Developmental Science and Neurodiversity (Taught)

Change and diversity are essential characteristics of the cognition, behaviour, and brains of children, adolescents, and adults. This MSc course will take neurodiversity as a framework for understanding development across the whole human lifespan and how development varies between people.

The course will provide a unique opportunity to gain advanced training in how to characterise diversity and development, and how to study them with the latest research designs and statistical methods.

Neurodiversity refers to variation in brain and cognitive functions including learning, attention, social ability, mood, and sleep. It provides a framework for understanding the factors that influence brain and behaviour across the whole population and the whole lifespan; for understanding conditions such as autism and ADHD as a part of that variation; and for addressing the need for variation to be recognised, valued, understood, and accommodated.

You will have opportunities to interact with a wide range of researchers from the University of Birmingham's Centre for Developmental Science, practitioners, and people with lived experience of neurodivergence. Optional modules let you combine your interest in development and diversity with training in advanced data analysis, neuroscience methods, and mental health.

You will take a mixture of compulsory and optional modules totalling 180 credits, including a 60-credit supervised research project, leading to a 6,000-word research dissertation. See some of the recent projects undertaken by students on similar courses in the School of Psychology.

Compulsory modules

Neurodiversity
Modelling Change and Diversity
Research methods and skills
Proposing research in psychology
MSc Research Project
Optional modules (two from this indicative list):

Clinical psychology and developmental diversity.
Data science for behaviour and brain I
Data science for behaviour and brain II
Translational Neuroscience
Youth Mental Health
Fundamentals in Magnetic Brain Imaging
Applications of Electrophysiological Approaches
Please note: The modules listed on the website for this programme are regularly reviewed to ensure they are up-to-date and informed by the latest research and teaching methods. Unless indicated otherwise, the modules listed for this programme are for students starting in 2024. On rare occasions, we may need to make unexpected changes to compulsory modules after that date; in this event we will contact offer holders as soon as possible to inform or consult them as appropriate.