Overview

Overview                                                 

     

The MRes programme provides training in a set of analytical and practical research skills that will thoroughly prepare students to continue on to a PhD. The programme is ideal for students who are thinking about continuing their studies to PhD level, but it is a highly flexible course that will be useful for many different career paths. The centrepiece of the program is an independent research project culminating in a dissertation.

Course overview

'I recently completed the MRes last year - I really enjoyed the ability to take part in a wide variety of research and the sense of community the MRes group had. My project was on face perception, and I'm now taking this onto a PhD here at York'

The focus of the course is on acquiring the knowledge and skills to design, conduct, evaluate and disseminate psychological research. You will acquire these skills through seminars, independent study, and through hands-on experience in one of the research labs in the Department. During the second half of the year you will put these skills to use in designing, running and reporting on your own independent research project. The empirical project is an opportunity for you to provide a scientific answer to your own research question, or to explore an area of research that you may be thinking of taking further in a PhD. Many MRes projects have led on to further PhD research, and several have been published in international peer reviewed journals.

Backgrounds of applicants

The typical candidate for the programme is a person who already holds an Honours degree in Psychology or a cognate discipline. Many of our students are international and come from countries including China, Hong Kong, India, USA, Canada, and Denmark. All our courses are taught in English but we welcome applications from all countries and there are good support services available for international students.

 

Destinations of graduates

Many graduates from the programme have moved on to PhD positions. Others are pursuing career paths within clinical psychology or are using their psychological skills in industry.

Content

Course content

The course combines taught courses in research methods and research skills with opportunities to study a wide range of topics at MSc level. Students also undertake a substantial empirical project with a member of faculty, providing them with extensive hands-on research experience.

Autumn	Spring	Summer / vacation
Research Design and Statistics 20 credits	Additional Research Methods 20 credits	Empirical Project 80 credits
Topics in Psychological Research  10 credits	Transferable skills 10 credits
Either: Specialist Option Or: Laboratory Placement Each is worth 20 credits	Either: Specialist Option Or: Laboratory Placement Each is worth 20 credits

Information about assessment

Modules are assessed through a variety of different assignments and exams including laboratory reports, multiple choice questions, critical analysis of published papers, short notes on a range of topics, and a dissertation and poster presentation based on the Empirical Project.

Empirical project

The empirical project enables students to participate in the design and implementation of a theoretically-motivated piece of pure or applied research in Experimental Psychology interpreted in its broadest sense. Many of the projects are published in academic journals.

Here are some examples of recent projects completed by students on this course:

• Katie Wheat used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study phonological encoding during the early stages of visual word recognition at the York Neuroimaging Centre (YNiC). The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
• Tracey Ward examined the relationship between deception detection and visual thresholds in a study entitled "Deceit in the Blink of an Eye: Can Processing Thresholds Predict Accuracy for Emotional Lie Detection?"

Research Design & Statistics

This course will follow closely Andy Field's book "Discovering Statistics Using SPSS". The course as a whole is an advanced 'refresher' course. It assumes a basic knowledge of statistics and experimental design, but starts from first principles. In this sense no common background is assumed. By the end of the course, you will be proficient in the more common statistical techniques used in experimental psychology, and for those techniques that we are unable to cover in detail, you will develop the confidence to find out about them through reading those parts of the Field book which won't be covered on the course.

Lectures

1. Introduction to statistical models: the mean and the variance
2. Correlations
3. Regression
4. Comparing two means: t-tests
5. Analysis of Variance I: the basics
6. Analysis of Covariance
7. Analysis of Variance II: factorial and repeated measures
8. Nonparametric tests and categorical data
   

Additional Research Methods

This module will provide additional methodological skills relevant to a wide range of research in psychology and social science.   

• To provide an understanding of some of the additional procedures used in psychological research.
• To enable the student to critically evaluate the analysis of data derived with these procedures.
• To gain insight into the use of applied qualitative methods.

Lectures

• Research Design
• Meta-Analysis
• Thematic Analysis
• Randomised Controlled Trials
• Individual Case Design
• Repertory Grids
• Psychometrics
• Discouse Analysis
  

Admissions

Admissions

Entry requirements

A degree or equivalent qualification, normally in Psychology, and normally at the level of an upper second class honours award.

For international applications, one of the following English language qualifications:

• IELTS 6.5
• TOEFL paper-based 600
• CBT: 250
• iBT: 100
• Cambridge Proficiency: A, B, C. GCE/iGCSE A, B, C.

Applying

An online application form is available from Student Recruitment and Admissions .

Who to contact for further information:

• Dr Julian Oldmeadow
  

Current Project Opportunities

Current Project Opportunities

As an MRes student you can conduct your own independent research in any area in which the Department has expertise, including adult cognitive processes, cognitive development, perception and attention, comparative psychology, social and personality psychology, and applications of psychology.

Here are some more specific examples of research areas that you could get involved in as an MRes student.

Perceiving social characteristics in faces

Andy Young

Professor Andy Young examines how we perceive social characteristics in faces. One question he is interested in is whether dimensions of perceived face variability are 'universal' and therefore likely to have an evolutionary basis, or variable between ethnic groups and therefore likely to be learnt.

Another interest is in the commonalities and differences between visual cues involved in recognising relatively invariant characteristics of a face (e.g. its identity) and characteristics that can change from moment to moment (e.g. emotional expression).

Spatial cognition and memory

Dr Tom Hartley

Which visual cues contribute to memory for places? What factors influence individual differences in spatial memory?

Social behaviour and communication in chimpanzees

Dr Katie Slocombe

  

Dr Slocombe’s research focuses on chimpanzee vocal communication and in particular, the extent to which our closest living relatives can use calls to refer to objects and events in the external environment and the psychological mechanisms underlying call production. This behavioural work is conducted with both wild and captive populations of chimpanzees.

Are Faces Special?

Dr Tim Andrews

Dr Andrews is interested in the neural basis of object and face perception. For example, is sensitivity to the configuration of an image evident with non-face objects?

 

 

Mechanisms of Action Perception

Dr Nick Barraclough

 

Dr Barraclough’s research investigates the brain mechanisms underlying perception of motion, human actions and social stimuli. Some of his current projects include:

• TMS studies of the neural networks underlying action understanding
• Role of social context in dynamic coding of human actions

Sleep, Language & Memory

Gareth Gaskell

Andy Ellis

Professors Gareth Gaskell and Andy Ellis research the role of sleep in learning and memory, particularly as it applies to learning language. They have two specific projects that make use of the department’s dedicated Sleep Lab:

• How do we learn new words?
• The role of sleep in learning.

 

Personality, Emotion & Music 

Dr Marcel Zentner

Dr. Zentner is interested in personality, individual differences in musical ability, and music-evoked emotion. With his students he devised a test that assesses perceptual sensitivity in various areas of music, including tempo, tuning, melody, rhythm, and timbre perception. He now plans to investigate how music appreciation and ability relate to non-musical skills, such as linguistic ability and emotional intelligence.