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Syllabi for PSY 101, PSY 230, PSY 260, PSY 336, PSY 364, PSY 365, and PSY 480.Blog rules: Make sure to end your comments with your name and course on the last line. Posts without may be treated as spam and will not appear. Thank you for your understanding.
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What does it mean to learning and not be aware of it? Can you learn without a mind? How can simple exposure and experience create memories and learning? Does doing something repeatedly effect changes in the brain? What is the significance of all of this happening outside of the conscious awareness of an organism—especially human beings?
Your blog entry is due Wednesday at 11:59pm.
This week we will consider the notion of ‘the self’ and ‘free will’.
We have recently reviewed the outline for a manuscript’s introduction and its ‘funnel’ logic, as well as the different sections of an APA manuscript. (It will be a good idea to continue to review Chapters 2 and 3 of the manual.)
In past blog posts, we have been working on editing our content to its barest essentials. Being concise and direct is critical to good scientific writing and communication.
Argument involves using substantive material to make a novel point.
Hello, everyone. Please find your new homework on correlation as a downloadable PDF in Comment #1.
This is similar to the last homework but now includes graphically representing your data.
Feel free to post questions on the blog, as well. We’re here to help!
This week’s assignment was to watch either Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind or Dark City (or both). (They’re both quite good, and are available on iTunes or through Netflix, etc.)
What are these movies about and what do these movies have to do with this unit’s neuroethical issues? Please use the movies as evidence for or against arguments you have made previously on the Mind control blog post. If you can, cite a specific time in the movie; definitely cite a specific scene with details!
Your comments and discussion are due next Monday (11/6/09) at 2pm. Please post your comments here.
Protected: PSY 230: Preview of upcoming readings
We were most recently talking about what memory is and what it is for. We are now considering the relation between thinking and language. Soon we’ll talk about the nature of intelligence.
Now is a good time to start to assess what all of these concepts are and how they may even be changing. Consider that research indicates the somewhat counterintuitive claim that memory is really about bringing knowledge to bear on the current situation or future goal you wish to attain, as opposed to an objective representation of the past (i.e., the ‘truth’ of what happened).
How do you define “cognition”? What is “intelligence”? If memory is different than what you thought, maybe these concepts will change as well. To help you assess and reassess your beliefs, consider the following two articles about (1) the effects of the internet on how we think and (2) the reason why IQ scores are rising.
How are two variables are related? Is the correlation statistically significant? What does that mean?
These are the exciting questions for today’s homework, available for download in Comment #1.
This is a preview post of where we’re going next week. There is no blog HW due per se, but you may wish to read ahead. See below.
Studying the mind is difficult for a ’scientific’ psychologist insofar as the mind is by definition immaterial and not subject to the same kind of analysis as a material, or physical, object. The mind is generally considered to be subjective and private, thus unavailable for public observation. Given that science is a public enterprise, it may seem that we have a dilemma. If, however, we operationally definite internal, cognitive processes in terms of public observables (i.e., behaviors), we can overcome the requirement of science.
Hello, everyone. Your statistics homework on “statistical significance” and different types of “error”, as it pertains to hypothesis testing is available for download in Comment #1. It also will refresh you with SPSS (PASW). Once we finish issues of significance and error, we will move into some applications of these terms in inferential testing. Fun!
As always, remember that we are here to help and you are very much urged to post questions on the blog if you have any. We will respond promptly to assist you.
As you know from your syllabus, you have the opportunity to participate in research as a subject.
What is a skill? What does it mean to become an expert so that one is behaving fluidly, or fluently? How are skills encoded in the brain? Are ‘procedural’ skills different than other kinds of memories abilities (e.g., categorized knowledge like semantic concepts)? Can learning new skills change how information is represented in our minds or brains?
What is the ‘Mozart Effect’? Chances are, whether you are a psychology student or not you have heard of this ‘effect’ or phenomenon. Please read the original Rausher, Shaw and Ky (1993) paper on the topic so that you can come to an informed conclusion about it. The figure on the right will help you understand the subcomponent of the Stanford-Binet being used.
What I hope you realize is that one cannot rely on media reports for scientific data. As we have recently learned in class, the same would hold for any kind of review (e.g., a book review on Amazon.com vs. the actual review vs. the actual book!). One must go directly to the literature and confront it. While reading these studies, consider your own experience with media, lay, and anecdotal reports about the Mozart Effect. Have any of you or someone you know bought any CDs or videos because of what you had heard? (No shame if you did.) Consider also this recent tweet I posted on Twitter:
No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund http://bit.ly/rxoIj (via @nytimes)
As indicated in class, the new edition of the APA Manual has its problems.
The American Psychological Association has started to release more information regarding the minor and substantial errors in the first printing of the sixth edition.
Here is an overview; here is a list of corrections; and here is a revised sample paper.
In the last unit, we considered attitudes toward neuro-cognitive enhancement (Farah et al., 2004; Greely, Sahakian, Gazzaniga, Campbell, & Farah, 2008; Manninen, 2006; Riis, Simmons, & Goodwin, 2008). Given their publication in scholarly journals, one could be forgiven for reflecting on these issues in a detached way. We then considered a personal side of neuroethics in the episode from Frontline on PBS, entitled “The medicated child”. It’s a quite gripping account of a neuroethical dilemma. By the way, the complete transcript is available to read and quote, as well.
Given what we know about the growing prevalence of psychopharmacological intervention for behavioral disorders, psychopathology, and even arguably run-of-the-mill normal stressors in the healthy (see last unit), it is reasonable to consider the somewhat now less science-fiction-sounding possibility of mind control.
To the extent that you are not in control, can you still be you?
(We’ll be looking at what neuroscience has discovered about ‘free will’ in the future.) Memory is another topic within psychology and philosophy that bears upon this issue of identity. If it is possible to manipulate memories and we consider our memories to be the narrative of our selves, is there a neuroethical concern about changing our personal identities when we intervene?
If we change our memories of who we were, do we change who we are and will be?
