Welcome to the Department for General Psychology

Prof. Dr. Stefan R. Schweinberger

General Psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the processes and mechanisms of human mental activities. Its “classic” areas of interest are perception, memory, attention, language, communication, motivation, emotion, action and, more recently, consciousness. Our own approach seeks to understand not only the functional “microarchitecture” of these processes, but also their neuronal bases. In addition to traditional experimental psychology, we use various research methods of the Cognitive Neurosciences, such as event-related brain potentials (ERP), functional brain imaging, or neuropsychological investigations of patients suffering from focal brain lesions. We all have a “social brain”, and our main research interest is in person perception and human interaction. What are the processes which enable us to recognize identity, emotional expression, or speech from a face or a voice? How does our perceptual system integrate information across different sensory modalities? How can the dynamic interplay between these processes of person perception and social action be characterized in human interaction? Visit our lab and research pages to learn more about our current projects.

Follow us on Twitter!