• Dr Sam McCormick is the first-year co-ordinator for the undergraduate psychology programme. She discussed how you can prepare for a degree in psychology and some of the topics covered in the module "How to become a psychologist"
  
  
• Dr Sam Fairlamb discusses your first-year module “Understanding Individuals and Groups”
  

• Dr Jeanne Shinskey talks about her research on how humans become symbolic thinkers.
• Dr Saloni Krishnan discusses her research, which uses MRI to understand the brain basis of developmental speech and language disorders.
• Professor Ryan McKay is a lecturer on the first-year module “Introduction to Mental Health and Well-being”. Here he gives a mini-lecture on the psychology of delusions.
• Dr Sam Fairlamb talks about his research on our awareness of death.
  
• Dr Jennifer Murphy (Lecturer in Psychology) gives a brief introduction to introception, and discusses why she studies it.

• Try out some classic psychology tasks online, such as the Stroop task or semantic priming.

Explore our research labs in 360 degree images, including our Baby Lab, EEG Lab, Virtual Reality Lab, Eye Tracking Labs, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab, Sleep Lab, and MRI Lab. Start your lab tour here!

• Student diaries: What does a week in the life of our students look like? Find out now!

Here is an exercise Dr Dee Birtles has prepared for you to start developing the academic skills you'll use in your degree. And you'll learn about synaesthesia in the process!

Step 1: Study this brief guide on how to how to read and understand a research article

Step 2: Work through this exercise and complete the test at the end to see how well you did. You can download the research article you need to complete the exercise here.

This is a list of resources recommended by first year module co-ordinators. None of these are required reading, just things that you may be interested in. 

Introduction to Mental Health and wellbeing

1. The hidden links between mental disorders 
This Nature News Feature discusses some of the issues that we tackle on the course – defining what a mental health disorder is, and issues around the co-occurrence of disorders.

2. Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
This book by Ben Goldacre is terrific, presenting compelling stories that unpick dodgy evidence. In doing so, you will get an intuitive overview of concepts you will encounter on the course – evaluating evidence, the placebo effect, understanding confounds as so on.

3. Books by Oliver Sacks (especially “An Anthropologist on Mars” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat”)
Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who covers medical histories of interesting neuropsychological cases, which is one of the approaches you will hear about.

4. Into the Silent Land - Paul Broks
A book by a neuropsychologist who discusses memory and identity. A less well-known alternative to Sacks.

Understanding Neuroscience

A Conversation article about the brain: Five amazing facts about your brain
Although this course draws heavily on the textbook, this piece might get you thinking about why we are all so interested in the brain.

Lifespan Development

Learn about the Baby Lab research in our video here:

Links to Baby Lab articles:

Learning about the world from Picture books

Why can't we remember early childhood?

Interesting TED Talks

What do babies think?

Can you tell if a kid is lying?

When do kids start caring about others' opinions?

What we know and don't know

Why 30 is not the new 20

Understanding individuals and groups

Milgram’s Obedience Studies and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment are two of the most famous psychological studies ever conducted. Both studies suggest that we can easily be swayed by situations to commit evil. However, do current psychologists still agree?
The below TEDTalk is a good example of how modern psychologists think about their work. The Psychology of Tyranny: Did Milgram Get It Wrong? | Alex Haslam | TEDxUQ 

Miscellaneous

The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology – Chris Chambers

Other TED Talks you might enjoy:

 Why we laugh – Prof Sophie Scott 

 The science inside our hearts - Prof Sarah Garfinkel 

In the Psychology department, we work together! See some of our contributions from both staff and students and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram 

Our senior tutor Dr. Ines Mendes made this video to support our students' well-being

• How to deal with anxiety
  
  

Find out more about preparing for university life on the general pages of our Applicant Activity Hub