Course Schedule

Veranstaltungen von Moritz Bammel


Lehrveranstaltungen

Dynamical Systems Theory and Nonlinear Methods in Psychology (FSL) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Moritz Bammel

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Mittwoch | 10:15 - 11:45 | 07.04.2025 - 11.07.2025 | C 14.201 Seminarraum

Inhalt: It is a common conception both in scientific circles and among psychologically inclined lay people to think of the biological basis of human behavior and psychological experience as a set of modules with distinct functional profiles that can be localized in the brain. For example, it is commonly assumed that psychological phenomena such as language, emotions, or decision making are controlled by distinct brain modules that can be studied in isolation from each other. A diverse group of scholars from philosophy of cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has questioned such modular accounts of cognition and the brain, and they have argued to replace modular thinking by drawing on insights from dynamical systems theory. On a dynamical view, the biological basis of behavior and psychological experience is best understood as flexibly forming and dissolving assemblies of various neural, bodily, and environmental structures that change over time and depending on the task context. In this course, students will learn about such a dynamical systems approach to psychology and cognitive science. In the first part of the course, students will engage with conceptual debates that are at the core of disagreements between proponents of modular and dynamical approaches. We will read and critically discuss papers from philosophy of cognitive science introducing dynamical systems thinking in psychology, and students will become familiarized with the basic conceptual toolkit of dynamical systems theory and how it differs from more traditional approaches to psychology. The aim of the first part of the course is that students are able to critically reflect on the theoretical controversies that motivate a dynamical systems approach to psychology. In the second part of the course, we will be concerned with the following question: What kind of practical implications for empirical research in experimental psychology result from adopting a dynamical systems perspective on cognition and the brain? One of the key implications is that experimental psychologists sympathetic of a dynamical systems approach to psychology use nonlinear methods to analyze their data. To get to know these nonlinear data analysis methods, students will form working groups, and each working group will be tasked to work through material introducing a particular nonlinear data analysis technique (e.g., recurrence or fractal analysis) and to perform a trial analysis in R. The aim of the second part of the course is that students gain hands-on experience in using nonlinear methods to analyze data from psychological experiments. At the end of the term, students will present the results of their group work such that all students get an overview over different nonlinear data analysis methods. This course is targeted at students who are interested in conceptual debates in psychology and their practical implications for empirical research. The interdisciplinary nature of this course results from paying attention to how conceptual debates in philosophy of cognitive science and theoretical psychology are directly related to different data analysis techniques in empirical psychological research. From a methodological perspective, this course will combine close readings and conceptual discussions with the acquisition of new data analysis techniques.