The CLPS Department offers four concentrations:
Psychology
Cognitive Science
Cognitive Neuroscience
Behavioral Decision Sciences
What's the difference among them? Why should one concentrate in Psychology as opposed to Cognitive Science? Or Behavioral Decision Science as opposed to Cognitive Science, or Cognitive Neuroscience as opposed to Neuroscience (that's a whole other department!)?
Trust me, this is the question that we as advisors are asked the most often, not only by students, but by faculty members outside of the department. The problem is that a lot of faculty have different ways of answering that question. There isn't a "one answer that rules them all" - there are a lot of opinions on this subject.
As I have before, I will provide a disclaimer, that this is my opinion, and not the opinion of the CLPS Department or even the concentration advisors, but that of a faculty member who has been in this department for a while.
Psychology is the study of behavior - human behavior, animal behavior, behavior throughout the lifespan, individual behavior, group behavior. How it is that we act in the world. Of course, that behavior is related to our mental states, so a fundamental question is how behaviors relate to the mind and how the mind and body produce behaviors. Psychology usually involves studying Cognition, Social Interaction, Development, and
Cognitive Science is the study of the mind - human minds, whether animals have minds, developing minds, artificial minds, and frankly, what a "mind" is. If the fundamental question around psychology is about behavior, the fundamental question around Cognitive Science is about consciousness. How can we explain it? Cognitive Science combines a part of psychology (particularly cognition and perception) with the study of language, computation, and philosophy.
Cognitive Neuroscience is the study of the brain (or how the brain instantiates behavior or the mind). Here, students learn more about the brain, both in terms of structure and function, as well as the techniques for studying it. There are some required courses in neuroscience (Cog Neuro was originally proposed and remains an interdisciplinary concentration with that department), but also certain parts of psychology (such as cognition, perception, development, or social) that can be more amenable to studying with neuroscientific techniques. The fundamental questions in this field have been (1) Where are cognitive processes localized in the brain, and more importantly (2) How do those neural systems and signals produce mental states or behaviors.
Behavioral Decision Sciences (BDS) would probably be called Behavioral Economics at another university (but hey, we're Brown and like to give things unique names). BDS is the study of human judgment and decision making - both in the cases of the individual and the group. There's a focus on understanding how decisions are made, and whether such decisions are rational or optimal. In order to understand decision making, it's important to understand a subset of cognitive and social psychology, but other areas of psychology, such as psycholinguistics and development might also be related. But what's also important is the study of economics, and many classes in that department are also part of the BDS curriculum.
There are some things that are shared among these four concentrations. All use similar statistical method, and so a shared foundation in statistics is a requirement in all of the concentrations. All of them involve reading, interpretating, and sometimes designing experiments, so a fundamental understanding of the experimental method is a shared requirement of all the concentrations. Finally, all of these concentrations talk to each other - they are not isolated. So, a student who studies psychology will often take courses with students who study BDS or Cog Neuro. Moreover, faculty in the CLPS department mentor in all of the concentrations. Although sometimes one of us takes on a particular role for a particular concentration, any faculty member is capable of advising a student in any of the concentrations - it's just that some have more expertise in certain fields than others. As an example, I study cognitive development, but my training is in cognitive psychology, so I could probably supervise in any of these concentrations, but I know the least about cognitive neuroscience - particularly neuroscientific methods - because I don't use them in my own research. However, I've supervised many students in Cognitive Neuroscience, including some into graduate programs in that area (well, in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience).
One other thing, we don't recommend students double concentrate in the department. In the 20+ years I've been here, I can think of one student who did that (was a double major in psychology and cognitive science). I don't think that this student got a better or more valid education than anyone else. I do think that many of these concentrations (particularly the AB options) allow for double-concentrating in other fields, and we certain encourage students to do that if they are interested.
If you have questions about any of these concentrations, I encourage you to ask the specific concentration advisors, who are listed on this page.