Like many of you and your students today (March, 2020) who are working from home. I am doing the same. While I am looking forward to the slew of research that is going to come out of this ABA experiment, this talk by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom may be a preview of the kind of finds we're going to see.  Bloom starts talking about his research here at about the 6:30 mark. Video Link : 2586 After watching this video, ask your students to identify the independent variable and dependent variables. How were participants randomly assigned to conditions? Why was it necessary to use random assignment and not just let participants decide if they wanted to work for home or the office? According to Bloom, what are the “three great enemies of working from home?” Bloom adds that having choice of whether to work from the office or work from home is key. During COVID-19, almost all of us in education in the US and other parts of the world—faculty, staff, and students—have no choice but to work from home. How may this impact our productivity? To expand the discussion, ask students to explore the pros and cons of teleworking and working onsite. If your students were psychological scientists, how could they go about researching the relative impact of each of those pros/cons. In other words, if students thought that “too many distractions at home” was a reason to work onsite, how could students find out how many workers would identify that as a factor and how big of a factor it was in their decision. ... View more

Originally posted on February 10, 2016. Three items from yesterday’s reading: 1. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) has just offered a nice video introduction to I/O Psychology (here). At 4-minutes, it’s well-suited to class use. 2. Not brand new—but new to me—is a wonderful 7½ minute illustrated synopsis of social-cognitive explanations of why, despite converging evidence, so many people deny human-caused climate change. The video, from biologist-writer Joe Hansen and PBS Digital Studios, is available here. For more on how psychological science can contribute to public education about climate change—and to a pertinent new U.N. Climate Panel conference—see here. 3. Does witnessing peers academically excelling inspire other students to excel? Or does it discourage them? Schools, with their love of prizes and awards, seem to assume the former. Researchers Todd Rogers and Avi Feller report (here) that exposure to exemplary peers can deflate, discourage, and demotivate other students (and increase their droppiing out from a MOOC course). ... View more

R. Eric Landrum (Boise State University) tells the story of a student who earned a BA and went out into the workforce. One day she ran into him and apologized for not using her psych degree. He asked what field she was working in. She replied, “I run my own business.” Landrum notes that we need to do a better job helping our psych majors understand that the skills and knowledge that they gain through the major will help them in a large number of career fields. Dialing it back to Intro Psych, we can help everyone who takes the Intro course see the value of psychology. Near the end of the Intro Psych course, show students these data from the June 2016 APA Monitor. People with a bachelor’s in psychology work primarily in sales, other work activities (i.e. “design, development, computer applications, production, quality management and work activities not otherwise specified”), professional services (e.g., “health care, counseling, financial services, or legal services”), and management/supervision. Other areas include teaching (11%), accounting/finance/contracts (9%), employee relations (5%), and research (3%). For an in-class or online discussion board activity, divide students into eight groups and assign each group one job category from the chart. (For larger classes, to keep group-size small, use more groups.) Ask students these questions: Identify at least one concept from each chapter we covered in this course that would be useful in this job field. For each concept chosen, briefly explain why it would be useful for those in that job field to know it. Students can write responses individually or as a group or each group could verbally report out. If time permits, you can opt to use a jigsaw classroom. If you have a class of 64 or more, create 8 groups of at least 8 students each. (Have less than 64 in a class? Use fewer groups and fewer students per group and assign each group two or more job categories.) Each group answers the questions above. Following discussion, each group member is assigned to a new group so that each new group now has at least one person who had discussed each job category. Within the new groups, group members share the concepts their former groups had identified. Ask students to look for commonalities and differences. Following discussion of these new groups, ask students to report out what they learned. For example, did the same concepts appear regardless of job category? Or were there some concepts that seem to be unique to a particular job category. Conclusion This is a nice integration activity that fits with the pillar model for Intro Psych (Gurung, et.al., 2016) and Goal 5: Professional Development from Guidelines 2.0 Gurung, R. A., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S., Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016). Strengthening introductory psychology: A new model for teaching the introductory course. American Psychologist, 71(2), 112-124. ... View more

Theresa Wadkins (University of Nebraska – Kearney) has a quick, but powerful way to demonstrate schemas in action. On the day she covers schemas, Wadkins walks into class, approaches a student, and asks, “How are you? Are you having a good day?” After the student responds, sometimes in befuddlement, she returns to the front of the room and begins her lecture. A few minutes later, she returns to the student and asks, “How is everything?” Again, the student responds, even more perplexed. And then back to the lecture. For the third and final time, she returns to the same student and asks, “Can I get you anything?” Wadkins then explains to her students that we have different schemas for what happens in a classroom and what happens in a restaurant. While being asked such questions is peculiar for a classroom, we would be put off if we weren’t asked these very same questions by a server in a restaurant. If you’d like to expand on this activity, ask students – in small groups or through an online discussion board – to identify the schema characteristics of what happens when a customer visits a sit-down restaurant and the schema characteristics of what happens when a customer visits a fast-food restaurant. Invite students to share the characteristics of each that they generated. Summarize the responses into a coherent schema for each type of restaurant. Ask students to reflect – in small groups, through an online discussion board, or as a written assignment – on what would happen if they had no schema for a sit-down restaurant when they walked into one. Or if they had no schema for a fast-food restaurant when they walked into one. Or if they walked into one type of restaurant with the schema for the other type of restaurant in mind. For added discussion or writing assignment, invite students to identify times when a schema they had did not match the situation. ... View more

