Experimental Psychology PhD Program

The Ph.D. program in Experimental Psychology provides a core base of knowledge upon which students specialize in biopsychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, or social psychology. Our program is rigorous, collegial, and student-centered.

Training Philosophy

The Experimental Training program (ETC) follows an apprenticeship model for graduate training. Students are admitted to the program to work closely with their primary advisor and begin working in their first year to get in-depth knowledge of their research area. As they progress through the program, students become increasingly independent, developing their own, individual research identities and program of research.

Although students conduct most of their research with their primary advisor, there are also opportunities to collaborate with other faculty in the department.

Courses and Milestones

The goals of our experimental training program are:

Give students training and hands-on experience in a high caliber research environment, resulting in demonstrated research competence and productivity.
Provide an education in psychology which is broad enough and deep enough to allow students to develop the necessary skills to pursue any area of research specialization in which they are interested, including research and teaching at a research-intensive university, teaching at a liberal arts college, or working in industry or for a non-profit.
Give interested students teaching skills and experience, including the opportunity to be an instructor of record and to co-mentor undergraduate students in research.
Give students an understanding of various methods for collecting data, including fMRI, EEG, eye tracking, virtual reality, behavioral observations, cognitive tasks, and questionnaire development, as well as strong quantitative skills, that can be transferred to academic and non-academic settings.

Students in the Experimental Training Program (ETC) do not have a prescribed list of courses. Instead, they are required to complete the following:

Three statistics/methods courses (9 credit-hours), including PSYC 5133 ("Inferential Statistics") and PSYC 5143 ("Advanced Descriptive Statistics"), the latter two to be taken in the first year of the program.
Three courses (9 credit-hours) in a concentration, with 6 credit-hours to be completed prior to the M.A. degree being granted; concentrations include social, developmental, neuroscience, cognitive, and other topics, to be considered and approved by the ETC on an as-needed basis.
Two courses (6 credit-hours) of electives.

At least three courses (9 credit-hours) that count toward the 24 credit-hours specified above must be graduate-level psychology seminars selected from among PSYC Seminar in Developmental Psychology (6323), Seminar in Quantitative Method (6343), Seminar in Learning or Cognition or Memory (6353), Seminar in Personality and Social Psychology (6373), and Seminar in Physiological Psychology (6413). In order to teach a course as the instructor of record, students must first complete Seminar in Teaching Psychology (602V).

In the event that a student has already passed a graduate-level course that they believe is comparable to one of the required courses, they may petition to waive the required course.

Throughout the program students are expected to be continually involved in research with their primary advisor, and they may work with other faculty as well.

Milestones

First-Year Project. Incoming ETC students become actively involved in research from the start of the program. In their first year, they complete a first-year project, which results in a first-year talk.

Master’s Thesis. A master's thesis project is required for all doctoral students and should be completed by the end of the second year of study. Students must first propose an empirical research project and once approved by their committee the research is undertaken. The thesis project culminates in both an oral defense and a submitted document. If a student has already completed an empirical master’s thesis in psychology, they may petition to have the master’s thesis project waived.

Concentration Area Project. Students who complete the master’s thesis requirement should begin their Concentration Area Project (CAP). This project serves as the student’s comprehensive examination, and at minimum, consists of an in-depth, independent and integrative project. Students should work with their mentors and advisory committee to ensure the scope of the project is satisfactory to meet the requirements of doctoral candidacy. Examples include (but are not limited to): a conceptual analysis that often serves as the springboard for student’s dissertation work, mastery of a methods-related competency central to the student’s area of expertise, or a meta-analytic or systematic review of an area of research. Students may include other pieces to their third-year project, including training opportunities and other matters of professional development consistent with their long-term goals. This project usually takes the good part of a year, and culminates with submission of a document (e.g., theoretical paper, research grant, empirical research paper) to their committee and an oral examination. Successful completion and defense of the third-year project is a prerequisite to doctoral candidacy.

Dissertation. The student’s dissertation is an independent empirical research project designed to produce novel findings that could make a significant contribution to the research literature. This research project is larger in scope than the master’s thesis, and also culminates in a written document and oral defense.

Additional Training Opportunities

Focus-Area Research Meeting (FARM)

FARM is an important space for honing presentation skills, especially when it comes to explaining your research to a diverse audience. It’s a forum to broaden our understanding of various aspects of psychological science. FARM provides students with important professional development opportunities, expands students’ knowledge, and can pave the way for collaborations between labs.

All ETC faculty and graduate students come together every other week to share their research. Each lab has at least one dedicated presentation day per year, with faculty and/or students presenting on their current research and other professional developments. Although the context is informal, presenters often use this opportunity to practice job talks and conference presentations.

Colloquia

The department hosts regular talks by invited national and international scholars. These talks provide opportunities to learn about cutting-edge research from researchers outside the department and provides the opportunity for making professional connections across the field of psychological science.

Research and Reading Groups

Although the combined experimental psychology program serves to broaden students’ interests and knowledge, there are also dedicated opportunities for specialized training in students’ subfields. These research and reading groups give students the opportunity to read, discuss, develop, and disseminate cutting-edge research in their areas of interest.

For example, faculty and graduate students interested in social psychology meet every other week for “Social Group” where research projects are discussed and inside jokes are born. Discussions typically focus on aspects of the research process including the development of research ideas and sharing feedback on data, manuscripts, and reviews. Matters related to professional development are discussed as well.

As an example of a reading group, faculty and graduate students interested in psychoneuroendocrinology (from both ETC and CTC) meet several times during each semester to read and discuss articles that make important methodological and/or theoretical contributions to the field.

See individual track pages for additional information.

Teaching as Instructor of Record

Most students serve as teaching assistants early in their degree. After completing the requirements of their master’s degree, students have the opportunity to develop and hone their teaching skills by being the instructor of record for an undergraduate course, usually General Psychology. In order to take advantage of this teaching opportunity, students must first take the Seminar in Teaching graduate course.

Skills, Resources, and Equipment

Labs in our Experimental Training Program study topics including memory, cognitive control, emotion, stress, language comprehension, attention, creativity, and risky drinking behavior. Students have an opportunity to gain experience in a variety of methodologies, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (e.g., MRI, fMRI, DTI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), assessment of psychophysiological indicators (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance, EMG), eye tracking, virtual reality, and computational modeling. Additionally, the psychology department has its own wet lab, where students learn to process saliva and blood samples, as well as conduct their own enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) to examine various aspects of people’s physiological states (e.g., cortisol, cytokines, testosterone, estradiol, etc.). Research also incorporates experimental manipulations, such as psychosocial stress manipulations, mindfulness inductions, and the administration of carbon-dioxide-enriched air to elevate panic-relevant somatic arousal.

Faculty have extensive connections within the community and other institutions. For example, some labs partner with schools and art museums (e.g., Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), as well as medical clinics at the Pat Walker Health Center and UAMS-Northwest.

The UA recently received $194.7M in funding for its development of the state-of-the-art Integrative and Innovative Research (I3R) initiative, which is a collaborative framework designed to facilitate integrative research across five clusters: Integrative systems neuroscience, data science, food and technology, materials science and engineering, and bioscience & bioengineering research in metabolism. The goal is to facilitate state of the art collaborations across all clusters. The development of I3R will bring new neuroscience colleagues, collaborations, and an MRI scanner to the UA campus.