Course finder
Semester 2
Behavioural Genetics (PSYL10161)
Subject
Psychology
College
CAHSS
Credits
20
Normal Year Taken
3
Delivery Session Year
2023/2024
Pre-requisites
Visiting students must be studying Psychology as their degree major, and have completed at least 3 Psychology courses at grade B or above, ideally including a course equivalent to Data Analysis for Psychology in R 2 (PSYL08015). We will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**
Course Summary
The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest in Psychology. This course introduces the research methods (primarily twin designs) used to estimate genetic and environmental influences on behaviour. In doing so the basic principles of genetic transmission and multifactorial inheritance are outlined. An overview of genetic and environmental findings in the areas of personality, cognitive abilities and mental illness will be presented. The implications of these findings for psychologists will be discussed, and the exciting directions (molecular, epigenetic, gene by environment interaction) that the rapidly advancing field of genetics is moving in will be highlighted.
Course Description
The content of this course comprises 1) A historical view of behavior genetics, 2) an introduction to quantitative genetics including the principles of genetic transmission and multifactorial inheritance, 3) twin and family methodology for estimation of heritability and components of environmental variance (focusing on correlations and quick formulae to estimate these values plus specification of basic models in R), 4) an overview of heritability findings (including multivariate studies) for a range of psychological traits (personality, cognitive abilities, mental illness) and understanding what these mean, 5) measuring genetic variation and associating specific genes with behavior 6) moderation of genetic effects by age and the environment, 7) applications of genetics research for psychologists, 8) the future of behavioural genetics - exciting developments.
Assessment Information
Written Exam 70%, Coursework 30%, Practical Exam 0%
Additional Restrictions
Unless you are nominated on a Psychology exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year Psychology course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.
view the timetable and further details for this course
Disclaimer
All course information obtained from this visiting student course finder should be regarded as provisional. We cannot guarantee that places will be available for any particular course. For more information, please see the visiting student disclaimer: