Psych 9B/ PSB P11B – PSYCHOLOGY
FUNDAMENTALS
Fall 2014
The courses labeled “Social Sciences Psych 9 A, B, C”
and “Social Ecology Psy Beh
P11 A, B, C” refer to the same, cross-listed, three-quarter course sequence.
All three courses are offered every quarter and they can be taken in any order.
This course sequence is designed to give students a strong foundation in the
major research areas of psychology. Topics include human development, memory,
language, emotional and social behavior, psychopathology, and neuroscience.
This course sequence is required for students majoring in Psychology in the
In this part of the course sequence, “Psych 9B” or “Psy Beh P11B,” we will learn about memory, thinking, language, and development.
This course also is a General Education (GE) Category III course. At the end of this course students should be able to
· Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the theories, sources, and interpretations of human behavior and organization (e.g., individual, societal and/or institutional).
· Understand and explain the scientific/interpretive methods used in the acquisition of knowledge and the testing of competing theories, in the social and/or behavioral sciences.
· If you are a
Psychology and Social Behavior major, you should be registered under P11B
(Course Code 54050).
· If you are a
Cognitive Sciences/Psychology major, you should be registered under Psych 9B
(Course Code 68050).
· If you are
enrolled in another major or are undecided/undeclared, you may register under
either P11B or Psych 9B.
No matter your major, you must be registered both in the lecture and in a discussion section. (Be sure to register the discussion section using a PSB course code if you are registered for the P11B lecture or using a Psychology course code if you are registered for the Psych 9B lecture.)
Please Note: No credit is awarded for Psych 7A/PsyBeh P9 if taken concurrently with, or after, any of the following: Psych 9A, B, or C, PsyBeh P11A, B, or C.
Add and Drop should be done using WebReg and can only be done during the first two weeks of the quarter.
· Textbook and
ancillaries.
The textbook for the course is “Psychology, 8th edition” by Henry
Gleitman, James Gross, and Daniel Reisberg (published
in 2010 by W.W. Norton & Co.). It is available for purchase at the UCI
Bookstore and other sources. The text is also available as an electronic book,
which is substantially less expensive but is only available for one year: http://books.wwnorton.com/nortonebooks/buychoice.aspx?siteId=gman8_ebook
· The textbook
comes packaged with the following accompanying materials (called
“ancillaries”):
·
Marcus,
G. (2006) The Norton Psychology Reader (Required)
·
ZAPS
(The Norton Psychology Labs) authorization code (Required)
·
Jonides, J. & Rozin, P. (2007). Psychology Study Guide (Optional for this
quarter)
· I-Clicker. You
will also need to have an I-clicker (also available from the UCI bookstore).
Bring your I-clicker with you to each class. Be sure that the batteries are
good.
The same textbook and (most of the) ancillaries are used for all three quarters of the Psychology Fundamentals course sequence. Luckily, we have a very good textbook, one which is both comprehensive and reader-friendly as well as having a very good website with review materials, quizzes, and other related materials. To access the website, you will need to register using a code which is found in new textbooks. (It appears that you can only access this site if you buy a new book.)
Do not try to use previous editions of the textbook. They are quite different. The textbook, like most, is expensive, but remember that it and the ancillaries are used for three quarters, and the same I-Clicker can be used in any course that requires them.
This term we will be using Piazza for class discussion. The system is organized to get you help quickly and efficiently from classmates, the TAs, and the professor. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, I encourage you to post your questions on Piazza. One advantage of Piazza is that anyone in the class can post answers. Although the TAs and I will be monitoring this site regularly, we will not necessarily comment on every question, especially if someone else has already provided a good answer.
Find our class page at: https://piazza.com/uci/fall2014/psych9bpsb11b/home
To facilitate use of Piazza, you and all members of the class will receive an email to your uci.edu email address requesting that you register. You may opt out of the system simply by not responding to this email.
If you have any problems using Piazza or if you want to provide feedback for the developers, you can email team@piazza.com.
Students are responsible for all the material presented in lectures and in assigned readings. Lectures will not simply repeat material in the text. Instead, lectures will emphasize and elaborate on key issues discussed in the text as well as introducing material not covered in the text. Thus, the text is not a substitute for the lectures, and the lectures are not a substitute for doing the assigned readings. To do well, it is important to both do the readings and attend the lectures. During lectures, please feel free to ask questions.
