Subject overview

ESRC recognition

This degree is recognised as meeting the standards set by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for direct entry to a +3 doctoral scholarship.  

Specialist facilities

The School has well-equipped labs for carrying out research in all its main areas of interest, and links with local schools and hospitals that greatly facilitate research, for example, on cognitive development and cognitive neuroscience. Psychologists share the use of the Clinical Imaging Sciences Centre (MRI and PET/CT) with Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). 

We have excellent lab facilities in cognition, developmental psychology, feeding and drinking, human psychophysiology, psychoacoustics, psychopharmacology, social psychology, and vision. Our Human Psychophysiology Laboratory houses EEG/ERP and TMS equipment, as well as eye-trackers and GSR facilities. The Human Psychopharmacology Unit has facilities for the study of alcohol and nicotine use, and for research into eating behaviour. There is a dedicated unit for the laboratory study of rodents. 

Specially converted rooms are available for the observation of children and group interactions. Most rooms are audio-, video- and data-linked, and a number have built-in one-way observation screens. There is an excellent range of audiovisual equipment, particularly for video recording, analysis and editing. 

Programme outline

Cognitive neuroscience is an exciting and rapidly developing field of research that straddles the traditional disciplines of psychology and biology. It has been referred to as the ‘biology of the mind’ as it seeks to provide brain-based accounts of cognitive functions such as perception, memory, emotion, language and thought. 

This degree offers a number of unique modules reflecting the Sussex research expertise in the neuroscience of consciousness and social neuroscience. It is our aim to offer hands-on experience of the methods of cognitive neuroscience, including fMRI, in addition to providing a solid foundation in contemporary theories to prepare you for a potential career in research. 

Assessment

The taught modules are assessed by a variety of methods that include term papers, presentations and unseen examinations. The project is assessed by a dissertation. 

Entry requirements

UK entrance requirements

A first- or upper second-class undergraduate honours degree in psychology, neuroscience or a closely related subject.

Overseas entrance requirements

Overseas qualifications

If your country is not listed below, please contact the University at E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk

Country	Overseas qualification
Australia	Bachelor (Honours) degree with second-class upper division
Brazil	Bacharel, Licenciado or professional title with a final mark of at least 8
Canada	Bachelor degree with CGPA 3.3/4.0 (grade B+)
China	Bachelor degree from a leading university with overall mark of 75%-85% depending on your university
Cyprus	Bachelor degree or Ptychion with a final mark of at least 7.5
France	Licence with mention bien or Maîtrise with final mark of at least 13
Germany	Bachelor degree or Magister Artium with a final mark of 2.4 or better
Ghana	Bachelor degree from a public university with second-class upper division
Greece	Ptychion from an AEI with a final mark of at least 7.5
Hong Kong	Bachelor (Honours) degree with second-class upper division
India	Bachelor degree from a leading institution with overall mark of at least 60% or equivalent
Iran	Bachelor degree (Licence or Karshenasi) with a final mark of at least 15
Italy	Diploma di Laurea with an overall mark of at least 105
Japan	Bachelor degree from a leading university with a minumum average of B+ or equivalent
Malaysia	Bachelor degree with class 2 division 1
Mexico	Licenciado with a final mark of at least 8
Nigeria	Bachelor degree with second-class upper division or CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0
Pakistan	Four-year bachelor degree, normally with a GPA of at least 3.3
Russia	Magistr or Specialist Diploma with a minimum average mark of at least 4
South Africa	Bachelor (Honours) degree or Bachelor degree in Technology with an overall mark of at least 70%
Saudi Arabia	Bachelor degree with an overall mark of at least 70% or CGPA 3.5/5.0 or equivalent
South Korea	Bachelor degree from a leading university with CGPA of at least 3.5/4.0 or equivalent
Spain	Licenciado with a final mark of at least 2/4
Taiwan	Bachelor degree with overall mark of 70%-85% depending on your university
Thailand	Bachelor degree with CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0 or equivalent
Turkey	Lisans Diplomasi with CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0 depending on your university
United Arab Emirates	Bachelor degree with CGPA of at least 3.5/4.0 or equivalent
USA	Bachelor degree with CGPA 3.3-3.5/4.0 depending on your university
Vietnam	Masters degree with CGPA 3.5/4.0 or equivalent

If you have any questions about your qualifications after consulting our overseas qualifications, contact the University at E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk

Related programmes

• Childhood and Youth Studies MA
• Global Health MSc

Fees and funding

Fees

Home UK/EU students: £5,500¹
Channel Island and Isle of Man students: £5,500²
Overseas students: £16,200³

¹ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
² The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
³ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.

