain
- Social influences: empathy
- Clinical models
Cognitive Sciences
- Behavioural and physiological methods
- Research milestones and related findings
- New theories, ideas and methods
- Particular areas of focus:
- Facial recognition, including prosopagnosia
- Cognitive maps
- Appraisal of consumer products
- Implicit learning and memory
- Psychology of decision-making
- Attention regulation by means of emotion
- Clinical models
Perceptual Sciences
- Empirical aesthetics
- Ergonomics and usability
- Dynamics of perception and value appraisal
- Cognitive plasticity
- Face processing, including prosopagnosia
- Colour perception
Courses
Research Internships and Workshops
- Behavioural methods
- Physiological testing methods
- Planning, conducting and evaluating an experimental study
- Scientific thinking (scientific reading, writing and marketing)
- Project management, including time, resource and team management
Language Centre-supported Courses
- Writing academic articles in English
- Writing academic proposals in English
- Writing and presenting academic papers in English
- Academic communication in English
Doctoral Seminars
- Presentation of experiment planning
- Methodology seminars
- Presentation techniques
- Journal clubs
Symposia / Workshops
These events – in which participants’ active involvement is a central element – are led by internationally renowned researchers invited to present on a theoretical or methodological topic. These seminars and symposia often yield impulses for joint research projects and regularly scheduled research colloquia.