All students must be registered for a weekly discussion section. Attendance at discussion sections is strongly encouraged but is not required. You should use discussion sections to ask questions about issues in the text not covered in lectures as well as issues from the lecture that you would like to have clarified. In addition to the questions you ask, the discussion sections will also provide you with opportunities to solidify and review your understanding of the material. Please keep in mind that these sessions are intended for discussion and clarification of the material presented in the text and lectures rather than “Cliff Notes” presentation of that material. If you arrive unprepared, that is, if you have not done the reading, attended the lectures, and thought through the review questions, you will probably not find these sessions particularly useful. (If you have done all of these things AND you feel that you have mastered the material then you may also find these sessions are not particularly useful.)
Copies of the slides presented in lecture (PDF files of the PowerPoint presentation materials), Podcasts of the actual lectures, and Review Questions will be linked on the Schedule page of the course website. The review questions are posted separately for the readings and for the lectures on a week-to-week basis. Although the review questions are not the same as the exam questions, students who have fully mastered the material needed to answer the review questions should be able to do well on the exams.
The lecture slides are posted to aid you in taking notes. You will find that, although they provide a high-level outline of the lecture material and reproduce important figures and illustrations, reading the slides will not be a good substitute for hearing a lecture.
In addition to the lecture slides, Prof. Wright will record video Podcasts of each lecture and make them available by linking them to the class website on the Schedule page. These videos will include everything displayed on the screen during the lecture. The audio will be taken from a microphone that I will be wearing. Although every attempt will be make these recordings available for every lecture, you should not rely on their availability – as with any other complicated system this one can screw up. Students in the past have found the Podcasts to be useful way to review material that might have been difficult to understand during lecture. Also, should you have to miss a lecture, watching the Podcast of it should be better than missing the material completely (note, however, that it is not possible to make up the points for missed Clicker questions).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Podcasts are only accessible from computers that appear to be in the uci.edu domain. If you are using a computer on campus, you should have no problem accessing these resources. To get access when you are off-campus, use one of the versions of the VPN (virtual private network) system available at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/vpn/. If you have problems with the VPN system, you should contact the Office of Information Technology help desk, not your TA or Prof. Wright.
There will be five chapter tests, one for each chapter covered in the text, and a cumulative final exam. The dates and time of these exams listed in the Schedule.
Each chapter test will have roughly 25 multiple-choice questions taken about evenly from the lectures and the readings. The lowest score on the five chapter tests will be dropped. The remaining four will each count for 15% of the overall grade (60% for all four).
The final exam will be cumulative, covering all the material in the course. As in the chapter tests, the questions will come from both the readings and the lectures. The final exam will count for 30% of the overall grade.
For each test/exam, please bring a Scantron Form F-288 (a red and white 5” x 11” inch form), two sharpened Number 2 pencils, and your UCI Student ID card, which will be checked.
Questions on the exams are designed to test your understanding of basic terminology (e.g., “working memory,” “long term memory”), your grasp of important concepts (e.g., sources of memory bias), your ability to apply these concepts to practical situations (the symptoms that would be expected as working-memory ability declines with age), your knowledge of how these concepts are supported (results from the research discussed in the text or lectures), and your ability to integrate the topics covered in the course (the role of memory in thinking). Questions range from easy to difficult.
Once the exams have been graded, scores will be posted. The TA of your discussion section will have your Scantron form, which you can have back, and copies of the exam questions, which you can look at but not keep. If you wish to discuss questions that you missed, write down the question numbers and the form (A, B, C, or D) of your exam. Then visit one of the teaching assistants or Prof. Wright during office hours.
The Schedule of Lectures and Assignments lists 17 online assignments or “Zaps” to be done during the course of the quarter. Five-percent (5%) of your final grade will be based on satisfactory completion of these exercises. Zaps are due at 8 AM (i. e., just before class) on the assigned date and no earlier than two weeks prior to the due date. These limits on when Zaps can be done reflect their role as demonstrations that are designed to illustrate and complement material presented in the text or lectures. They will be most effective as illustrations if they are done near the time when they are due. Credit for each individual Zap is all or none – either you did it within the assigned time window or you did not. However, you will receive credit for the Zaps that you have done, even if you did not do them all, and you can miss two of the assigned Zaps and still receive full credit.