The Washington Post published a wonderful article on the sense of shame that surrounds mental illness and how people are overcoming that shame and stepping out of the shadows. Ask your students to read the article and respond to the following questions in class as a small group discussion, online through a class discussion board, or as an out-of-class written assignment. 1. Those interviewed for the article expressed a fear of coming out as having mental illness. What is the stigma associated with mental illness, and why would those with mental illness fear others knowing? 2. The article identifies several ways in which people with mental illness are coming out publicly. What are those ways? If you were to come out publicly as having mental illness, which of those ways would you choose and why? 3. Visit the blog http://stigmafighters.com. Choose one blog post and answer the following. a. What is the person’s name and what they do in life (short descriptions are typically at the end of each post)? b. What type of mental illness do they have? c. Describe their milestone events, such as their first memory of symptoms, their first diagnosis. d. What’s it like for them to live with mental illness? e. What reactions did you have as you read their story? Itkowitz, C. (2016, June 1). Unashamed and unwell. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/wp/2016/06/01/unwell-and-unashamed ​[Note: Published in the paper on June 2, 2016 if you're looking for it in a library database.] ... View more

If you make candy bars and sell them through vending machines, you can use operant conditioning principles to get people to do all sort of things. In this case, Nestlé, the maker of Kit Kat bars in Brazil, put special vending machines on two different college campuses in the same Brazilian city. The machines streamed video to each other. Players stepped up to each machine and pressed play (“jogar” in Portuguese). The goal? To win a staring contest. The winner earned a Kit Kat Chunky chocolate bar. Video Link : 1628 Bonus: If you’d like to expand your coverage of schemas to talk about differences in food preferences around the world, tell your students about the phenomenon that is Kit Kat, the most popular candy, in Japan. Ask your students to guess how many flavors of Kit Kat there are in Japan. The answer: almost 300 (Goldman, 2016). Some of the flavors: grilled potato, cherry blossom, soybean, blueberry cheesecake, chocobanana, white peach, green tea, pumpkin, apple, mango, lemon, red bean paste, apple vinegar, pineapple, kiwi, cappuccino, jasmine tea (The weird and wacky…, n.d.). Want to try out some of these flavors yourself? You can order some here. Why is Kit Kat so popular in Japan? One factor is probably because its name is similar to the Japanese phrase kitto katsu – good luck (literally, surely win) (Goldman, 2016). Goldman, R. (2016, May 13). Japan has a Kit Kat for every taste, and then some. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/world/what-in-the-world/kit-kat-japan.html The weird and wacky flavors of Kit Kat in Japan. (n.d.). Retrieved May 28, 2016, from http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/worlds-weirdest-kit-kat-candy-bars/ ... View more

The Crisis Text Line is a crisis hotline that lets those in crisis text a volunteer crisis counselor. Since they launched in 2013, millions of texts have been exchanged between those asking for help and those providing it. This 10-minute TED talk by the founder Nancy Lublin provides an inspiring overview. Video Link : 1632 For students in crisis I’m adding this statement to my syllabus: Counseling Center.   Are you feeling stressed about college? Tests? Your future? A relationship? A loss? Adjusting to a new culture? An addiction, yours or someone else's? Living? Visit Highline's Counseling Center (counseling.highline.edu) in Building 6, upstairs on the north side of the building. Email: counseling@highline.edu . Phone: (206) 592-3353 If the Counseling Center is closed and you need to talk with someone now, call the King County Crisis Clinic at (206) 461-3222. If you'd rather text with someone, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741-741. For texters concerned about privacy, the volunteer counselors don’t see their phone numbers. It’s all done through an encrypted computer interface. And for those who are really concerned, they can text “loofah” (or similar spellings) to have their texts scrubbed from the system (Dupere, 2016). Is your psych club, Psi Beta chapter or Psi Chi chapter looking for a project? Print and post flyers on your campus. You can use the Crisis Text Line’s pre-made flyer. Or do a fundraiser. Crisis Text Line accepts donations. How to become a volunteer Volunteers apply, and those who are accepted undergo 34 hours of online training. Volunteers commit to doing one 4-hour shift per week for a year. Do you have students who are over 18 years old who might be interested in volunteering? Download the Crisis Text Line volunteer flyer: http://www.crisistextline.org/wp-content/uploads/CTLVolunteerFlyer.pdf. It’s not a guaranteed gig; 39% of those who apply are accepted to begin the training (Dupere, 2016). Show me the data All of those 18 million texts provide a boat-load of data. And those data are publicly available at http://crisistrends.org. Texts about depression increase throughout the day, peaking at 8pm. Texts about family issues are most common on Sundays. The state with the most LGBTQ-related texts? Alaska. The least? Vermont. The state with the most bullying-related texts? Vermont. The least? New Hampshire. Starting in Spring 2014, texts about anxiety and texts about suicidal thoughts co-occur. You can also choose a topic to see a sample text and a word cloud of the top 50 words that appear in texts related to that topic. Here’s what I got when I selected anxiety. If you’re a researcher interested in using their data, their FAQ says, “Data access is available to approved academic researchers. The application will be available here in late January 2016.” As of this writing (June 2016), I don’t see an application. If you’re interested, email them at info@crisistextline.org.    Dupere, K. (2016, May 28). This text line is helping teens talk about mental health without saying a word. Retrieved May 31, 2016, from http://mashable.com/2016/05/28/crisis-text-line/ ... View more

White light is the presence of all of the visible light waves. White noise is the presence of all of the sound waves within the range of human hearing. Because our sensory systems are optimized to detect change, noises at night are likely to jar us awake. White noise machines or smartphone apps (or fans) mask other noises. The frequencies from those other noises blend into the white noise as long as the loudness of the other noises is the same or lower than the white noise. If they blend in well enough, our brains won’t detect them, and we sleep right through the sound. (Mileage varies. Some people are more sensitive to other noises when presented inside of white noise.) Side note: Pink noise is like white noise in that all of the frequencies are there, but with pink noise, the higher frequencies have decreased loudness. LiveScience has a nice explanation of the difference. Why is it called pink noise? In light, the higher frequencies are on the blue end of the spectrum. If those higher frequencies in white light are reduced, the light would appear more pink. Some people prefer pink noise over white because white noise sounds too high-pitched. World War II (source: 99 Percent Invisible, Episode 208: Vox Ex Machina) The 1939 World’s Fair in New York debuted the first voice synthesizer, created by sound engineer Homer Dudley of Bell Labs. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US called on Dudley to solve a serious communication problem. For allied military leaders to talk with each other, they had to use shortwave radio – that anyone could listen in on. They had been using a scrambling technique that would switch the frequencies of the voices, so that high frequency sounds would transmit as low frequency and vice versa. Decoding those transmissions was as easy as it appears – for anyone listening in. Homer Dudley created a 2,000 square foot, 50-ton computer that compressed and digitized voices then masked them in white noise, on the fly. The trick? Two identical vinyl records of recorded white noise – for each conversation. At least 3,000 pairs of these records were made – each with a different white noise pattern. One set stayed in Washington, DC; the other set was sent to London. Each pair had a codename, such as wild dog. Before a call, the communication officers would decide which record to use. At the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the communication officers would open a short wave radio connection to London. At the designated time, each side would start their records. The voice from, say Truman, would be sent from his microphone, through the machine that digitized his voice, then mixed his digitized voice with the white noise from the record, and finally sent it out over the shortwave radio frequency. To anyone listening in on that radio frequency, they would hear only white noise since Truman’s voice would blend into the white noise. Across the pond in London, the signal would be intercepted, run through the machine where the white noise playing on the vinyl record would be subtracted, and Churchill would hear Truman’s digitized voice. After the call, the records were destroyed. For the next call, a new pair was used. This device “was involved in virtually every major military operation after 1942. It was even critical in the planning of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan.” Another side note: When this technology was declassified in the 1970s, researchers put it to good use. It’s digital compression that smooshes our voices enough to be sent through cell phone towers. Our MP3 audio files and streaming video files use this same compression technology. Conclusion This Memorial Day weekend, when you turn on your white noise generator, give a special nod to those fought in World War II. ... View more

The 1960s and early 1970s was a rough time in the United States – 1968 alone gave us the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Vietnam War protests were occurring on college campuses across the country – 1970 brought the Kent State University shootings. Out of this mayhem rose Bill Backer (born June 9, 1926 – died May 13, 2016). In 1971, his flight to London was forced to land in Ireland thanks to fog at his destination airport. “The next morning, Mr. Backer was stunned to see the diverse group of passengers who had been angry the night before cheerfully conversing in the coffee shop… ‘People from all over the world, forced by circumstance, were having a Coke – or a cup of coffee or tea – together.’” (Roberts, 2016). Bill Backer was the adman who brought us this commercial, introduced to a new generation in the final episode of Madmen. Video Link : 1614 In this one-minute commercial – music video, really – Backer tells us that while we all may be different in so many ways, by sharing a Coke, we are all part of a single ingroup. During such a fractious time period, what a wonderful message: Hey everyone, let’s just have a Coke and sing as one – if only just for a minute. In 2016, on the eve of a U.S. presidential election, with the country feeling as divided as ever, I would love to see someone, including an advertiser, step forward and offer a unifying message. I tell my students that what would bring about world peace is being attacked by aliens from outer space (one heck of a superordinate goal), but I much prefer the ingroupiness invoked by a serene image of all of us on a hilltop, singing together with a Coke in hand.   For a quick classroom demonstration, show the video to your students. Ask students in pairs, small groups, or as a class, to posit some possible ingroups for the people on the hilltop before they gathered there (e.g., culture, country of origin), and then identify the dominant ingroup conveyed by the commercial (e.g., Coke drinkers). Conclude the exercise by saying, “And if you’re drinking a Coke, you’re part of that ingroup.” Bonus tip: If you do buy the world a Coke, you'll probably feel happier -- "Doing good... makes us feel good" (Myers, 2014). Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2014). Psychology in everyday life (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Worth. Roberts, S. (2016, May 16). Bill Backer, who taught the world (and Don Draper) to sing, dies at 89. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/business/bill-backer-who-taught-the-world-and-don-draper-to-sing-dies-at-89.html ... View more

Whatever words researchers have chosen to use to refer to people with intellectual disability have been turned into pop culture insults, such as idiot, imbecile, and moron. In more recent decades when researchers favored the term mentally retarded, “retard” became the preferred insult. In fact I heard a student utter this in my class just a couple weeks ago. The student, I am sure, did not intend to offend an entire group of people. Instead, she was using a word she learned to be a good stand-in for asinine. Personally, I’d like to see asinine make a comeback. It’s a good word. It nicely calls out asinine behavior without denigrating a group of people. In the fall of 2012, after a presidential debate, Ann Coulter tweeted “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard” (https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/260581147493412865). On the Special Olympics website the next day John Franklin Stephens responded. “I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.” His time was well-spent; he wrote a beautiful, well-crafted response. He closed with this, “Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.” He signed it, “A friend you haven’t made yet.” More recently, a New York Times article (May 7, 2016) reflected on the use of the term intellectual disability, the favored term for the last decade. The article provides a nice historical summary of both the language used and how people with intellectual disabilities were treated. Michael Wehmeyer (director of the University of Kansas Beach Center on Disability) notes that intellectual disability is “the first term that doesn’t refer to the condition as a defective mental process – slow, weak, feeble… Intellectual disability conveys that it is not a problem within a person, but a lack of fit between that person’s capacities and the demands of the environment in which the person is functioning.” Although he personally prefers cognitive disability (and so do I, not that I really get to have an opinion on the matter). It is difficult to imagine how “intellectual disability” could be twisted into an insult. While those who think of such things work on that, the rest of us can work on helping our students understand how offensive it is to casually toss around the word retarded as an insult. This is an easy topic to tackle when covering development, intelligence, or perhaps even better, stereotyping and prejudice. We seem to have largely moved past “that’s so gay” as an insult. We can do the same with “that’s so retarded.” Signed, The niece of a woman with an intellectual disability ... View more