Funding

The funding sources listed below are for the subject area you are viewing and may not apply to all degrees listed within it. Please check the description of the individual funding source to make sure it is relevant to your chosen degree.

Faculty interests

Research interests are briefly described below. For more detailed information, visit the School of Psychology. 

Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience

The Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience research group has interests in:  

• addictive behaviours 
• ageing and dementia 
• appetite and obesity 
• influences of early developmental insults on adult behaviour. 

The human work benefits from the developing strength of cognitive neuroscience at the University, including links with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trusts, and the Sackler Centre for Consciousness and the Clinical Imaging Sciences Centre, both based on the Sussex campus. 

On the animal side, the Sussex group is one of the strongest groups in any UK university for the behavioural characterisation of transgenic mice, and enjoys collaborative links with molecular neuroscientists in the School of Life Sciences and with the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). 

Professor Aldo Badiani Drug addiction: clinical and preclinical research, environmental influences on drug reward and drug abuse, therapeutic intervention. 

Professor Pete Clifton How brain systems regulate feeding behaviour, side effects of antipsychotic drugs on body weight.

Dr Hans Crombag Neurobiological and behavioural mechanisms of appetitive learning and memory, contextual learning processes in relapse.

Professor Theodora Duka Alcohol and nicotine addiction: human studies of conditioning, adaptive mechanisms. 

Dr Sarah King Techniques to investigate the mechanisms underlying the effects of stress and drugs on brain and behaviour. 

Dr Eisuke Koya Neuronal ensembles, associative learning, obesity, addiction, synaptic physiology, immunohistochemistry. 

Dr Michael Morgan Substance misuse, impulse control in adolescence and adulthood, psychopathology in substance misusers. 

Dr Tamzin Ripley Changes in neuronal plasticity, using behavioural and electrophysiological techniques, and its role in drug abuse. 

Professor Jennifer Rusted Psychopharma-cology of human memory, prospective and action-based memory in ageing and dementia. 

Professor David Stephens Neurobiological and behavioural mechanisms underlying drug dependence. 

Professor Martin Yeomans Appetite control, development of food preferences, dieting as a model of disordered eating and obesity. 

Cognitive Psychology

This Cognitive Psychology group has interests in:

• attention, visual perception and cognition 
• language and communication 
• learning, memory and consciousness 
• mammal vocal communication and cognition. 

This group has wide-ranging interests in language and communication, including mammal vocal communication, learning, memory, attention, visual perception and cognition, and consciousness. As well as normal adult cognition, we study both developmental issues and various pathologies. We use a variety of techniques, including traditional behavioural methods, and modern neuroscientific methods, such as EEG/ ERP, TMS, and fMRI. 

Dr Chris Bird Cognitive processes examined through comparing the performance of brain-damaged adults with neurologically healthy controls. 

Professor Zoltan Dienes How people acquire knowledge they are not aware of having, computational modelling of such learning. 

Dr Sophie Forster Attention, distraction, executive control and mind-wandering; individual differences. 

Professor Alan Garnham Language comprehension, particularly inference; sentence processing; reasoning; mental models theory. 

Dr Graham Hole Face recognition, age perception from faces, perceptual aspects of driving (especially ‘looked but failed to see’ accidents). 

Dr Ryota Kanai Neural processes and computational principles underlying subjective conscious experiences and qualia. 

Dr Beena Khurana Visual cognition, the role of attention in motion perception, processing of human faces. 

Dr Karen McComb Mammal communication and cognition, functional questions about animal communication and the nature of animal minds. 

Dr Romi Nijhawan Compensation of neural delays in perception and action, flash-lag effect in vision and action. 

Professor Jane Oakhill Mental models theory of text comprehension and reasoning, and children’s text comprehension. 

Dr David Reby Vocal communication, sexual communication, crossmodal abilities in non-human animals. 

Dr Jamie Ward Human cognitive neuroscience using neuropsychology, fMRI, TMS and EEG. Synaesthesia. 

Developmental and Clinical Psychology

The Development and Clinical Psychology research group has a common aim of advancing theoretical approaches to human development and clinical psychology, often through studying applied questions. Approaches include observational and experimental studies, longitudinal analyses of child development, comparative perspectives, dynamic systems, neural network modelling, and experimental clinical psychopathology. We work closely with clinicians and educationalists, and with typical and special child populations. 