Zaps assignments are on the following website: http:/wwnorton.com/zaps/
To receive credit for doing a Zap you must create a login using the Zaps code that you received when you purchased the textbook with the ancillaries or that you purchased separately – codes can be purchased for $30 on the website. When you go to purchase a Zaps code you will be asked for a “shipping address”. Don’t worry; just enter an address. What matters is the email address that you enter; it should be your uci.edu email address. Norton will use this address to send you a confirmation email that includes a link to activate the Zaps site. There you will able to put in the Class ID and start the homework.
Note: Codes are good for a year. You may need it for the other quarters of this course.
For credit to be assigned to you correctly, two pieces of information should be associated with your Zaps login at the time you do a Zap.
·
Your uci.edu address. You use this as the login name that you use to access the Zaps
system. (The page you see after you log in gives you the opportunity to change
the password on your account; however, you must contact Norton, the publishers,
if you need to change the email address that you have initially entered.)
·
The Class ID. This is
( 6Q6U4Y34 )
Please be sure that you enter this code without the parentheses or any
leading or trailing spaces.
The class ID can be changed on the tab called “About Me” that you will near the top of the page after you first login. You might need to do this if you are taking two or more of the Psych 9 / PSB 11 courses in the same quarter. We will not be able to see what Zaps you have done unless the class ID is entered correctly at the time you do the Zap and your login name is your UCI Netid.
A summary of credit for the completion of ZAPS will be updated in the grade book on the EEE website on a regular basis. You can also check on the Zaps system whether you have received credit for a Zap by looking at the “My Activity” tab. (Note: The entries in this summary are the date and time, in the Eastern Standard Time zone, when you completed the Zap.)
Perhaps it should go without saying (but I will say this anyway): you will get the most out of these Zaps if you read the Introduction and Theory sections, try hard when you are running the experiment, and then try actively to relate this experience to the material presented in the text and in lectures.
ZAPS experiments rely on popup windows, cookies, and Javascript. If you encounter problems at the start, the culprit is most likely the presence of popup blockers within your Web browser. The Zaps FAQ page provides instructions on how to turn off popup blocking: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/zaps/faq.html.
During each lecture there will be questions or demonstrations that will require the use of your I-Clicker. Class participation accounts for 5% of your final grade. You will receive full credit for class participation if you simply respond to at least 75% of the questions posed during the quarter with your I-clicker and partial credit for whatever less than 75% of the clicks you have done. It does not matter whether or not a response is “correct”; for many I-Clicker questions there will not be a uniquely correct answer.
To receive credit for class participation, you must register your I-Clicker. There are three steps to registering: (1) Pull off the little plastic tab on the side of your I-clicker to activate the batteries (you might want to consider getting new batteries if you are using an I-Clicker that you used in a previous quarter). (2) Use your I-Clicker in class at least once. (You will receive credit for I-Clicker responses that you make prior to registration.) (3) Go to the registration website at http://www.iclicker.com/registration/ and supply your last name, first name, your 8-digit UCI student ID number, and the serial number on the back of your I-Clicker. Doing this correctly is your responsibility.
I-Clicker participation will be updated in the grade book on the EEE website for this course at least once a week.
Your final grade will based on
|
Average of 5 chapter tests after the lowest score is dropped (15% each) |
60% |
|
Final exam |
30% |
|
Zaps assignments |
5% |
|
Clicker participation |
5% |
No letter grades will be assigned for the chapter tests. Students, however, will be informed of relevant statistics (e.g., mean and median) and score distribution. Final letter grades for the course will be on a “curve” based on your total points at the end of the term. This curve is used for all Psych 9 and PSB 11 courses. The top 15% of the class will receive grades in the “A” range (that is, A+, A, or A-), the next 25% will receive grades in the B range, the next 45% will receive grades in the C range, the next 10% with receive grades in the D range, and the last 5% will receive F's. My one caveat to this system is that the application of this curve will only ever adjust your grade up – your curved grade will never be worse than the raw percentage.