While we can talk about auditory hallucinations in class, it’s difficult for students to understand how much of an impact this experience can have on the people who must cope with the hallucinations. The free Hearing Voices app provides students with simulated auditory hallucinations (Android; may or may not be available for iOS – check iTunes). The app’s disclaimer statement notes that the audio simulations were “recorded by people who hear voices. The content is designed to reflect the variety of voices commonly experienced, as such some voices will be positive, providing support and encouragement, while others will be confusing or critical, perhaps repeating strange phrases or disparagements. It is vitally important that the recordings sufficiently mimic real-life and therefor the footage you will hear does contain profanities and explicit language which some people may find offensive.” The app comes with two activities and three exercises. The activities ask the listener to do a memory task and a mental math task while listening to the simulated auditory hallucinations. The exercises ask the listener to engage in conversation with a friend or engage in some other everyday activity while listening to the audio. If you would like to have students experience this in class, ask them to bring headphones (the iPhone users can plug their headphones into the Android phone of another student). One student can listen to the simulation while holding a conversation with the student next to them. And then have students switch roles so the other student can experience the simulated auditory hallucinations. Each activity and exercise comes with a “reflective prompt” that you may choose to use as a writing prompt for an out-of-class assignment. If students would like to explore further, in the Podcasts section of the app, four people speak of their experiences with auditory hallucinations. In the Explanations section, students can explore sociocultural, psychological, and biological contributors to the experience of auditory hallucinations. At the time of this writing, the app contains some glaring typos, but that doesn’t detract from the app’s value. There are several auditory hallucination simulation videos available on YouTube, such as this one. If you don’t want to ask students to download an app, students can launch on of those videos instead, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvU-Ajwbok. Video Link : 1613 [Thank you to Dana Wallace for posting on May 4, 2016 a link to this Hearing Voices app on the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook page!] ... View more

The Discovering the Scientist Within: Research Methods in Psychology author team— Gary Lewandowski​, Natalie Ciarocco​, and David Strohmetz​—would like to share our sincere thanks for your overwhelming interest in our recently published first edition. Since publication in December, we've been so delighted to see that our vision to create a text with a student-centric "learning by doing" approach has resonated with so many our of colleagues throughout North America. Thank you for your reviews, comments, support, and excitement. We hope that you will contact us with any questions! Best wishes in your courses in the upcoming year. Sincerely, Gary, Natalie and Dave What's so different about Discovering the Scientist Within? Each design chapter focuses on a single research question, which provides a strong foundation for students’ understanding of the actual design and the entire research process. Each design chapter repeats all steps of the research process, which puts into classroom practice the authors’ own experience-based conclusion that repetition is the key to solidifying research skills—skills that lead to success in the laboratory, in the workplace, and beyond. Book-specific Research in Action activities in LaunchPad Solo put students in the role of the researcher and ask them to make decisions in planning and executing a study from idea to results. The authors have provided the most comprehensive Instructor’s Resource Manual for the research methods course, containing nearly 300 sources to make teaching methods easier and more relatable to students. ... View more

Susan Nolan, presenting at the Northwest Conference on Teaching Introductory Psychology, offered some suggestions on diversifying the images in your presentations – and I’d add diversifying name used in your exam questions – to ensure that all students see people and names that are both familiar to them and not familiar to them. I teach on a diverse campus where our students or their parents have come from all over the world. I use my students’ names in exam questions. Last term, I had one student, as she handed in her exam with a big grin said, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen my name on an exam!” Nolan suggested visiting Wikipedia’s most common surnames page. Choose a name, and then, if you’re looking for a photo to use on a presentation slide, search that name in Google images. Be sure to click on “search tools” and then under “usage rights,” choose “labeled for noncommercial reuse.” Alternatively, you can use a fake name generator, like, well, FakeNameGenerator.com. Choose the gender you’d like or leave it set to random. Choose your “name set,” such as “Arabic.” Click “Generate.” When I just ran it for Arabic, it generated Hafsah Yakootah Khouri. I can use that name in an exam question, or I can do a Google Images search for an image I can use on a presentation slide. Again, b e sure to click on “search tools” and then under “usage rights,” choose “labeled for noncommercial reuse.” Do you give your students case studies of fictional people? Fake Name Generator is a terrific site for creating a fake person. Not only does it generate names, it will generate an entire fake identify, including address (that’s what the “country” field is for), phone number, birthday, MasterCard number, occupation and company, height, weight, blood type, favorite color. ... View more

