Introduction to Psychology -- PSYC 1101 (Summer 2006)

Schedule of Topics and Extra Material (as of Aug 28)

Note: This schedule is to be used only as a guide. The exact order of material may be changed, or the schedule may differ depending on how quickly we cover the various sections of material.

Date (approx.)   Topic Readings Handouts
(in PDF)
June 19 a Introduction to the Course and to Psychology Chapter 1, pg 2-13 PPT
  Note: READ THE SYLLABUS web page!!  
June 19 b History of Psychology Chapter 1, pg 2-13 PPT
     
June 21 a Research Methods, Measurement, Basic Statistics Concepts Chapter 1, pg 13-35, Appendix PPT
June 21 b Research Methods, Measurement, Basic Statistics Concepts Chapter 1, pg 13-35, Appendix  
  See also:
Phineas Gage Very extensive information.
 
June 23 a Biological Basis and Neural Organization Chapter 2 PPT
  See also:
Paul Broca
Golgi's Nobel Speech, 1906
 
June 23 b Functional Organization of the Brain Chapter 2 PPT
  Digital Anatomist (first two sections deal with neuroanatomy. Very nice pictures)
Human Brain Disection (really excellent pictures with labeled structures)
NeuroTutorials (John Krantz's pages at Hanover)
 
June 26 a Neuroscience & Neural Computation Chapter 2, Chapter 5 PPT
June 26 b Visual Neuroscience Chapter 2, Chapter 5  
  See also:
Hubel & Weisel video (quicktime)
David Hubel's Nobel Lecture
Vision people mentioned in class:
Brian Wandell, Stanford University
David Van Essen, Washington University
Interesting Links:
 
  See also:
Clip of Dr. Gazzaniga and Split Brain Patient
An interesting clip of a prosopagnosic, someone that has difficulty recognizing faces
Interesting Links:
Gazziniga'sLab and Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth
A site giving more info on split brain patients, and another one
Mike Tarr and his Lab at Brown
 
  See also:
Video clip of Capgras delusion
Video clip of Temporal lobe epilepsy patient
Brain and Emotion (a very long but fascinating article on brain structures involved in emotional experience)
 
June 28 a Sleep, Motivation and Learning
Chapter 3, 4 PPT
June 28 b More on Learning
Chapter 3, 4 PPT
  See also:
Dr. Dement! - This pageis a gold mine for finding out more about all things related to sleep.
A short snippet on dreams (34 mb)
A little clip on Pavlov, it's a bit overcompressed but not bad...
Note: For Motivation section, be sure to read text book
 
June 30 a Sensation and Perception I (Vision & Hearing) Chapter 5, 6 PPT (2.6MB!!)
  See also:
I have many links on my Sensation and Perception Links page.

Gustav Fechner is an important figure in psychophysics. Oddly enough, there is little on Fechner in English, so if you can read German this page is ok:
Gustav Theodor Fechner
 
June 30 b Sensation and Perception II (Vision & Hearing) Chapter 5, 6  
  Also note: We will have a choice of what "extra" sensation and perception topics to cover. Auditory pathology, speech, touch, pain, smell, taste, flavor, are all on the menu...so think about what you want to learn about, and tell me in class today.
 
July 03 a Sensation and Perception III (Other Main Senses) Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6  
  Balance, Pain, Taste, Smell, Flavor, etc. (see slides)  
July 03 b Sensation and Perception: Applied Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6  
  Sports, work, etc.
See also:
Eye movements during Digital Dance Revolution (fast) (slow) - Thanks to John Henderson, Michigan State University

 
July 05 a Exam 1    
  In class, closed book, multiple choice.