Research spans three intertwined themes: 

• development of cognition and communication 
• mental health through the lifespan 
• social and emotional development. 

We have several focused labs: Child Anxiety Theory and Treatment (CATT) Lab • Children and Technology (ChaT) Lab • Children’s Relationships, Emotions, and Social Skills (CRESS) Lab • Sussex Baby Lab • Sussex Family Research Lab • Word and Object Reasoning Development (WORD) Lab. 

The group is well-supported with lab facilities, including testing rooms for audio-visual recording, software for video editing and analyses, questionnaire scanning facilities, environments for conducting controlled experimental psychopathology studies, and specialised spaces for conducting a range of studies from habituation to clinical interviews. The group has good links with local daycare, schools and colleges. 

Professor Robin Banerjee Social and emotional development of pupils at school, self-conscious cognition and emotion, self-presentational behaviour. 

Dr Kate Cavanagh Cognitive biases and reasoning processes in emotional disorders, increasing access to psychological therapies. 

Professor Graham Davey Experimental psychopathology and anxiety disorders, the causes of perseverative psychopathologies. 

Professor Andy Field The role of childhood experience in fear acquisition, parenting and child anxiety. 

Dr Anna Franklin The development of colour perception and cognition, broader issues in cognitive and developmental science such as how language and thought interact. 

Professor Gordon Harold Developmental psychopathology, family processes and child development, child and adolescent mental health, prevention science. 

Dr Jessica Horst Cognitive development in children under the age of five; language acquisition, infant and toddler categorisation. 

Dr David Leavens Non-verbal communication by apes and humans, joint attention, mother-infant interaction, evolution of language. 

Dr Bonamy Oliver Child behaviour, using longitudinal, behavioural genetic designs to better understand environmental influences on behavioural outcomes. 

Dr Alison Pike Antecedents and consequences of variation in family relationship quality, including marital, parent-child and sibling relationships. 

Dr Nicola Yuill Typical and atypical social cognitive development, autism; technology to support children; children’s language development. 

Social and Applied Psychology

The Social and Applied Psychology is a field that concerns itself with the attitudes and behaviour of people in their social environments. Above all, it focuses on how people’s relationships – with others in their groups or with those who belong to different groups – affect behaviour and, in turn, how relationships are affected by the social context in which people find themselves. 

This Group is one of the largest groups of social and applied social psychologists in the UK. Its work is concerned with theory development, testing and application in four main areas: 

• health psychology and behaviour change 
• identity, culture and well-being 
• intergroup relations, group processes and collective behaviour 
• pro-social and moral engagement. 

Dr Rod Bond Group processes, particularly social influence and reaction to deviants; subjective well-being. 

Professor Rupert Brown Intergroup relations: prejudice and prejudice reduction, acculturation processes, hate crime, collective guilt. 

Dr Richard de Visser Young people’s health behaviour, sexual health and sexual behaviour, gender and health-related behaviour. 

Dr Helga Dittmar Social and psychological dimensions of material goods, compulsive buying; sociocultural influences on body image. 

Dr John Drury Crowd behaviour, empowerment and positive psychological change, crowding/ density, celebration and ‘atmosphere’. 

Dr Tom Farsides Factors that facilitate (duty or empathy) or inhibit (moral phobia or selfishness) positive other-concern. 

Professor Peter Harris Cognitive, emotional and behavioural response to risk, especially health risks. 

Dr Donna Jessop Impact of personally relevant health-risk information on behaviour change, fear appeals. 

Dr Karen Long Inter- and intragroup relations, social identity theory, social and personal identity as sources of self-esteem. 

Dr Eleanor Miles Self-regulation: emotion regulation, self-control, physical and psychological consequences. 

Dr Paul Sparks Attitude theory applied to environmental and health issues: normative influences and self-identity, decision making. 

Dr Viv Vignoles Self and identity, motivational processes and culture and context influences on identity construction; life transitions.

Careers and profiles

This MSc will give you a thorough grounding in theories and methods at the cutting-edge of the field that will prepare you for a potential career in research and enhance your work-related skills such as critical insight and data analysis. This degree is also relevant if you are interested in clinical psychology or in work in the biomedical sector by providing, for example, an understanding of how brain damage affects cognition. Our graduates have gone on to pursue PhDs and to careers in industry and medicine. 

School and contacts