On April 11, 2016 Richard Ransom, the founder of Hickory Farms, died at the age of 96 (Walsh, 2016). In a masterful use of the norm of reciprocity Hickory Farms stores offered samples before it was popular to do so. Today it’s commonplace; not so in the 1950s and 1960s. "The women didn’t bother asking customers if they wanted a taste – they just cut off bite-size pieces and held them out to people, Robert Ransom [Richard’s son] recalled. Shoppers felt obligated to take and eat what they were offered, and after tasting meats and cheeses every few steps around the store, they felt obligated to buy something" (Walsh, 2016). Does giving a free sample actually make a difference in sales? You bet. Friedman & Rahman (2011) compared four conditions delivered in a fast-food restaurant: no greeting/no gift, greeting/no gift, greeting/free yogurt, greeting/free key chain. The greeting of customers didn’t matter. What had the most impact was giving a customer a free gift, and, no, it didn’t matter what that free gift was. Those who received a free gift (yogurt or key chain) spent 46% more on their purchase than those who did not receive a free gift. If I were just starting a business like Hickory Farms, I’d give out free samples, too! Friedman, H. H., & Rahman, A. (2011). Gifts-upon-entry and appreciatory comments: Reciprocity effects in retailing. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 3(3). doi:10.5539/ijms.v3n3p161 Walsh, M. W. (2016, April 16). Richard K. Ransom, founder of Hickory Farms, dies at 96. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/business/richard-k-ransom-founder-of-hickory-farms-dies-at-96.html ... View more

After introducing students to the concept of correlations, it may help students to see a scatterplot to understand what the correlation coefficient means. Give students an example of correlation. For example, Cornell, et.al. (2013) found a correlation of .32 between the number of dropouts from 289 Virginia high schools and student perceptions of teasing and bullying. At this website, enter .32 in the “r” box and enter 200 in the “n” box (289 of course would be better, but the site limits the number of data points to 200.  Press enter. In pairs or small groups, ask students to describe the graph, and then ask a volunteer to share their description. (Students may explain that the number of dropouts is plotted along the x axis and the student perceptions of teasing and bullying are plotted along the y axis. As perceptions increase, so do number of dropouts.) Explain that Cornell, et.al. (2013) also found a correlation of .46 between the percent of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals and academic failure rate. Ask students to predict what will happen to the points on the scatterplot when you enter .46 into the “r” box. Again, ask students to explain what the scatterplot means to a partner, and then ask for a volunteer to share their description. Give one last example from Cornell, et.al. (2013). They found a correlation of -.42 between the percent of students who qualify for free and reduced price meals and the size of the high school. Ask students to predict what will happen to the points on the scatterplot when you enter -.42 into the “r” box. Again, ask students to explain what the scatterplot means to a partner, and then ask for a volunteer to share their description.    Finally, ask students to predict what will happen to the data points when you enter 1 in the “r” box. Now that students have a handle on what is happening in scatterplots, invite students (perhaps as an assignment), to visit http://guessthecorrelation.com. Here, players try to guess the correlation based on the scatterplot. You get three lives. If your guess is off by more than .1, you lose a life. If your guesses are good, you earn lives and coins. The data collected are used for research; you can read about that on the “About” page. Unfortunately, the site only gives scatterplots for positive correlations. Cornell, D., Gregory, A., Huang, F., & Fan, X. (2013). Perceived prevalence of teasing and bullying predicts high school dropout rates. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(1), 138-149. doi:10.1037/a0030416 ... View more

Winston Moseley died on March 28, 2016 at the age of 81. His obituary appeared in the New York Times on April 4 th . Moseley was the catalyst for an event that everyone who has taken Intro Psych since the mid-1960s remembers, but I’m not surprised if you don’t recognize his name. The event is known for the victim, not the killer. In 1964, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese. “His life behind bars had been relatively eventful. Mr. Moseley was condemned to die in the electric chair, but in 1967, two years after New York State abolished most capital punishments, he won an appeal that reduced his sentence to an indeterminate life term. While at Attica Correctional Facility, in 1968, he escaped while on a hospital visit to Buffalo, raped a woman and held hostages at gunpoint before being recaptured. He joined in the 1971 Attica uprising; earned a college degree [bachelor’s in sociology] in 1977; and was rejected 18 times at parole hearings, the last time in 2015.” The obituary explains that this would have been just another murder among the 635 others that year in New York City had it not been for a front-page New York Times article published two weeks later. The story’s angle was apathy – that 38 people witnessed the whole thing yet did nothing. But that’s not quite what happened. “None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.” For more, see last month's blog post on Kitty Genovese. ... View more

Patty Duke, who portrayed a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker in the play and later in the movie, died on March 29, 2016. Her obituary in The Telegraph discussed her less-than-pleasant relationship with her guardians. For example, “For 18 months before the audition for the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, the Rosses spent some time each day treating their protegée as if she were deaf and blind, banging pots and pans behind her until she no longer reacted and making her do household chores blindfold.” This is quite an example of habituation. “[S]ome time each day” for a year and a half Duke’s guardians made sudden, loud noises. Sure enough, she eventually would not respond to those sounds. If you have the time, you can do a quick classroom demonstration. Start the demonstration by asking students to write down something, like the names of five friends. As students look down to write, slam a book on a table. Ask students, “Raise your hand if you jumped.” Briefly tell your students who Helen Keller was and show a short clip from The Miracle Worker. Now ask your students to consider the challenges faced by Patty Duke playing someone who is both deaf and blind. “If you were Patty Duke, what could you do to prepare for this role so that you wouldn’t respond to sudden, loud noises?” After students share their ideas, reveal how Duke’s guardians prepared her. ... View more

