PSY 202 – Introductory Psychology

Fall 2009

Marlowe C. Embree, Ph.D.

Section 1:  9:00-9:50 a.m.

Section 2:  10:00-10:50 a.m.

Also see www.uwmc.uwc.edu/psychology/gen_syllabus.htm for additional details.  The information found on this Web page is part of this syllabus and should govern your expectations for the course.

I’m looking forward to this course and hope you are too!  We’ll be covering the entire field of psychology in only 15 short weeks, so please pay careful attention to the course requirements and due dates below.  Online lecture notes and other supportive materials can be found at www.uwmc.uwc.edu/psychology (hyperlinked on the main Web page).   Don’t miss these!

Text:  Gazzaniga, M.S.;  Heatherton, T.F.;  and Halpern, D.F.  (2010).  Psychological science (3^rd ed.)  New York:  W.W. Norton.  

Note:  The UWMC Bookstore is a not-for-profit cooperative whose function is to control textbook costs to students. The Bookstore guarantees you receive the right books and the right edition of each book. If you order online, you may or may not find cheaper used books, but be advised that it occasionally happens that you receive an unacceptable edition or extraneous materials The decision on where to buy your books is yours, but keep in mind that buying through the UWMC Bookstore is essentially risk-free as long as you abide by the refund policy and dates.

Course Outline:  (quizzes and discussion assignments are found on the course site at d2l.uwc.edu)

 Grading Structure:

 Grades will be based on the following:

Best six of eight online quizzes (found at d2l.uwc.edu) – 10 points apiece =       60 points possible

Best six of eight online discussions (found at d2l.uwc.edu) – 6 points apiece =   36 points possible

Best three of four unit exams – 40 points apiece =                                           120 points possible

          If you take all four exams, the lowest score will be dropped.

          You can also substitute the “exam alternative project”

              for one unit exam, if desired.

Comprehensive final exam (required of all students) =                                        80 points possible

         Students who do not take the final will receive

         an automatic F for the course, unless there is a

         legitimate emergency situation involved.

Research participation or reaction paper =                                                        10 points

Completion of department assessment activity =                                                 4 points

GRAND TOTAL                                                                                           310 points possible

Grades will be based on a percentage cutoff system.  Approximate (not guaranteed) cutoffs:  91-100 A, 81-90 B, 71-80 C, 61-70 D, 0-60 F.  These cut points may be adjusted at the instructor’s discretion without prior notice to better approximate a normal distribution.  

Reading Assignments and Reading Guides:

Approximately 20-25% of each quiz and each unit exam will be drawn directly from assigned text readings, below, whether or not explicitly covered in class.

Lecture Unit 1 (Introduction)

In class, we will discuss two different definitions of psychology and how the tension between them has shaped the history of psychology.  The text (page 5) straddles them by defining psychology as "the study of mind, brain, and behavior".  Why do you think the authors have done this?  Why do you think they have made mention of the brain in their definition?  (Read the last paragraph on page 5.)   The text summary of the history of psychology (pages 16-24) can be viewed in terms of the oscillation between these two definitions, though they don't say so.  Can you see this theme throughout their discussion even though it is not acknowledged by them?

The issue of reductionism is covered in detail during lecture.   The text reading does not deal extensively with this issue, perhaps in part because the authors are stridently reductionistic (as opposed to the nonreductionism of your instructor).  Can you see evidence of this fact in the text chapter?  Consider, for instance, pages 7-14.  How does this part of the text highlight the authors' reductionism?  From what I have to say in lecture about this issue, how do you think I might react to their exposition on these pages?  They do discuss the "levels of analysis" problem on page 14, without explicitly drawing links to the concept of reductionism.

The nativist-empiricist controversy is discussed in the text on page 7.  They take an interactionist position, which is common in the field, without directly discussing the complexities of interactionism as outlined in lecture.

Lecture Unit 2 (Research Methods)

The text discussion of scientific inquiry on pages 34-36 does not directly address the universe of discourse problem outlined in lecture.  What kinds of questions do you think the authors believe science can, or cannot, answer?  Do you think the authors believe, as your instructor does, that there are types of knowledge that are derived from sources other than science?  Why or why not?

The discussion on pages 27-47 generally parallels the lecture material and is worth careful study on your part.  Note the discussion of variables (p. 37), different research designs (pp. 38-43), the third-variable problem (p. 42), types of variables (p. 43), manipulation vs. measurement (p. 43), and sampling issues (p. 46), all of which are discussed in detail in lecture.  Details of how correlations work and how correlation coefficients are to be interpreted are found on pp. 69-70.

Ethical issues in research are discussed in detail on page 62.

Lecture Unit 3 (Physiological Psychology)

pp. 135-136:  Views of mind and brain.  Note the text authors' reductionism as contrasted with my nonreductionism.  The authors state without qualification, "most psychological scientists now reject dualism", but they in fact confound psychophysical parallelism (which everyone accepts) with epiphenomenalism (which is by no means universally accepted).  I'm afraid that the text authors, otherwise bright and reasonable people, have drunk too deeply of the Steven Pinker Kool-Aid.  Similarly, they state on p. 147 that "brain activity produces consciousness" (an epiphenomenalistic view), rather than stating as I believe that brain activity mediates consciousness.  For a scientific exposition of dualism, see Mario Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain.

pp. 92-98:  Neural structure and functioning.  We will not cover the biochemical mechanics of intraneural transmission to the level of detail presented in the text, but this is useful information nonetheless.

pp. 114-116:  Overall structure of the nervous system.

pp. 104-112:  Basic brain structures.

pp. 139-144:  Split brain.

pp. 149-153:  Sleep.  Try to stay awake while reading these pages.

Lecture Unit 4 (Sensation and Perception)

pp. 187-210  The sense modalities.  The book goes into much more detail on this topic than we will in class.  Some interesting information here.  Note specially pp. 209-210 for sense modalities of which many students have not heard before. 

pp. 182-186  Psychophysics.  Pay particular attention to signal detection theory, which is not covered in lecture.

pp. 216-218  Gestalt principles of perception;  top-down vs. bottom-up perceptual models.

Lecture Unit 5 (Motivation and Emotion)

Of all the units in the course, this is the one where I deviate most sharply from the approach taken in the book.  I do talk about Maslow (pp. 381-382) as well as the Yerkes-Dodson Law (pp. 383-384), but otherwise, take a much more nonreductionistic and idiographic approach to motivation than the text authors do.  Don't feel obligated to read the rest of this chapter unless you are interested for your own sake. 

Lecture Unit 6 (Conditioning and Learning)

Pages 259-264 are all excellent and deserve careful study.  For the most part these mirror my lecture on behaviorist models of learning, as well as providing a balancing critique of behaviorism.

Note that the notational system of the text is slightly different from that I use.  Follow my symbol system, please, in addressing issues of diagramming on the quiz and the exam.

The lecture material on Edward de Bono's cognitive modes is not found in the text.  Note, however, that my Web side provides some additional hyperlinks regarding that system:

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/psychology/six_hats_problem_solving.htm

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/psychology/311_six_hat_improvements.htm

http://www.uwosh.edu/programs/teachingforum/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=705&format=html

These may help you to further digest the Six Hat model.

Lecture Unit 7 (Memory)

Read text pages 281-304 and 311-323.  The authors do an excellent job with this chapter.  What they call the modal memory model is essentially the same as the Atkinson-Shiffrin model discussed in lecture.

Lecture Unit 8 (Language and Cognition)

No assigned readings.  This is a short unit, so take a break from reading.

Lecture Unit 9 (Developmental psychology)

Readings will be kept to a minimum in this unit because my approach to this unit is much more tightly focused than that of the text authors (who basically try to cover far more ground than, in my opinion, can be meaningfully addressed).  Read pages 478-480 (attachment), 486-492 (Piaget), 494-495 (Kohlberg), 512 (Erikson).

Lecture Unit 10 (Abnormal psychology)

The Big Five is covered on pages 579, 586-587, 598-600.

An overview of the DSM classification system is found on pages 623-654.

Lecture Unit 11 (Clinical psychology)

Pages 666-676 cover the basic approaches to therapy.

Lecture Unit 12 (Social Psychology)

Pages 545-551 discuss classic research on conformity and pathological obedience.

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