Concentration Areas

The program counts with 4 lines of research jointly articulated: 

Behavior analysis has the objective of develop social and cientific relevant researcges about basic and complex behavioral processes with enfasis on operant learning. Recurring themes are verbal behavior investigation, culture, symbolic behavior, creativity, superstition, aversive control, observation and variability. Those investigations also has propitiates the development of translational and applied researches.

The line of Animal Behaviour and Human Etology focuses the behavior of human and non-human animals in terms of causation, ontogenesis, adaptive function and evolution.  Analysis on motivational systems, flexibility on the ontogenesis of behavior, of the relations bewteen nature and culture and of processess of social transmission of information are also added. The research line has the condition of the application of knowledge constructed  in the area, aligning teaching and research as a way of contributing to the insertion of post-grad and graduation students on national and international scientific context. 

The research line of Theoretical and Methodological Problems of Psychological Research develops studies about the conditions and foundations of knowledge construction in psychology in its historical and philosophical dimensions.  It focalizes: a) the analysis and historical-philosophical reflection about the construction of psychological theories, its conceptual corpus and its genesis; b) the proposition of ethical and historical-philosophical reflections about theories in psychology, about its objectives, methodologies and implications for professional practices; c) the emergence of new theoretical-methodological propositions in psychology. 

The line of Sensation, Perception and Cognition seek out the knowledge of the organization and functioning of sensorial, perceptual and cognitial systems, and how those dimensions of consciousness relates with behavior. It concentrates on the use of the visual system as a model for the understanting of neural phenomena, studying the perceptual development and the lateralization of sensorial-perceptual funtions. It focalizes on the psyco-phisiologial knowledge of sensorial, perceptual and cognitial systems and how they relate with behavior, with emphasis on teaching practices, on the appropriation of the experimental methods and of the theoretical knowledge of this line of research.