I’m fortunate to have small classes (max 38), and so my students and I get to know each other very well. With in-class exams it’s been years since I’ve caught anyone cheating. Of course it’s possible that some students are cheating, and I’m just not seeing it. Without doubt some have gotten away with it. But I prefer to believe that the mutual respect that I foster over the course of an 11-week quarter reduces cheating. But I also have my students sign their names at the top of their exams. A fascinating set of experiments (Shu, et.al., 2012) found that when participants were given an opportunity to cheat while reporting their own results on a task or, in a naturalistic setting, reporting their car’s mileage at a used car dealership, they were less likely to overstate their numbers if they signed their names at the beginning of the reporting event rather than at the end or not at all. The proposed mechanism behind this is self-awareness. Being aware of ourselves – as a signature does – reminds us of what moral beings we are. The more moral we’re feeling, the less likely we are to cheat – or so the thinking goes. Does a signature at the top of an exam reduce cheating in a classroom setting? I don’t know. I didn’t have the foresight to look at average exam scores before and after I started asking for signatures, and now I don’t even remember when I started doing it. But I do know it’s a simple enough thing to implement. If you decide to add a signature line to your exams, consider testing its effectiveness. I’d love to see your results! Shu, L. L., Mazar, N., Gino, F., Ariely, D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2012). Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(38), 15197-15200. doi:10.1073/pnas.1209746109 ... View more

The coverage of epigenetics in Intro Psych textbooks appears to be slowly on the rise. And with good reason. If you're not familiar with epigenetics, this 9-minute student-friendly video is a nice introduction Video Link : 1576 For a more scholarly introduction to epigenetics, this 2016 article from Child Development will get you up to speed. In Intro Psych, your textbook may give an overview of the topic wherever it covers genetics and revisit epigenetics again during coverage of psychology disorders. Research is stacking up. Our experiences influence the turning on and off of genes that are linked to psychological disorders. For example, "Exposure to stressful or traumatic life events, especially early in life (early life stress (ELS)), is one of the strongest risk factors for a number of psychiatric disorders, ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over depression to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Over the past decade, an ever growing body of evidence indicates that exposure to stressful life events can lead to long lasting changes in a number of systems including the endocrine system, the immune system and brain structure and function" (Provencal & Binder, 2015). If a cause of psychological disorders is related to epigenetics, the effectiveness of treatments may also reside in epigenetics. Electroconvulsive therapy, for example, may alter epigenetic tags (Jong, et.al., 2014). Psychiatric drugs may also work this way (Boks, et.al., 2012). For Intro Psych, the specifics of epigenetics is probably not that important, but a broad overview and the implications of the research are certainly worth the time. References Boks, M. P., de Jong, N. M., Kas, M. J. H., Vinkers, C. H., Fernandes, C., Kahn, R. S., … Ophoff, R. A. (2012). Current status and future prospects for epigenetic psychopharmacology. Epigenetics, 7 (1), 20–28. http://doi.org/10.4161/epi.7.1.18688 Jong, J. O., Arts, B., Boks, M. P., Sienaert, P., Hove, D. L., Kenis, G., . . . Rutten, B. P. (2014). Epigenetic effects of electroconvulsive seizures. The Journal of ECT, 30(2), 152-159. doi:10.1097/yct.0000000000000141  Lester, B. M., Conradt, E. and Marsit, C. (2016), Introduction to the Special Section on Epigenetics. Child Development, 87: 29–37. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12489 Provencal, N., & Binder, E. B. (2015). The neurobiological effects of stress as contributors to psychiatric disorders: Focus on epigenetics. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 30, 31-37. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2014.08.007  ... View more

Earlier this week in my Intro Psych course, we were knee-deep in the social psych chapter when a student asked about Kitty Genovese. The standard story reported in most Intro Psych textbooks turns out to be not quite the whole story. While we know that the bystander effect exists and we know what factors increase the likelihood of the bystander effect occurring, there's much more to Genovese's murder than 38 uncaring people. I took a deep breath and gave some context to the tale that has become a part of our cultural consciousness. To expand your own background I recommend starting with the Manning, Levine, and Collins September, 2007 American Psychologist article, The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping: The parable of the 38 witnesses. For a deeper exploration of what happened that night in 1964, check out Kevin Cook's 2014 book Kitty Genovese: The murder, the bystanders, the crime that changed America​. If the social psych chapter is coming up faster than you can read, take an hour and watch his 2014 book talk at the Kansas City Public Library. Video Link : 1560 ... View more

Contributed by Mark Gluck, author of Learning and Memory. Featuring Dr. Andrew Peter Mallon, CEO and Director of Research, Calista Therapeutics, and contributed by innovative teachers. Currently, my primary interest in connection with Learning and Memory is the discovery and development of new treatments that cure the diseases of learning and memory, either by protecting or regenerating damaged CNS cells, in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, or by enhancing the capacity of the CNS to learn, in diseases like autism. Previously, I taught Learning and Memory for many years, whilst an Assistant Professor (Adj) at Brown University. In my view, the best lessons that can be taught are those that fundamentally inform students about the nature of their own psychology and how it works for and against them without their awareness. My two favorite classroom exercises explore two critical aspects of learning: conditioning and learned helplessness. In my classroom exercise on conditioning, I paired the ingestion of a very sweet, sugary substance (US) that elicits salivation (UR) with a distinctive sound (CS). I have used various sounds as the CS, including a dog-training clicker or saying ”test time” in my inimitable Scottish accent. The pairing can be performed during a normal lecture, and conditioning can quickly be established. Then, after the sugar is removed, the retention and extinction rate of the salivation response (CR) can be assessed in individuals. The association can be extinguished by pairing wasabi with the CS, but in the absence of intentional extinction, I have found that the CS–CR association can last weeks. For me, the real-life lesson from this observation is that it is equally possible to establish an association between a pleasant stimulus and a person: If you (CS) want to be liked by another person, you can pair your presence or your interaction with them with an agreeable US, such as a nice smile, eye contact, humor, friendliness, a compliment, or a bunch of flowers, chocolate, or other small gift. It is a reliable way to enhance one’s interactions with other people and can be remarkably effective. I used the standard impossible anagram experiment to induce learned helplessness in half of my class as a rapid way of demonstrating the power of that pathological psychological effect; however, I follow it up with a discussion that helps students differentiate pathological learned helplessness from the necessary realization that in some cases failure is inevitable. Learned helplessness is widely considered to be an important element of depression, and it is critical for students to understand it and to learn techniques to halt the downward cycles into learned helplessness that can stymie the treatment of depression. It is also important to distinguish between pathological learned helplessness, in which the person submits to failure in an achievable endeavor, and the reasonable recognition that some goals truly are unachievable. In the example I cite to demonstrate learned helplessness, a male student asks a young lady to the prom, is refused, asks another and is again refused, and becomes despondent and never asks another. I contrast that with the example of jumping off tall buildings while flapping one’s arms in the hope of flying, an endeavor in which one should submit to failure. The key to truly understanding learned helplessness lies in distinguishing what is really possible from what is impossible. ... View more

Written and contributed by Mark Gluck, author of Learning and Memory. Addicted to Love? Thinking about the object of his desire, Sam’s heart starts to pound, his palms get sweaty, and he feels excitement and anticipation. Denied access, he becomes irritable, has trouble sleeping, and develops an overwhelming obsession that swamps all other interests. Based on the above description, Sam might be a cocaine addict. Or he might just be passionately in love. Humans viewing pictures of their beloved show increased brain activity in areas including the dorsal striatum, the VTA/SNc, and the orbitofrontal cortex (Aron et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2010). These are some of the same brain areas activated by addictive drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine, and they are different from the brain areas activated by sexual arousal, indicating that romantic love is more than just a drive to obtain sex (Fisher, Aron, & Brown, 2005). Viewing pictures of a romantic partner can even produce pain relief, apparently by activating reward centers in the brain that overrule the simultaneous processing of pain (Younger, Aron, Parke, Chatterjee, & Mackey, 2010). If romantic love activates the same reward circuits as cocaine, can it be just as addictive? Individuals experiencing intense romantic infatuation can display behaviors reminiscent of drug seeking: pursuit of the beloved to the exclusion of other activities, obsessive and intrusive thoughts, and even impulsiveness and poor decision making—leading, for example, to crimes of passion (Frascella, Potenza, Brown, & Childress, 2010). On the other hand, just because romantic love shares some brain circuitry with cocaine and can elicit some of the same behaviors doesn’t necessarily justify calling love an “addictive substance.” Not everything that elicits reward-seeking behavior or that provokes withdrawal symptoms qualifies for that label. (You seek out water when you’re thirsty, and you experience distress if you go too long without; yet would you consider yourself “addicted” to water?) Many experts believe that the depression and grief that accompany a breakup are a normal part of life— not evidence of an addictive disorder. Nonetheless, some individuals do display excessive devotion to their beloved and experience severe withdrawal symptoms after romantic rejection, including clinical depression and (in rare cases) suicide or homicide. It is possible that, just as some individuals can try cocaine and walk away while others become pathologically addicted, so too some individuals can survive a painful breakup while others remain trapped in a state of loss. Debate continues regarding whether such individuals should be diagnosed with a pathological addiction (Reynaud, Karila, Blecha, & Benyamina, 2010). As research elucidates the brain substrates of drug addiction and suggests therapies (including medication) to reduce the cravings associated with drug withdrawal, should we consider using the same medications to help reduce cravings following romantic rejection? If you’ve ever had your heart broken by a failed romance, would you have taken advantage of such a treatment if it existed? ... View more

Written and contributed by Mark Gluck, author of Learning and Memory. It has long been assumed that sleep, beyond its role in rest and refreshment, also has a facilitating effect on learning and memory. After all, who doesn’t recognize the experience of working fruitlessly on a problem to the point of exhaustion, and then coming up with a sudden solution following a night of sleep? It is only over the last two decades that the effect of sleep on cognition has been studied in depth by the scientific community. This research has led to a growing understanding of how sleep affects learning and memory. A typical night of sleep includes cycles of alternating sleep stages, each characterized by a different profile of brain activity. In one of these stages, rapid-eye-movement (REM), or paradoxical, sleep,  the brain seems as active as when awake. This is the stage in which most dreams appear. Another stage, slow-wave sleep (SWS), or deep sleep, is characterized by highly synchronized brain-neuron activity and is the stage in which it is most difficult to wake the sleeper up. Recent research has combined sophisticated experimental designs, neuroimaging, and single-cell recordings to discover the relative impacts of the different sleep stages on various cognitive functions. It shows that SWS is mostly important for the consolidation of declarative memory, as well as for rule learning, spatial navigation, and insight. REM sleep, on the other hand, exerts its greatest effect on procedural memory. Some of the mechanisms by which sleep contributes to these functions are also becoming clear. During SWS, the hippocampus, a brain region involved in episodic and associative learning, ”replays” some of the waking experiences acquired during the previous day. The replay allows the new memories to be reorganized into a more efficient structure and also contributes to their assimilation into the general knowledge store of the individual. This reorganization is reflected as better performance the following day. Many questions are still unanswered. For example, the mechanism by which REM sleep facilitates learning and memory remains somewhat less characterized in comparison to that of SWS. However, the rapid advancements in this field hold out promise that the years to come will bring a fuller account of why the third of our lives we spend sleeping, a seemingly wasteful behavior from a learning–memory perspective,  is in fact not wasted at all. FURTHER READING Stickgold, R., & Walker, M. P. (2005). Memory consolidation and reconsolidation: What is the role of sleep? Trends in Neuroscience, 28, 408–415. Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Review Neuroscience, 11, 114–126. ... View more

