SV 171: Principles of Psychology Spring 2016 1 Course information Class schedule Instructor Office hours Textbook 2 M/T/Th/F 5th period (11:45 am–12:35 pm) Room B106 Alan Jern Office: B103A Email: jern@rose-hulman.edu Thursdays 6th–8th periods, and by appointment Peter Gray, Psychology, 7th edition (E-book acceptable) Overview Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. This course will provide you with a broad overview of the science of psychology. Some of the questions we will consider are: • How do we interpret sensory information? • What motivates us? • What makes us happy? • How accurate are our memories? • How do children learn language? • How much do other people influence our behavior? • Why do some people get depressed? You can probably formulate some answers to these questions just by reflecting on your own experience. As you will learn, however, we often have far less insight into the nature of our behavior than it seems. In this course, we will focus on answering questions like these by treating people as scientific subjects. We will consider psychological theories, experiments, and case studies that address each of these questions, and many others. 1 3 Assessment Component Exam 1 Exam 2 Exam 3 Paper Homeworks (6) Reading responses (3) Quizzes (12) Participation Total 3.1 Weight 15% 15% 15% 25% 15% 2% 10% 3% 100% Exams (45%) There will be three non-cumulative exams. There will be no final exam. All exams are closed-book and closed-notes. 3.2 Paper (25%) Assignment Paper topics Paper outline Presentation Final paper Total Weight 1% 3% 6% 15% 25% You will submit a literature review paper on Monday of Week 10. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current research on a psychological topic of your choice. In addition to the paper itself, you will give a presentation in Week 10 summarizing what you learned. More details about the final paper assignment are posted on Moodle. 3.3 Homeworks (15%) There will be six homework assignments. These assignments consist of short answer questions related to the course material from the preceding week. 3.3.1 Homework grading I will only grade around half of the homework questions. The graded questions will not be announced in advance. The remaining questions will be marked only for completeness. Although only half of the homework questions will be graded, I will always post complete solutions on Moodle shortly after the homework deadline. 2 3.4 Reading responses (2%) On two days in Week 1, we will discuss research articles in class. To ensure that you come to class prepared to discuss the articles, I will post a question or prompt about each article on Moodle that you must respond to before class that day. Your reading responses should not be longer than two paragraphs. 3.5 Quizzes (10%) There will be 12 online quizzes. These quizzes will consist of questions related to the assigned textbook readings through the previous class day. Your two lowest quiz grades will be dropped at the end of the quarter. Quizzes must be submitted by 11:30 am on the day in the schedule in order to receive credit. 3.6 Participation (3%) This class would be boring for all of us without any interaction. Accordingly, I expect you to be an active participant. In addition to asking and answering questions in class, there will be many opportunities for you to participate, including in-class experiments, activities, and discussions. As long as you show good attendance and make a reasonable effort to contribute to the class when appropriate, you will receive full participation credit. I will warn you in advance by email if I feel your behavior is deficient in either of these respects. That means that if you don’t hear from me, you can assume you are on track to receive full credit. If you continue to make an inadequate participation effort after a warning, you will receive a 0 for the participation component of your grade. 3 3.7 Final grade Grades will be assigned as follows. Percentage ≥ 90% 87–89% 80–86% 77–79% 70–76% 67–69% 60–66% < 60% 4 4.1 Grade A B+ B C+ C D+ D F Course policies Late assignments For the entire course, you will have two free late days that can be used for homework assignments ONLY. Homeworks will be considered one day late if they are submitted any time after the start of class on the due date up to 24 hours later. Homeworks will be considered two days late if they are submitted any time between 24 and 48 hours after the the start of class on the due date. You don’t need to notify me in advance if you plan to use one of your late days—I will keep track of your late days and notify you by email when you have no late days remaining. Any assignments submitted after your late days are exhausted will not be accepted. The purpose for this policy is to ensure that I can grade your homework and post keys in a timely fashion. 4.2 Academic integrity Academic misconduct will be addressed according to the policies described in the Rose-Hulman student handbook. Academic misconduct includes: (1) submitting work that is not your own; (2) copying ideas, words, or graphics from any source without appropriate citation; (3) misrepresenting your work or yourself (i.e., deliberately submitting the wrong assignment or lying to explain a late assignment); (4) collaborating with other students when this is not permitted; and (5) submitting the same work for credit in two courses without prior consent of both instructors. If you are unsure whether something qualifies as academic misconduct, please check with me before engaging in the behavior. 4 5 Course schedule The following schedule lists topics, readings, and due dates for the whole term. The page numbers refer to the 7th edition of the Gray textbook. The days marked with a Q are days with online quizzes. I don’t anticipate any major deviations from this schedule, but it is subject to change. Schedule changes will be announced in class and will be posted online. I will give you plenty of notice when such changes are made. Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Date 3/7 3/8 3/10 3/11 3/14 3/15 3/17 3/18 3/21 3/22 3/24 3/25 3/28 3/29 3/31 4/1 4/11 4/12 4/14 4/15 4/18 4/19 4/21 4/22 4/25 4/26 4/28 4/29 5/2 5/3 5/5 5/6 5/9 5/10 5/12 5/13 Topic Introduction Foundations Applications Methods Methods Learning Sleep Perception Perception Motivation Emotion Review Exam 1 Memory Memory Thinking Research paper Thinking Development Development Development Development Review Exam 2 Social behavior Social behavior Social behavior Social behavior Personality Disorders Disorders Disorders TBD Review Exam 3 Paper time Q Q Q Q Reading pp. 12–21 pp. 1–12 Roediger & Pyc Pennebaker et al; pp. 29–41, 159–164 pp. 45-52 pp. 101–126 pp. 220–230 pp. 281–285, 293–300 pp. 300–313, 326–333 pp. 195–205 pp. 231–241 Due Reading response Reading response HW 1 HW 2 Paper topics Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q pp. 321–326, 334–340, 352–353 pp. 340–351, 353–360 pp. 369–379 Final paper assignment pp. 380–388 pp. 413–414, 420–438 pp. 442–452, 471–473 pp. 461–466, 479–483 pp. 494–500 pp. 503–507, pp. 522–536 pp. 544–552, pp. 553–561 pp. 573–590 pp. 617–629, pp. 631–637, pp. 667–670, TBD 5 HW 3 HW 4 511–518 Paper outline 561–570 HW 5 638–643 645–653 673–692 HW 6 Reading response Week 10 Date 5/16 5/17 5/19 5/20 Topic Presentations Presentations Presentations Presentations Reading 6 Due Final paper