Required Text

Psychology Themes and Variations, 2nd Edition,
by Wayne Weiten and Douglas McCann

Study Guide and Other Course Supplements

A Study Guide should be bundled with the textbook. The textbook publisher also provides an online study guide. It has chapter learning objectives, practice tests, flash cards, and links for further reading on psychology topics of interest to you. I also post some current articles from the popular press (e.g., New York Times, Scientific American) on my website at paultrapnell.com. Those articles are posted for casual reading only. They are NOT required and are NOT examined on in the course.

 

General Course Description:

This course provides an introduction to the scientific study of mind and behaviour from biological, social, cultural and individual perspectives. Major topics include personality traits, developmental processes, visual perception, theories of motivation, learning, memory, intelligence, states of consciousness, social interaction, hereditary and environmental influences, and psychological disorders. To fulfill the research requirement for this course, students also participate directly or indirectly in the Department's research programs.

 

Please note: Some adjustments may be made in the text material to be covered for each test. For example,sometimes a chapter may not be covered in class but will still be required for the exam, and/or some chapters may be reordered and possibly tested on a different dates than listed above. Announcement of changes will be made in class. If there are any changes you will know well in advance.

 

Class Absence

Missed material is your responsibility. You must contact others in the class about missed material when you are absent, NOT the Instructor or Teaching Assistant. Obtain contact information from four classmates who you may want to contact if you need to get missed materials.

 

Topic and Exam Schedule

 

 

Grade Components

1. Six tests (95%). There are six tests across the year and will be worth 95% of your final grade. All six tests are NON-cumulative, (i.e, are based ONLY on the material since the preceding tests). Tests will be multiple choice and will assess BOTH material from the textbook and material from lectures. The average of your best FIVE test marks will be used to calculate your grade, however, only the lowest mark across the first five tests can be dropped--All students must write test 6, and their mark on test 6 must be included in the calculation of their grade.

 

Please note:

1. Bring Photo-ID to all tests as well as two sharpened pencils.
2. Electronic devices (e.g. calculators, cell phones, etc.) are banned for all tests.
3. All tests are property of the Psychology Department. They must be returned to the instructor or teaching assistant following review, upon penalty of course failure.
4. We do not have a lot of extra lecture time so I will normally not hand back or go over tests during class time. To see your test, please arrange an appointment with myself or a teaching assistant

 

Missed Tests

A grade of 0 will be given for any test that a student fails to write. However, exceptions will be made in the case of "illness, physical disability, or adverse domestic circumstances". Students will be permitted to write a make-up test provided that they:

1. Notify me before the scheduled time for the writing of the test, or if that is not possible within 24 hours of missing the test. (Please email me AND
2. b) Provide appropriate documentation (a medical certificate from your physician, in the case of illness or physical disability; documentation from a counsellor, lawyer, advising clergy, etc., in the case of domestic affliction). Students will also be permitted to write a make-up test, if the test conflicts with the observance of a religious holiday, providing that appropriate notification and documentation are given.

Please note: Documentation must state that the student was unable to write the test on the test date. If a test is missed without a valid reason, it will become the one "dropped" in the calculation of your final grade. There are no exceptions to this policy.

 

2. Class Participation (5%). Given that this is a large class, you will use clickers to participate more fully in lecture. The iClicker is an interactive student response system that allows you to participate in demonstrations, find out whether you understand a particular concept or idea, and examine your preferences and opinions. Thus, it is important that you remember to bring your clicker with you to class each day (except for test days), and to participate using your clicker throughout the lecture. I will officially begin keeping track of class participation starting on Friday, September 16. You will earn one participation point per class period by answering the clicker questions presented that class period using your clicker. Your six lowest clicker scores will be dropped at the end of the course. Thus, you have six days that you can miss class, forget your clicker, fail to click on the questions in a class periods, etc. without losing any clicker points. Do not come up and ask me to write down your name as participating if you forget your clicker. Participation requires you to be present in class AND to be participating with your clicker. WARNING:If you are found using multiple clickers, then I will take the clickers away from you and all involved parties will be ineligible to receive clicker participation points for the rest of the course. Additionally, you would be in violation of the university's student code of conduct and the infraction would be handled accordingly per university guidelines.

