Psychology 100

Introduction to Psychology

Fall, 2008

INSTRUCTOR:
Frank T. McAndrew (SMC E131, Ext. 7525)
e-mail: fmcandre@knox.edu.

TEXTBOOK:
Introduction to Psychology (8th Ed.) by James W. Kalat

LAB DISCUSSION LEADERS:
Pam Schuller, Carri Frye, Maddi Weiland, Kevin Goetsch, Molly Wilson, Christina Pfaff, Audra Adolph, Liz Soehngen

Psychology Department Web Page

GOALS OF THE COURSE

Welcome to Psychology 100!  I sincerely hope that you have a good experience this term and that at the end you think it was time well spent, whether this is the only psychology course that you will take or just the first of many.  There are a number of goals that I have for this course:

1) To help you become a more sophisticated observer of human behavior.  By this I mean
     that you will learn to think about humans scientifically, relying on data and evidence
     for your beliefs as you come to understand the limitations and pitfalls of intuition.

2) To make you more skeptical in almost all ways.  In your life you will be regularly
     exposed to outrageous, unsubstantiated claims about products, health remedies, and
      various other phenomena, and I hope that as a result of taking this course
      you will be at least a little bit better at evaluating the quality of evidence used in
      support of such arguments.

3) To have you learn about the field of psychology and to understand the methods that
     psychologists use to understand human nature.

4) To give you experience with scientific writing, both as a reader through studying the
     textbook and learning what a journal article is, and as a writer when you report the
     data and results in the lab reports that you will be writing.

5) For those of you who are not science students, this course will also help you to sharpen
     the study and note-taking skills essential for organizing the information you are trying
     to absorb in this class.  This is a skill that will transfer well to many other situations.


                                                           TOPICS and READINGS
Introduction to the Field of Psychology & It's Methods of Research (Chapters 1 & 2)

Lab #1 - Using PsychInfo (Thursday, September 18)

The Biology of Behavior (Chapter 3) 

Lab #2 -Sniffy the Virtual Rat (Thursday, September 25; Continued on Thursday, October 2)                                 

TEST #1(Approximate Date - Wednesday, October 1 - Chapters 1, 2, 3)

Learning: Operant & Classical Conditioning (Chapter 6)

Perception (pp. 127-146)
Hall of Illusions

Lab #3 - The Stroop Effect (Thursday, October 9)

Cognitive Psychology: Memory & Attention (Chapter 7 & pp. 287-298) 

Lab #4 - Memory (Thursday, October 16)

TEST # 2 (Approximate Date - Monday, October 15 - Chapters 6 & 7;  pp. 127-146;  pp. 287-298)

Consciousness (Chapter 10)

Lab #5 - Sleep & Dreaming (Thursday, October 23)

Human Development (Chapter 5)

Social Psychology (Chapter 13)

Lab #6 - Nonverbal Communication (Thursday, October 30)

TEST # 3 (Approximate Date - Wednesday, November 5 - Chapters 5, 10, 13)

Personality (Chapter 14) 

Lab #7 - Personality (Thursday, November 6)

The Nature & Treatment of Mental Disorders (Chapters 15 & 16)

Lab #8 - Diagnosing Psychological Disorders (Thursday, November 13)

TEST #4 (Monday, November 17 - Chapters 13, 15, 16)

Your grade will be based upon the percentage of total possible points that you accumulate on the four tests and on five brief lab reports that you will be writing. All tests will be multiple-choice. 

Letter grades will be as follows:
A = 93-100%
A- = 90-92%
B+ = 88-89%
B = 83-87%
B- = 80-82%
C+ = 78%-79%
C = 73-77%
C- = 70-72%
D+ = 68-69%
D = 63-67%
D- = 60-62%
F = <60%.

THE LAB PROJECTS
On Thursday of every week you will have a laboratory/discussion section lead by an upper class psychology major. You will receive two points just for attending each one of these sessions. During each lab session, a brief demonstration or experiment will take place that everyone will participate in. The demonstration for each week will provide the data needed to write up the lab report for that week, and it will be due on the following Thursday. You are required to write FIVE reports throughout the course of the term. All reports will be typed, double spaced, and written in the appropriate format. The quality of your writing WILL be a contributing factor in the grade that you receive. Each report will be worth 10 points. While the length and format will differ a bit from lab to lab, the average report will only be about two pages in length.

Lab reports will NOT be accepted late. If you do not hand in a report on the Thursday that it is due, it will be assumed that the report for that week is one of the reports that you elected not to hand in.

PARTICIPATION IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
By participating in research projects being conducted in our department, you can earn bonus points(extra credit). You are free to participate in as many studies as you like, and you will earn one point for each half-hour of reseacrh that you participate in.  However, no one will earn more than 10 points through research participation.  If you volunteer to participate in an experiment and fail to show up, one point will be DEDUCTED from your grade.

I have put copies of the overheads that I used in class on the web. The formatting is not as nice as it was on the original overheads, but all of the information is there. To see copies of the overheads that were used in the lectures for this course, click on the picture of the overhead projector.