Syllabus

Office Hours: 
MW: 2-3 pm
T: 11-12 am
F: 9-10 am

Objectives

Course Objectives

What is learning? How do we learn? How is it different from that other course we teach here called Cognition? These are the topics of this course. Briefly learning is the acquisition of new behaviors as a results of experiences in the environment. This course will examine the discoveries from this area of psychology. In many ways these discoveries form the foundation of much of our other knowledge in psychology. We will also take a look at the controversies that have arisen as a result of how this knowledge has been interpreted. Much of the material in this course is grounded in the behaviorist tradition so we will have to examine the implications and range of ideas that the term behaviorist encompasses. This grounding of a set of findings in a tradition that makes many of us uncomfortable in its implications will give us a good opportunity to examine the nature of theory and the relationship between theory and data. 

Major Objectives

This course is an upper level course and an upper level lab course in the psychology major.  Thus, in this course there are several specific objectives that relate to the position of this course in the major.  As you advance, we hope to give the psychology major is designed more ownership over your education.  This objective is reflected in several ways in this course.  First, like all 300 level courses you will be required to design and conduct your own project.  Secondly, you will find a greater emphasis on primary literature.  Thirdly, you will take greater leadership in the course leading some discussions.

Liberal Arts Objectives

This course also is being taught at Hanover College.  When you graduate you will be given a degree: the Bachelor of Arts.  Your degree is identical to every other student that graduates.  You do not get a degree in Psychology.  You only get a major in Psychology.  The difference is that we believe, or at least hope, that all students leaving this school have attained something that is common to all students.  We hope you are educated, at least foundationally.  Towards that end, all courses need to help develop skills needed by an educated person.  These include analytical thinking, evaluation of evidence, development of new ideas and the testing for these ideas and the articulate dissemination of our learning.  These skills are crucial to all facets of your life, your careers included.  Thus, this course will require discussion of the material in the class, oral presentations, independent research, and writing.

Class Schedule

Lab Schedule

Assignments and Exams

Exams

Exams are all essay and comprehensive.  They will ask you to critically examine the issues discussed to that point in the course and to draw from multiple areas to reach a conclusion.  There will be two exams, a mid-term and a final.  It is possible they will be take home.

Journal Discussion

As this is an advanced course, one of the tasks you will be given will be to lead a discussion and critique of one or more journal articles. Critiquing a journal article is one of the basic skills required of an educated person. Being able to evaluate another person's claim is key to being able to think independently and not have to follow along after experts. As such, this class will required you to demonstrate this ability.  It is also an ability you will be asked to demonstrate on your comprehensive examination in psychology. Given the size of the class, you will work in pairs or groups of three. The articles are linked to the syllabus.  You will be assigned an article and lead a discussion of it. To be able to lead a discussion on any topic requires that you know some of the background. So be prepared to do some extra library research to understand and present a background to the class so that they can understand the importance of the paper. Grading will be based on the relevance and quality of the background material (i.e., does it aid in understanding or is it irrelevant or insufficient), and the quality of the discussion that you lead.  All teams need to schedule a time to meet with me prior to leading their discussion.

Labs and Lab Write Ups

Part of the purpose of the 300 level class in the psychology major is to expose you to different research methodologies.  In Social Psychology you learn group testing methods, in Adulthood and Aging you learn qualitative methods; and Cognition, you learn repeated measure designs.  Much of the field  Learning is also dominated by a unique methodology, the single subject design.  This method is somewhat similar to what is done in Sensation and Perception, for those of you who took that class.  So these labs will work to teach you how to use individual subjects to conduct complete experiments and reach sound conclusions.  We will complete two, but I am not sure if we will have a chance to do three before you need to concentrate on your final project.

The lab reports will be written according to APA format including all sections (abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references, etc.).  You are expected, since you have had research methods, to be familiar with APA format.  What you have forgotten you can look up in books in the library.  I am very serious about this.  On  your labs your will received two grades, one for the content, one for following the format.  The final grade is the average of the two grades.  Any error will lead to an automatic F on the format portion of the grade, but the paper can be resubmitted for format errors but with no higher a grade than a C on that portion of the grade.  So this part of the grade should be easy to get an A on.  Let us see how much you can impress me.

Final Lab Project

Lets have some fun here. Well, I hope a lot of the course will be fun, but this task can be particularly entertaining. Conditioning principles are the basis for the tricks that you see at Sea World and lots of animal shows. In this class, take what you have learned, and use conditioning principles to teach the animal to perform some trick. You will demonstrate your animals success or lack of it on the last lab session. You will also write a formal paper where you will discuss your approach, the principles you used, discuss your history of your work, and make conclusions about how you successfully or not used conditioning principles. (This is still written in APA format). 

Ok, let me give some ideas off the top of my head. 1) teach a rat to run a maze without error or prevarication. 2) teach the rat to move a ball through a maze. 3) teach the rat to hit various objects in a certain order. 4) create an obstacle course for the rat. 5) Have it stand on its haunches and play dead under your control.  Be creative. Other hints will be forthcoming. Criteria will be complexity of behavior, reliability of the rat following the command, as well as details in the presentation and write up.

Just a note, by the second week have your idea and start the conditioning in parallel with  your other labs.

Grading