 

3. Subject Pool Requirement.

All students are expected to fulfill the subject-pool requirement by completing six credits worth of psychology experiments. Failure to complete all 6 credits will result in your final grade being dropped one letter grade (e.g., from an A- to a B+). See attached sheets at the end of this course outline for subject-pool information or go to the subject-pool website http://psychology.uwinnipeg.ca/pages/sbpinf.html

 

Unofficial Cut-Offs for Letter Grades

Please note carefully that the cutoffs provided below are are tentative guidelines that the course instructor will follow, but unofficial grades based on these tentative guidelines below do not necessarily correspond to the official final grades awarded by the University administration. The Registrar retains the right to modify grading cutoffs in cases involving unreasonably lenient (or difficult) exams, exceptionally skewed grade distributions, and other unusual circumstances. In most cases offical final grades correspond quite closely to the unofficial grades based on the cutoffs provided below. Please be advised that this is not always, or necessarily, the case, however. The following should therefore be interpreted as unofficial cutoffs, not absolutely final official grading cutoffs for this course.

 

Important Information

1. The above grades may be changed in either direction. Use these examples as a rough guide only. In addition, examples assume that subject pool requirements, including any imposed penalties, have been met.
2. The final date for withdrawals without academic penalty from this course is Thursday, January 19th. NOTE: You must formally withdraw from a course. If you simply stop going to classes, you may receive an "F" on your transcript and loss of tuition credit. If you are considering withdrawing from this course, I encourage you to talk to me in case I can help in anyway.
3. You have rights and responsibilities outlined in Section VII of the Calendar concerning information on appeals (p.52) and academic misconduct (p.50).   Please consult your University Calendar   http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/calendar-calendar   for more information.
4. You may be requested to show picture ID during any exam. Please be sure to bring your Library Card or Driver's License to each exam.
5. Disability Services and Resource Centre: Students with documented disabilities requiring academic accommodations for lectures or tests (e. g., access to volunteer note-takers, private space) are encouraged to contact the Coordinator of Disability Services at 786-9771, or go to http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/services-disability. All information about disability is confidential. If you are seeking academic accommodations, please discussion the situation with me the first week of classes or within one week of making arrangements with DS.
6. Counselling and Career Services: For career or academic guidelines, for personal problems, for STUDY SKILLS and note-taking, anxiety, etc., take advantage of the range of free counseling services to get the help you need to survive and succeed in university. Check out the Counselling homepage at http://ccs.uwinnipeg.ca.
   
   NOTE: If you feel that you have a medical or personal problem that is interfering with your work, you should contact me, Disability Services or Counselling Services as soon as possible. Problems may be documented and possible arrangements to assist you can be discussed at the time of occurrence rather than on a retroactive basis. In general, retroactive requests for grade revisions on medical or compassionate grounds will not be considered.
7. Academic Misconduct: Students are responsible for understanding the nature of and avoiding the occurrence of academic offenses. There is a section in the General Calendar on academic misconduct dealing with regulations on student discipline and grade appeals.
8. Classroom Etiquette: Unauthorized talking-in-class and other seemingly minor disruptions (e.g., students arriving late or leaving early) have a negative impact on the class environment (ranging from being somewhat annoying to the rest of us to being downright rude and offensive). Attendance is voluntary. If you attend I expect you to be attentive and polite to others. Do not sit near others who seem to always want to communicate with you or amuse you through words, whispers, or smiles. You are expected to change your seat next class, if necessary. Resist being an accessory no matter how innocent it seems. If you must leave class early, please sit near the door. (Otherwise, early departures can be quite disruptive, no matter how carefully you try to arrange your exit.)
9. Email Policy: I strongly prefer to interact with students in person but you are welcome to communicate with me by e-mail. However, e-mail should be used only to provide me with information or to ask a question that requires a brief response. For more lengthy discussions, you should raise questions during class or office hours. Should you decide to email me, please do so this way: First Term (Dr. Trapnell) use:psyc1000@gmail.com; Second Term (Dr. Sinclair): use WebCT. If you email me through my university account your email could end up being filtered out by the University SPAM filter.
10. Office hours and appointments: If you have questions about the course material, would like to discuss issues related to the course in more detail, or would like to see your tests, you are always welcome to drop by my office or make an appointment to meet with me or a teaching assistant. I will not use office hours to go over course material you missed without a valid reason for missing class.
11. Instructor’s expectations: I expect you all to work hard and learn a great deal from this course. I also expect to be challenged by what you already know, or wish to know. I do not approach the courses I teach from a position of absolute authority and total knowledge. The field of psychology is so vast and ever changing that we must strive to keep up with the latest findings, while putting everything into the framework of our basic knowledge.
12. I want to remind you that this course should be taken seriously. I understand that many of you have second jobs (because university is a job!), families, and other personal obligations. However, this is no excuse to minimize the importance of this class or your university education. For those of you who have outside obligations, you must learn time management skills and how to plan accordingly. Through my experience, I have learned that planning ahead is the best tool that can be used throughout a university education and in the professional world. You must understand how to follow guidelines and complete work by deadlines.

Tip: Read this outline more than once and keep it in your binder or somewhere you can reference it easily.

 

How To Study The Textbook

Distributed practice is a vastly better study method than night-before cramming. Why? Consider these facts, which you will encounter is Chapter 6, Memory:

1. Human memory is superb at exploiting time and location cues. Study routines (same time, same location) take systematic advantage of that fact.
2. Consolidation of memory storage is not instantaneous. Memory systems require time for incidental rehearsal, and time for connections to form with previously learned information. Night-before cramming short-changes these critical human memory mechanisms.
3. Interference between bits of information can be a bigger barrier to remembering than the amount of time passing between studying and testing. Given this, consider the wisdom of "cramming", i.e, trying to jam a big pile of complicated, completely new information into memory 12 hours before a test. Not the best method.

The more you learn about human memory the more compelling is the logic of adopting a study routine distributed across the week (ideally, at the same location and time). Distributed practice is by far the best approach in a survey course. Don't panic, don't cram, schedule 3-4 study sessions per week. Then, stick to your schedule.

 

It also matters very much how one studies. A recent study by the Ohio State University College of Agriculture demonstrated that number of hours studying, by itself, was not a strong predictor of course grades. The way one uses the available study time may be much more important that simply studying and studying and studying. Astronomical grades are not attained only by those with astronomical IQ scores. In fact, IQ correlations with grades in a single course are typically less than .40. There is a very learnable skill, however, that is essential to high grades: efficient styles of encoding information in a form that readily permits self-testing, i.e., note-taking skill---especially with respect to the textbook. It is essential to prepare superbly organized notes for each text chapter.

 

Copying sentence after sentence from the textbook is the opposite of efficient note taking. If you tend to do that, try this instead: (1) choose a relatively brief number of text pages for each study hour, eg, 5-8 pages. (2) Casually read that section over once, not taking any notes. Merely ask yourself "what is this paragraph mostly about?" as you are reading. (3) Now, do a second, more careful reading of it using a highlighter, and prepare extremely brief notes (e.g., short phrases) on loose-leaf paper for the most central facts--- the bold, italic, or tabled items, or the ones you guess are most likely to end up as test questions. Do those notes in point form, using two columns: each item listed on the far left, a blank column in the middle, and your answer phrase for that item on the far right. These kinds of loose-leaf notes allow you to test yourself easily by covering up the answer column (the right column) with a piece of paper. Why focus on things you already know? Test to see what you don't know, put an "x" by those items and focus on learning those items. Then cover up the answer column again and re-test... etc.

 

After a few effortful weeks go by, skill at (3) above will start to gel, and the elegance and efficiency of your note-taking will improve naturally, on its own. Eventually, knowing which things to focus on and how to take really fast, efficient notes on those points becomes second nature. That's when grades start to climb skyward... Here is an example of simple, clearly organized text notes (e.g., using the headings and subheadings already provided in the text chapter) in a format that allows easy self-testing by covering up the right column:

 

Research Requirement

Scientific knowledge of human behaviour depends upon research and as a university student you make a signification contribution to the psychological sciences by taking part in our department's research. The Psychology Department requires all Introductory Psychology students to experience the research process by having you participate in studies throughout the academic year.

You can complete the course requirement in any of the following 3 ways:

Monitoring your credits

Psychology Department Website:
        http://psychology.uwinnipeg.ca/pages/credits.html.
Your accumulated credits are listed by student ID number for you to check the accuracy of your credits earned. The list will be updated regularly, so please check it frequently to be sure that your credits have been properly entered. Find out well in advance if you need to earn extra credits, or if there are any mistakes on the website. It may take up to one week from the date of the experiment to process your credit, but if after a week or so, you have not been given credit for a study in which you participated, contact us immediately. This is why you need to keep all your credit receipts until you receive your final grade.

