Primate Cognition (PSYCH 3624) at OSU

My spring semester of 2020 I took by far my favorite class so far, Primate Cognition with Dr. Anna Yoacom. Besides the fact that Dr. Yocoam is an amazing professor who really cares about her students and is passionate about what she is teaching, the content was really fascinating to me. We studied everything from basic language and counting capabilities in a range of non-human primates to meta-cognition and morality. We began the class with a brief overview of primate species and learned about not only apes but also old world monkeys, new world monkeys and prosimians. This is the first class I have left wanting to tell more people about what I have learned. There were a lot of research articles that we had to read, which is not a strength of mine, but we always discussed them in class and had fair good online discussions through a website called Perusal. I think this is what sparked my interest in moving away from veterinary medicine and towards psychology. It was not just that I liked learning about primates, I liked the concepts behind the theories and learning about how they think in comparison to humans. A lot of primate cognition is understanding how humans think and comparing that to primates. I would love to go more in-depth into primate cognition specifically, but I realize this is very specialized, so learning more about general psychology and the career paths I can take within the field is how I would like to continue with my newfound interest.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *