The distinctions between the different areas of focus are not absolute. A few faculty members are formally affiliated with two areas, and many faculty members have interests that overlap with those of faculty in other areas. In several cases, the overlap of interests has led to the formation of collaborative research programs. Nevertheless, the areas differ in many important ways, so knowing more about each area is essential to understand the department's structure.

Behavioral Neuroscience. Behavioral Neuroscience, is fundamentally interdisciplinary. The behavioral neuroscience faculty perform research and offer training in behavioral neuroscience and sensory neurophysiology. These faculty are productive and highly visible. Most members of the area have externally funded research programs, and area faculty also serve as PIs on both of the training grants in neuroscience. Moreover, the area's faculty have played important roles in the Purdue Integrative Neuroscience Program since its inception. While maintaining a balance and diversity of scholarly and research programs, the area includes an especially strong concentration of faculty interested in the physiological mechanisms of motivation.

Clinical Psychology. The clinical psychology faculty seek to expand knowledge of positive adjustment, and of psychological disorders and their prevention and treatment, in children, adults, and families. The faculty direct a program of doctoral training that is based on the "scientist-practitioner" model and that has been continuously accredited by the APA for more than 50 years. Data recently published in a top peer-reviewed scientific journal confirm the prominence of the program in the field. Over the past 30 years, the program has been one of the most successful in the nation in placing its graduates into clinical psychology faculty positions. Moreover, the most recent (2000) APA reaccreditation team reported that the clinical faculty "are well-qualified and are exemplary role models," and that the "program has achieved an excellent integration of science and practice."

Cognitive Psychology. The cognitive psychology faculty investigate the characteristics, processes, and mechanisms of human cognition. Topics of study include attention, auditory perception, human-computer interaction, linguistics, mathematical modeling, memory, neural networks, neuroscience, response selection, and visual perception. The area's research influences every other area of psychology, as well as other disciplines. The area's faculty members collaborate with researchers in other departments and are active in interdisciplinary programs, including the Human Factors, Perception-Based Engineering, and Neuroscience programs. Faculty in the area have an international research reputation, particularly for their expertise in theories and research on memory and on the relations between perception and action. Many of the faculty members are editors of or members of editorial boards for important journals in the field, and the faculty have a high rate of publication of journal articles. Moreover, a special strength of the faculty is their skill in investigating human cognition with a variety of experimental approaches.

Developmental Psychology. All the developmental faculty have expertise in the study of processes of development, but some focus primarily on the biological and experiential bases of cognitive and linguistic development while others focus primarily on important social relationships in development. The current faculty are nationally known as scholars and researchers, and their published work is cited very frequently. Most of the faculty have external funding, and several are editors of professional publications or serve on the editorial boards of major journals. In addition, many of the faculty are currently involved in interdisciplinary research projects.

Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Faculty in I/O psychology conduct research on the psychological processes relevant to understanding work behavior. Some example areas include job satisfaction, work motivation, work-life interaction, workplace aggression, and selection decision-making. The I/O faculty strongly believe that scholarly and applied are not terms describing incompatible values, and a central assumption of the area's faculty is the foundational importance of basic psychology to applied psychology. At the same time, I/O psychology has as its mission the use of psychological knowledge to improve the well-being of the work lives of people. As such, the area bridges the scientific and applied strategic objectives of the university. The historical importance of Purdue's I/O program is well recognized, and I/O at Purdue continues to have a very positive reputation. Purdue was ranked 12th in faculty productivity in a recent article published in the Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, and the area's faculty attract highly talented graduate students.

Learning and Memory. A broad goal of much, if not most, research in psychology is to describe how the brain transforms experience with different environmental inputs into adaptive behavioral outcomes. Historically, scientists interested in animal learning have attempted to explain these types of transformations primarily by the operation of associative processes, which are known largely from the results of experiments using Pavlovian or instrumental conditioning procedures. However, during the last 20-25 years, scientists both inside and outside of this subfield have come to realize that a complete account of behavior, be it the acquisition of a conditioned reflex by an invertebrate or the emergence of language in a human, will require analysis at multiple levels. Research by the Learning and Memory faculty attempts to describe the psychological functions that enable experience to alter behavior, the nature of the brain structures that perform these functions, and evolutionary forces from which these functions and structures emerged. Based on this foundation, the faculty intend to give students integrative training in four core sub-areas: animal behavior, cognitive processes, evolution, and neuroscience.

Mathematical and Computational Cognitive Science. The faculty in mathematical and computational cognitive science focus on the use of mathematical methods to study behavioral and mental phenomena. The role of mathematical models and formulations in psychology is similar to that in the physical sciences, biological sciences and economics. Mathematical psychology at Purdue is internationally recognized for its leadership in research and scholarship. Faculty members in the area have been presidents and vice-presidents of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, as well as editors and associate editors of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology and Psychometrika, the two most influential journals in the field. The area members have a long record of external funding, of scientific awards, of invited fellowships and addresses, and of organizing symposia and conferences in the field. Moreover, the area's faculty have been involved in a number of interdisciplinary activities, including the programs in Video and Image Systems Engineering and the Perception-Based Engineering Lab.

Social Psychology. Social psychology focuses on the social and interpersonal causes and consequences of human behavior. It is among the most interdisciplinary fields of psychology, with ties to health, sociology, business, communications, education, political science, and other disciplines. Moreover, two current (and one departing) faculty are among the 100 most cited social psychologists in recent social psychological handbooks (Tesser & Bau, 2002). Most social faculty have had major grants, served as journal editors, or received other honors reflecting the strength of the area (e.g. serving on grant panels).