Questions

Questions concerning the research requirement should be directed to the subject pool coordinator, room 4L31, 786-9744. The Psychology Department is eager to make your subject pool participation an interesting and enjoyable learning experience for you, and we are always interested in your feedback.

1. SUBJECT-POOL PARTICIPATION CREDIT

Participation has educational benefits for you as an Introductory Psychology student. You receive first-hand experience with research design and procedure, and you learn through the feedback you receive about each study you participate in. You earn one credit for each hour, or part thereof, of research participation. You need a total of 6 credits to pass the requirement. All studies are carefully screened and approved by the Psychology Department Ethics Committee and by the University's Senate Committee on Ethics in Human Research and Scholarship. If, for any reason, you find a study offensive once it has been explained to you, you may leave, but receive credit nonetheless.

Availability of Studies

Most students earn all or most of their research credits by participating in the Subject Pool because they usually find it interesting and somewhat less time-consuming than the article summaries. Studies will be posted when they are available or sometimes announced in class. It is your responsibility to check the subject pool bulletin board. Do not leave your participation to the last minute.

Sign-up Procedure

1. Go to the Subject Pool Bulletin Board located in the hallway of 4th Floor Lockhart beside room 4L16N where you will find sign-up sheets on the various studies being conducted.
2. Read each study’s information sheet carefully before signing up, and follow the instructions that are posted.

If You Cannot Appear

Call the answering machine 786-9854 before your appointment time and leave a clear message including your name and student number, as well as the name, date, and time of the study. If you call before your appointment you will not be penalized; if you are a ‘no show’, you will receive a penalty.

If the Experimenter Does Not Appear

If you show up but the experimenter does not, you can still get your credit. To receive it you must report your name and contact number, and the date and time and study name to either the subject pool coordinator in room 4L31 or the psychology office 4L41.

Credit for participating

1. You will receive one research participation credit when you show up for a study.
2. Print your information at the top of the credit form and hand it in to the researcher so that your credit can be entered into our tracking system.
3. Keep the bottom portion of the credit form as your receipt until you receive your final grade.
4. You need a total of 6 credits to pass the research requirement. Check the website.

Penalties:

1. For missed appointments:  If you miss an appointment, and have not phoned in before your scheduled participation, you will be required to earn an additional research credit.
2. For failure to complete the research requirement of 6 (or more) credits:  Results in a letter grade penalty being applied to your mark. This means that your grade would be lowered one step. e.g. from B+ to B or from C to D, or from D to F.

Getting the Most out of Participation

A debriefing period will follow your participation in the study. You may often get as much out of the discussion following the study as you do during actual participation. The researcher will be happy to discuss any aspect of the study with you. The researcher will post the results and they will tell you when and where you can review them. By participating in our research, you are providing a very valuable service to the Psychology Department, and your contribution is highly valued and much appreciated.

2. OBSERVER CREDIT

The observer-only option is for those who want to have the experience of participating in a study but prefer not to have their results used. Students who elect this option will do everything that a regular participant would do; and in addition, they must inform the researcher in advance that they are opting for observer status. The researcher will then destroy the data produced. Although this option is available for most studies, there may be some that cannot accommodate observers. If a study will not be able to offer the observer option, this information should be posted on the sign-up sheet.

3. ARTICLE REVIEWS

The third way of earning a credit is to read a research article and then answer a few questions about it. The prescribed articles are listed below, and they are on reserve in the library. Ask for them under "Psychology Research Requirement", rather than your professor's name.

• These are just like any other assignment in your course and are subject to the same rules regarding academic misconduct.
• Use the attached Article Review sheet , or create your own using the identical format and information.
• Article reviews are graded on a PASS/FAIL basis and your responses must reflect that you have read and understood the article.
• If your article review is a PASS, you will receive 1 Research Credit (check the website).
• Deposit article reviews in the drop box outside of 4L16N, with your student number and name filled out legibly.
• Article reviews are due no later than 1 week after the last day of classes.

Select from these following articles:   You may search the web, or go to the library where they are on reserve under ‘Psychology Research Requirement’.

If you do article reviews, use this form for them: Download form