November lectures and tutorials

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Tutorials will NOT meet on Friday, November 7. However, you will notice in the LECTURE OUTLINES section of the website that there is a lecture associated with that date. The November 7 lecture will be available on that date online. I talk about the first five chapters of the Murdoch book in the online lecture. I suggest that you listen to the lecture as soon as possible and certainly before the next live lecture, which is on November 12 in the usual Curtis Lecture Halls location. 

To access the online lecture go to the LECTURE OUTLINES section of the website on that date or later, click on November 7, and follow the link at the top of the outline.

The next tutorial meeting will be on Friday, November 14.

We will have one more online lecture this month. On Wednesday, November 19, we will NOT meet in Curtis, and instead I will ask you to listen to another online presentation. Both of the online lectures will remain posted on the course website until the end of the course, but I encourage you to listen to them as close to the scheduled dates as possible.

Review sessions for first exam

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I know many students are anxious about preparing for the first examination. One way to enhance your preparation is to attend one of the Exam Review Sessions organized by the discussion facilitators. We have offered similar sessions in the course for several years, and the participants generally find them very helpful. Come to as many of the sessions as you like and bring all of your questions. The sessions this week will help you identify the topics and issues to identify as you study; those closer to the exam date will help you make sure you have understood the material well. I will post the room locations for the sessions as soon as they become available.

Study strategies to boost learning

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Several times in the course I have used examples involving the psychological phenomena of learning. Sometimes students ask me what psychologists have found in their research about the best strategies to use for learning in a university environment. Today an article on this topic came to my attention; and because I think it looks pretty good, I want to pass it on for your consideration. The article, Strengthening the Student Toolbox, is by John Dulosky and can be found by clicking on the title. Let me know if you have any comments or questions after looking it over.

Psychologists studying animals

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The theory of evolution was an important factor in the founding and development of Psychology. Many psychologists today use animals to study elements of human psychological processes because we know from evolution that many human processes exist in other animals, perhaps in more elementary forms. However, there are also psychologists who study animals out of an interest in the animals in their own right, and often in their natural habitat. One such psychologist is Anne Russon from York's Department of Psychology who is particularly interested in orangutans. Her work is the focus of this article in the most recent issue of the New Yorker magazine. I think you may be surprised to see how well developed the orangutan's learning abilities have been found to be.

Welcome to the study of Psychology!

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Congratulations on your decision to study Psychology. In Section I we have a lot of people who are keen to help you get started and enjoy lots of success in your work; these include your Course Director, three graduate student Teaching Assistants, and nearly thirty undergraduates who completed the course previously. Our first course meeting will be on Wednesday, September 10, in Curtis Lecture Halls I. At that time I will introduce myself and all the members of the course team, and I will explain more about the work that we will be doing and the structure of our meetings.

On the website you will find both the Course Outline and the Reading Schedule for the year. Each week I will post an outline of the Wednesday lecture and a list of discussion questions to help you prepare for the tutorials. Also here you can also expect to see announcements about activities in the course, answers to frequently asked questions, and comments about topics or ideas I forget to mention during my lectures. I hope the website will prove to be a valuable resource for you and that the course will prove to be an excellent experience.

While you are here today, please have a look around. In addition to the course-specific material I have mentioned, you will find links to a number of different resources, blogs, and podcasts relevant to Psychology in general. 

I look forward to meeting everyone in the course soon,

ron

Meaningful alternatives to happiness

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Students who have completed one of my sections of the Introductory Psychology course will be very familiar with Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Happiness Hypothesis. Because Haidt is such a good writer and speaker, it doesn't always occur to those following him that there might be other more important goals in life than happiness. For a view on the purpose of life that aims in a different direction - one more consistent with the existential phenomenologists introduced by Butt near the end of the course - see this recent CBC Ideas podcast: Say No to Happiness.

Freud's contributions to the English language

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The OxfordWords blog has an interesting post this week by Simon Thomas on common English words that originated with Freud. Thomas' post is titled Say one thing and mean your mother: the language of Freudianism. Interestingly it seems that the term "Freudian slip" did not originate with Freud himself. The term he used in German was "Fehlleistungen," which Thomas says is best translated as "failures" or as "faulty actions". After Freud's death, it was one of his translators who introduced the term Freudian slip. To read the full post, click on its title above.

