PSYC 3100 SPRING 2019

QUIZ 1 is WEDNESDAY 2/20/19

It will take the first half hour of class, after which we will have 45 minutes of lecture. Expect about 20 multiple choice questions.

The material is largely from your notes and various links on the web page which are listed below, along with the text reading.

Text readings are as listed on the syllabus (which can be downloaded here if you've misplaced it). The READINGS link cited below is more specific and useful. (EIGHTH EDITION READINGS ARE LISTED HERE, BUT NOT ON THE READINGS LINK!) The major focus is on things I say in class, but you should use the text to enrich and enlarge your understanding of anything covered in lecture. For this quiz, the third and fourth definitions of psychology (natural science definition "science of knowing and experiencing"; extensional definition "science of things that move around on their own") and their implications will not be covered, and will instead appear on the midterm exam.

Material covered as late as Monday 2/18/19 will absolutely be thoroughly covered on the quiz!

Priorities for studying in this course are: 1) things I talk about in class that are also in the reading; 2) things I talk about in class that are not in the reading (consult your notes and the web page as appropriate); 3) things I don't talk about in class but which are in the reading, in which case I will specifically draw your attention to such topics and pages.

Here is an excerpt from the READINGS link with EIGHTH EDITION readings added, covering the parts that will be on the first quiz, and incorporating the required links from the web page (plus the optional one on Phineas Gage, possibly useful for those who have the 6th edition of Hergenhahn, which omits him). Note that the third and fourth definitions of psychology will not be included, as mentioned above.

THE HISTORY AND SYSTEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY COURSE

* schools of thought in the first decades of psychology [see link on web page]

Included in the above discussion are Wundt, Titchener, functionalism, and behaviorism (associated with Watson). These will each be addressed in greater detail after the quiz so you don't need to do the textbook readings about them (listed on the syllabus and readings list) to study. But you DO need to know the descriptions in the above link and in your lecture notes, which will be sufficient for now.

PSYCHOLOGY AS A NATURAL SCIENCE: FOUR DEFINITIONS

[see link on web page]

* textbook definition "science of mind and behavior" / overview of psychology's history; (6E 623-628) (7E 585-595: more specifically 588-591 "Cybernetics", "Language and Information", "Physiological and Gestalt Influences"; skip "More Social Psychology", 592-595 "A Cognitive Revolution") (8E 574-584: more specifically 577-580 "Cybernetics", "Language and Information", "Physiological and Gestalt Influences"; skip "More Social Psychology", 582-584 "A Cognitive Revolution") on the birth of cognitive psychology; (6E 616) (7E 589) (8E 578) on Chomsky

* philosophical definition ("science of experimental epistemology"): rationalism/nativism and empiricism/associationism, including Chomsky and language development; (6E 18-23) (7E 17-22) (8E 18-21) empiricism, nativism, and rationalism [see link on web page for some brief passages scanned from Erika Hoff's text that describe the Chomskyan view of language acquisition, along with an orientation to the perspectives of empiricism and nativism. Focus on the familiar parts that come up in lecture -- though there's not much of it that doesn't come up in lecture since I did edit it to be appropriate for our class. Consider the section on "interactionism" to be about the degree to which a theory should be empiricist or rationalist, and the nature of the relevant experience.]

The "textbook definition" in the above link mentions Wundt, Watson, and Ulric Neisser. For this quiz, you should know what's listed for each, including the corresponding dates, but again, the textbook reading on Wundt, Titchener, and Watson will not be necessary.

The last two definitions listed on the syllabus will NOT be covered on the first quiz, but will be addressed afterward and will appear on the midterm exam. The definitions NOT appearing on the quiz are:

* natural science definition ("science of knowing and experiencing")

* extensional definition ("science of things that move around on their own")

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM AND PSYCHOLOGY

[see these slides]

* cortical localization of function:

Franz Joseph Gall and phrenology (6E 244-247) (7E 230-233) (8E 226-229) [see optional link on web page]

Phineas Gage (not in 6E) (7E 234) (8E 230) [see optional link on web page]

Paul Broca (6E 248-250) (7E 234-236) (8E 230-232)