You may earn up to (but not more than) 4 points of extra credit by doing one of the two procedures described below. Note that extra credit points are particularly useful because they are added to your grade on 1-100 scale after the grade distribution described above has been determined. Using extra credit, you may be able to raise your grade one-third of a letter grade (if your total score for the course is close enough to the cutoff for the one-third grade step) but grades will not be raised more than one-third letter grade. (For example, you could potentially raise your grade from C- to C, but not from C- to C+. You could potentially raise your grade from B+ to A-, but not from B to A-).
The two options to earn extra credit are to (a) participate in Social Science and Social Ecology experiments or (b) you can write a research-summary report. You can earn extra credit by doing one or the other of these, but they cannot be combined.
Participating in Experiments: Psychology is a scientific discipline and, as a volunteer participant in experiments, you have an opportunity to learn more about how experimental research in psychology is conducted. Your participation will also aid UC Irvine’s extensive research program in the psychological sciences. You will receive one point for each hour that you participate (that is, 1/2 point for each half hour) up to four hours. This is all managed by a system called Sona. To sign-up to participate for an experiment, go to the following website: http://hsl.ss.uci.edu/hsl_student-info and follow the instructions.
If you agree to participate in an experiment, you enter into a contract with the experimenter to be present at the time and place designated on the sign-up sheet. If you must cancel an appointment, you may do so on Sona website at least one hour prior to the experiment; in an extreme emergency, you may call the Laboratory Office, 824-5412.
There are a limited number of experiments run each quarter. Many experimenters try to do most of their work at the start of the quarter in order to have the 2nd half of the quarter to do their data analysis. Because the lab may run out of experiments before the end of the quarter, early participation is the safest way to ensure that you will not miss out on this opportunity for extra credit.
Research Report: Alternatively, if you do not wish to participate in research, you may receive up to 4 points of extra credit by completing a satisfactory paper of 3 full, double-spaced pages (or more) in which you summarize the theoretical rationale, predictions, methods, and results from a journal article (from a scholarly journal – if you have questions about whether an article is appropriate, please check with the administrative TA) cited in the Gleitman text for one of the chapters that we cover this quarter. To be acceptable, your paper should
(a) explicitly cite the page in Gleitman where the article is referenced,
(b) summarize what is being discussed in Gleitman at the point of the citation,
(c) describe how the cited article is relevant to the point being made in the text, and
(d) it should be turned in with (these may be in separate files) both a copy of the article cited and
(e) a signed statement asserting that your paper has not turned in for any other class and will not be.
Failure to follow these steps will reduce the points you receive.
Extra credit papers are due by midnight on Friday of Week 10. They should be submitted as PDF files (or, if necessary Word files) to the EEE Dropbox for this course. No late papers will be accepted.
Students who are ill for a lecture should seriously consider staying home, getting rest, and trying to avoid infecting classmates. The availability of the podcasts means that you need not miss any of the presentation. The University is requesting that students with even mild, flu-like symptoms stay home and if appropriate, seek medical attention, returning to class only after fever and other symptoms have abated for 24 hours. It is not possible to make up the points for the Clicker questions that you will miss if you do not come to lecture; however, the scoring for the Clicker points is designed to accommodate the fact that students may miss several lectures for illness or other reasons.
If you are ill for an extended period of time or if you are ill for an exam, you should inform Prof. Wright as soon as possible. Our policy is to attempt to make accommodations for students in these unfortunate situations.
There are a number of simple things that you can do to
make the class better for everyone. It is disruptive to everyone when students
arrive late or leave early. Although occasionally this may be unavoidable, you
are expected to arrange your schedule so that this is the exception. On those rare occasions when you do arrive late or know
that you must leave early, please sit near the back of the room. Conversely, if
you have arrived early, please find a seat near the front of the room and the
middle of the rows.
There is no reason to be using phones or messaging
devices during class. Please just turn them off.
Some students find it useful to use laptops to take
notes during class. That is the only reason for which they should be used.
Other activities are not only distracting to you but to those around you.
The lectures and other materials in this course are
all copyrighted by Prof. Wright (2012).
Note taking for personal use is appropriate and
encouraged; however, no one has permission to reproduce or disseminate the content
of this course for commercial purposes.