The photo has nothing to do with the OxfordWords blog or with Freud; rather it was sent to me this week by one of the past year's students, Tom C. He said it reminded him of some of the illusions we studied when we were reading the section on Gestalt Psychology in Kukla's book. Do you see a man's head in profile, or do you see one side of a man's face head on? Perhaps you will be able to alternate between the two; but I don't think you will be able to see both at the same time. [I haven't been able to track down the original source of the photo; but if anyone comes across it elsewhere, let me know so I can properly attribute it.]

Trouble

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Act 3 of this week's This American Life podcast tells the story of a woman who copes with her psychological problems in an unusual way. Listen to the episode and see how many different approaches from among those we study in Trevor Butt's Understanding People book you can identify.

The episode begins with a seemingly unrelated account of the popularity of toast bars in San Francisco, but stay with it and you will soon encounter the story's protagonist. 

Joining the WIKI site

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Several students have successfully signed up with Wikidot.com and joined the WIKI page for our course. I encourage everyone to complete their registration soon so that they can begin posting their project material there. When you go to our course WIKI, you will see a grey bar in the middle of the home page if you have not yet joined the site. When you click on that bar, a box with a few options will pop up, and one of the options will invite you to enter the membership password. Do that and you will be presented with a form to fill out to join Wikidot.com. Once you have submitted that form, you will be able to immediately start writing on the site.

The password is not difficult to remember:   psychology

On a different note, some may find today's op-ed column by David Brooks in the New York Times interesting. Brooks writes frequently on topics related to evolutionary psychology, and today he considers aspects of the idea that humans are constituted of two systems - a largely conscious rational system, and a largely unconscious autonomic/emotional system (something that should sound familiar to readers of Damasio). In today's piece he asks in which of these two systems we are most likely to find our "deepest self."

Exam review

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The discussion facilitators will be holding three review sessions prior to the February 26th exam:

Friday, Feb 21, 10:00 to noon -- S 312 Ross Building 

Monday, Feb 24, 10:30 to 12:30 -- 003 Accolade West

Tuesday, Feb 25, 12:30 to 2:30 -- 002 Accolade West

The exam will be based on the material we have read during January and February. Don't neglect the Haidt article assigned for the current week. The exam format will be the same as for the previous two exams. A brief review of the major concepts we have considered this term is posted in the Lecture Outlines portion of the website. If you have questions, please post them in the Central Square portion of the Dialogue Forum, and I will respond to them there.

Brain and empathy (and music)

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Today's Academic Minute on Northeast Public Radio concerns the social emotions and associated brain processes. Have a look; it will only take a minute (well actually two and a half minutes, but still not long for an interesting topic).

Another article appearing today discusses the neurology of musical ability, including mention of the neurological connection between music and emotion. Towards the end of the article there is interesting mention of the idea of using music as a means to facilitate emotional expression in people with various neurological problems. You will find the article in the February issue of University Affairs.

Antonio Damasio

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I would like to recommend two excellent video sources for learning more about Damasio's ideas. 

In 2011 he gave a TED talk (19 minutes) on his ideas about the biological bases of consciousness. In a longer interview (65 minutes) with David Brookes at the Aspen Institute in 2009 he discusses much of the material in the book we are reading, Looking for Spinoza. 

Damasio does an excellent job in the two videos of summarizing the central ideas in his work. Watching the videos will give you an excellent framework for organizing and understanding the Looking for Spinoza book.  Thanks to Justin S for pointing me to these videos.

The following are links to two videos that I used in one of the lectures last term. You will find links to these in the lecture outline, but I wanted to add them here to make it a little easier to find them again in the future when we have all forgotten which lecture they were included in.

The fairness study from Frans de Waal's Ted talk - monkeys with grapes and cucumbers 

Autonomy, mastery, and purpose from Dan Pink's RSA Animate talk

 

Study and Review Sessions

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Our two HealthAid Network students, Afifa and Denise, are organizing a study session for Tuesday (Dec 10) afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00 in 203 Behavioural Sciences Building. Everybody is welcome - bring your books and your questions; students will work together on the material for the exam.

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Our Discussion Facilitators have organized four review sessions prior to the exam. The format for these will be similar to those held before the first exam - the facilitators will guide a discussion of the topics raised by the students attending. The dates, times, and locations for these review sessions are as follows:

Thursday, Dec. 12, 10:30 - 12:30, S312 Ross Building

Thursday, Dec. 12, 1:30 - 3:30, S312 Ross Building

Monday, Dec. 16, 10:30 - 12:30, Vari Hall D

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 10:00 - 12:00, Vari Hall D

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Questions about the course material can also be posted in the Central Square portion of the Dialogue Forum. Doing so can be a great help to others as everyone in the class can benefit from the responses your question receives.