Karl Lashley (6E 606-608) (7E 568-570) (8E 557-559)

* some additional pages not listed in the readings but referred to in lecture:

Jerry Fodor (6E 633) (7E 599-600) (8E 588-589) "The Return Of Faculty Psychology"

Pierre Flourens (6E 247-248) (7E 232-234) (8E 228-230)

Wilder Penfield (not in text ) [see optional link on web page]

Bell and Magendie(6E 234-235), (7E 220-221), (8E 216-217)

Fritsch and Hitzig (6E 250), (7E 236), (8E 232)

David Ferrier (6E 250), (7E 236-237), (8E 232-233)

* contemporary approaches to the mind in psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience; Parallel Distributed Processing a.k.a. Neural Networks or Connectionism (6E 635-639 on New Connectionism) (7E: pp. 601-605) (8E: pp. 590-594) and its antecedents [see link on web page]

It's possible but not likely that the following Early Psychology readings will be referred to by the end of class Monday 2/18/19, so whether and how much they are covered on Quiz 1 depends on what's covered that day:

EARLY PSYCHOLOGY

Some Precursors to Psychology

* Kant's arguments against psychology as a science 6E 195-196; 7E 184; 8E 180-181; see also note on web page

* Mueller 6E 235-236; 7E 221-223; 8E 217-218 ("Doctrine Of Specific Nerve Energies")

* Helmholtz 6E 237-242; 7E 223-227; 8E 218-223 ("Helmholtz's Stand Against Vitalism"; "Rate Of Nerve Conduction" through "Helmholtz's Contributions")

* Donders 6E 269; 7E 254-255; 8E 249-250 ("Mental Chronometry" - in the middle of the Wundt section)

I would make two recommendations about studying for all the exams in this class (and possibly in other classes):

1) First, a common experience is for students to have read the textbook, web links, and their notes, and feel quite secure that they understand everything -- but then not see that understanding reflected in their exam scores. Consider why that might be: looking at the material and having a feeling of understanding is a rather passive way to confirm your knowledge. I too can look at the text, web links, and notes, and feel like I understand them all, yet let's be honest, my understanding is probably quite a bit deeper than yours despite the similarity of the feeling. What you should aim for is not just recognition and sensibleness, but real familiarity and comfort, where you feel like you could actually explain the topic clearly to a fellow student who had a question about it, or even to someone who had no knowledge of it (e.g. a parent or roommate). Not that you literally need to deliver practice lectures to an audience, but maybe that's something to try to imagine, to see where your gaps and shortcomings might be.

2) Second, the multiple choice format often leads students to expect a kind of recognition test where terms are matched up with definition a, b, c, or d, or maybe a concept is described as being about a, b, c, or d. But multiple choice questions (mine included) can require you to think hard about comparisons or contrasts between perspectives, or ways that one idea implies or is linked to another, or applications of the topics to particular situations. For this reason, I find flashcards and the like to be of limited use, maybe good for memorizing what "PDP" stands for or what my specific definition of "rationalism" is, but flashcards tend to focus on isolated pieces of information rather than how concepts are related to one another. It makes sense to know not just a definition of rationalism, but that it's most often linked to nativism, and how that connection has appeared in Chomsky's ideas, and what the characteristics are of a psychology that is based on rationalism, and why that psychology is cognitive rather than behaviorist. These are all things that are addressed in class, so I'm not implying that you need to creatively come up with these explanations; just don't assume that a superficial memory of a term and what it means will suffice. Sometimes students ask me if they just need to know the major points of what we covered, and unfortunately the answer is, no, that's not enough: you need to know the details too.

For these two reasons I usually suggest that the way to think about my exams is to pretend you're studying for an essay exam rather than a multiple choice exam. That way you realize you don't only need to know what the concepts mean, but you also have to be able to link them together and understand why and how they're connected. And you want to know this at a level where you'd be able to produce such an explanation in an essay, because even though you don't have to actually write it, that type of preparation will allow you to make the connections that the questions ask you to make. Students have sometimes said they don't think my questions are too difficult, really -- just that they make you think through them to figure them out instead of instantly answering or not answering correctly. That's exactly my intention.