 
July 05 b Pattern Recognition (following the exam) Chapter 6 PPT
  See also:
Oodles of visual illusions with explanations (requires some flash, some java, and other stuff)
Perception: An introduction to Gestalt Theory - Kurt Koffka (original article published in 1922)
A little snippet on vision.  Great soundtrack (that's sarcasm...) (17mb)
Speech Perception at the HaskinsLab at Yale
Sinewave speech and the more general page for these demos here
Categorical Perception
Other stuff at Haskins
 
July 07 a Memory Chapter 7 PPT
  See also:
Parallel Distributed Processing / Connectionism / Neural Network Links
James McClelland - one of the original researchers on the question of word superiority effects and PDP models
Software for building PDP style models - very cool...
The Java Interactive Activation Model - a minimodel of the word superiority effect
 
July 07 b Thoughts and Concepts Chapter 8 PPT
  See also:
Mike Posner at University of Oregon
Change Blindness demostrations by Daniel Simons of University of Illinois
 
July 10 a Reasoning and Decision Making Chapter 8 PPT
  See also:
Clip on Clive the amnesiac.  Very highly recommended.
People whose work was mentioned in class today:
Randy O'Reilly - computational modeling of memory functions inhippocampus and neocortex
Alan Baddeley
Brenda Milner- She was one of the scientists to describe one of the original cases of memory disfunction due to hippocampal lesions (in a patient famously known as HM)
Donald O. Hebb - psychologist/neuroscientist pioneer.
 
July 10 b More on Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making    
  Everyday aspects of this topic  
July 12 a Language Chapter 9 PPT
July 12 b Language and Thought Chapter 9  
  See also:
The Bacon Oracle Small world networks -
NY Times article (requires free registration),
American Math. Soc. Release
Al Barabasi- small world networks in the World Wide Web
Latent Semantic Analysis -Check out the Automated essay grader...
Hyperdimensional Analog to Language (HAL)
 
July 14 a Cognitive Development Chapter 12 PPT
  See also:
Daniel Kahneman (ground breaking work with Amos Tversky on decision making), now a Nobel winner
Amos Tversky (d. 1996) Rate which of the following pairs as more likely/common cause of death: Lung Cancer vs Motor vehicle accident; Emphysema vs homicide; Tuberculosis vs Fire and Flames
 
July 14 b Cognitive Development / Intelligence Chapter 12  
  A couple of interesting video clips on language development:
Acquisition - this discusses the ideas of Chomsky and also the role of social interaction, especially with Mothers in helping bootstrap language acquisition.
Stages - this discusses the basic stages of language acquisition from early exposure, babbling, one and two word utterances.
Statistical learning - Here are sound demos that suggest that infants (and tamarins) can learn the sequential probabilities that can guide the segmentation of the speech stream into words.  
Stream - here the phonetic segments are played continuously and "words" are those sequences of segments that are consistent (e.g., tudaro) and nonwords are those that are not consistent (pabiku).  Consistency here means that /tu/,/da/, and /ro/ always appear together, where as /pa/, /bi/, and /ku/ occur together sometimes but often they don't.   Infants pick up on this and it probably is critical in getting the word learning process started. This work is from the lab of Jennifer Saffran(Wisconsin), and Richard Aslin (U of Rochester)
 
July 17 NO CLASS    
July 19 a Intelligence Chapter 14 PPT
  See also:
Eye tracking studies of ambiguity resolution
Adult ambiguous
Adult ambiguous
Adult unambiguous
5 year old, ambiguous
5 year old, unambiguous These clips from the lab of John Trueswell (U of Pennsylvania)
 
July 19 b Social Development
Sexual Orientation
Chapter 13
PPT
PPT
  See also:
Harlow's wire and cloth monkeys

American Psychological Association's page on Sexual Orientation
 
July 21 a Exam 2    
     
July 21 b Personality (after the exam) Chapter 15 PPT
  See also:
Video clip on development of "Theory of Mind"
 
July 24 a Attitudes & Beliefs Chapter 10 PPT
July 24 b Emotion Chapter 11 PPT
  See also:
 
 
July 26 a Social Context Chapter 10, 11 PPT
July 26 b Social Context Chapter 10, 11  
  See also:
Darryl Bem's pages at the Cornell Department of Psychology
Bem's original Psychological Review paper (extremely well written and in depth discussion of his theory)
An interesting true story about Darryl and Sandy Bem's kids (related more to gender roles really)
 
July 28 a Psychopathology I Chapter 16 PPT
     
July 28 b Psychopathology II Chapter 17  
     
July 31 Final Exam - Monday, 2:50-5:40pm