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The exam will be held from 9 to 12 on Wednesday, Dec. 18. Students in tutorials led by Patric and Jacy will write the exam in 109 Accolade West. Students in tutorials led by Ron, Genevieve, and Eric will write the exam in 206 Accolade West. Accolade West is the same building where the Friday tutorials are held.

 

 

Exam results on Wednesday

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I will return your exams at the beginning of next Wednesday's class (Nov. 27). Your mark on the exam will be a letter grade. 

Here is the way in which we arrive at the letter grade for an exam. First each marker decides on the letter grade appropriate for the question or questions that he or she marked. Suppose for example that I am marking Question 1. I read your answer and decide on a letter grade. On your exam booklet I write down the numeric equivalent in the York grading system for that letter grade. These are as follows:

  • A+   9
  • A     8
  • B+   7
  • B     6
  • C+   5
  • C     4
  • D+   3
  • D     2
  • E     1
  • F     0

Each marker does exactly the same thing for each question. Once all the questions have been marked, we average the marks on the cover. This average could be anywhere between 0.0 at the low end and 9.0 at the high end. We convert this average to a letter grade by means of the same scale essentially. To be specific:

  • 8.5 to 9.0     A+
  • 7.5 to 8.49    A
  • 6.5 to 7.49    B+
  • 5.5 to 6.49    B
  • 4.5 to 5.49    C+
  • 3.5 to 4.49    C
  • 2.5 to 3.49    D+
  • 1.5 to 2.49     D
  • 0.5 to 1.49     E
  • 0.0 to 0.49    F

Many students are inclined to assess their work in terms of some sort of percentage system and are tempted to use the numbers that appear on the exam booklet to calculate some sort of percentage. Do not yield to this temptation. Our system of marking is based on letter grades as described above, and percentages do not enter in to the marking in any way at any point.

November 20 lecture is online

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First a reminder that the lecture scheduled for November 20th will not be held in the lecture hall. Instead I am recording my comments about this week's reading and it will be available online in two parts. Go to the Lecture Outline portion of the website, open the outlines for Nov. 20, parts 1 and 2, and click on the recording boxes in those outlines to hear the material. Part 1 is available now; part 2 will be available by 8:30 on Wednesday.

Coincidental with our study of how testing in education is related to socioeconomic factors and learning, the Globe and Mail published an article Saturday on this topic with reference to Toronto. I encourage you to have a look at it here.

Characteristics of System 2 thinking

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In today's lecture I mentioned that one of the characteristics of the effortful thinking that Kahneman calls System 2 is its limited capacity. The video here demonstrates this limitation in a very dramatic way. Follow the instructions and pay very close attention as you watch the video and assess the limits of your own effortful thinking.

Also in today's lecture I mentioned the idea that System 1 thinking doesn't usually come with any hint that there are alternatives to its products. It can be very difficult for one to recognize that he/she needs to step back, reflect, and engage in System 2 thinking. York psychologist Maggie Toplak is concerned with the question of whether children become better at recognizing the need for and engaging in rational thinking as they grow older. You can read a brief summary of her recent work here or the abstract of a recent paper here.

Exam Information

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1. Our first exam will be held at 8:30am, Wednesday, November 6, in our usual Accolade East classroom. The exam will consist of eight short answer and identification questions  based on the material assigned thus far:

  • Sheese e-book, Chapters 1 - 4
  • DeLoache article
  • Kukla & Walmsley book, Chapters 1 - 7

The Discussion Facilitators will be offering four review sessions in the week leading up to our first exam. The schedule and locations are given below. Please review the course material yourself and bring your questions to the sessions. You may come and go as you please during the sessions - so it is not a problem if you arrive or depart in the middle of the time period. Don't forget that you can also post questions (and your responses to other students' questions) in the Central Square portion of the Dialogue Forum.

  • Wednesday, October 30 from 1:30 to 3:30 in     S312 Ross Building
  • Thursday, October 31, from 10:30 to 12:30 in    104 Accolade West
  • Monday, November 4, from 2:30 to 4:30  (note time change)    S105 Ross Building
  • Tuesday, November 5, from 10:30 to 12:30 in   S205 Ross Building

2. Our second exam will be held at 9:00am, Wednesday, December 18, in rooms 109 and 206 of Accolade West. More information about this exam will follow near the end of the term.