Yesterday author Albert Bandura joined Michael Krasny of The Forum to discuss his latest book, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves.  In the interview, Dr. Bandura takes a look at how people rationalize committing inhumanities and why some people seem to lack moral accountability. In his theory, Dr. Bandura identifies eight methods that people use to disengage morally and still feel good about themselves.  The first, and in Dr. Bandura’s opinion likely the most powerful, is moral justification – using worthwhile ends to justify inhumane means.  As an example, Dr. Bandura points to recent atrocities committed by ISIS in the name of Allah where religious ideology “justifies” the means. But what about people who refuse to cross over the line and do not commit such acts?  Those people show moral courage; they have a sense of common humanity and also have empathy and compassion for the plight of others.  In his book, Dr. Bandura also emphasizes the power of humanization and highlights a story from WWI during which the Allied and German forces were in the trenches about to launch a campaign on Christmas Eve.  The soldiers decided to come together in a one-day truce. Exchanging rations and pictures of their families and children, the soldiers humanized themselves.  When the truce was over, they had a sense that their enemies were good people and were presented with a choice -- they chose to shoot over the trenches. To hear more about Dr. Bandura’s theory, stream or download the full interview: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201603031000 Learn more about Dr. Bandura's text, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/product/moraldisengagement-firstedition-bandura ... View more

Next week I’ll cover the social psych chapter in Intro Psych. I’ve been thinking of some quick and easy ways to get students to do some deeper thinking around the social psych concepts covered in the textbook. In all cases, I’ll use think/pair/share – ask students to take a minute to think and jot down a response, take a minute to share their response with a neighbor, and then ask for a few volunteers to share their responses with the class. If you use a classroom response system, like Socrative, ask volunteers to type in their responses. Do these as you go or at the end of class as a recap. “You see a person trip and fall down steps. If you have fallen prey to the fundamental attribution error, what would you say caused the person to trip?” “You want to borrow $20 from a friend. If you were to use the foot-in-the-door technique, what would you ask your friend first? “You want to borrow $20 from a different friend. If you were to use the door-in-the-face technique, what would you ask your friend first? “You are working on a group project. The group leader is fostering groupthink. What is the group leader saying?” “You are the leader for a group project. You want to avoid groupthink. What are you saying?” “You are at a local sporting event. The fans of the local team are exhibiting ingroup bias. What are they doing or saying?” “You are standing on a street corner with dozens of other people as you watch two cars crash into each other. You notice that you and your fellow witnesses are in the midst of experiencing the bystander effect. What are you thinking in that moment that keeps you from helping?” “You are in a car accident. A crowd has gathering on the sidewalk, but the bystander effect has them frozen. What can you do or say to increase the likelihood of someone helping?” ... View more

Check out this Op-Ed from Psychology Today by Albert Bandura, author of Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves. Dr. Bandura draws on his agentic theory to examine the mechanisms by which individuals in all walks of life commit inhumanities that violate their moral standards and still retain a positive self-regard and live in peace with themselves. Read the Op-Ed: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thought-action-efficacy/201602/how-people-commit-inhumanities Learn more about Dr. Bandura's text, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/product/moraldisengagement-firstedition-bandura ... View more

Those who write/draw comic strips are often astute observers of human behavior. That makes the funny pages a gold mine for psychology examples. (Here’s another blog post I wrote about a comic strip illustrating the spotlight effect.) Last week (February 16, 2016), Scott Adams of Dilbert fame gave us a wonderful example of the door-in-the-face technique. When a coworker’s babysitter cancels, she asks Dilbert if he likes kids. He assures her that he is not interested in watching her kids. She replies, “I was going to ask you to adopt them.” There’s the door-in-the face. Dilbert’s replies, “Absolutely not. The best I can is watch them tonight.” One of my favorites comes from Mark Tatulli’s Lio (November 14, 2009). Lio is known for having a different group of friends than most kids. Including in his group are ghouls, goblins, and, yes, even death. In this particular comic strip, Lio loudly rips open a bag of “Monsta Treats.” In the next panel we see a monster towering over Lio, soaking him with dripping saliva. Ask students, in pairs or small groups, to identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned responses, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response. Circulate around the room clarifying as needed. Bring the class back together and identify each. Next ask what generalization would look like. And then ask what would need to happen to bring about extinction. Hilary Price in her Rhymes with Orange comic (August 21, 2013) gave a nice side-by-side comparison of positive and negative reinforcement. In the first panel a middle schooler is working on homework, and an off-panel parent says “If you finish this homework, I will let you watch a show.” In the second panel an adult is typing on a computer, and the adult’s thought bubble reads “If I finish this paragraph, I will let myself pee.” Ask students, again in pairs or small groups, to identify the behaviors being reinforced, and then to identify which is positive reinforcement (first panel) and which is negative reinforcement (adult) and explain why. If you have a favorite comic strip that illustrates some psychological comment, please leave a link to it in the comments! ... View more

How cool would it be if a couple cognitive psychologists decided to write a blog for students on how to study? Megan Smith (Rhode Island College) and Yana Weinstein (University of Massachusetts Lowell) have created LearningScientists.org. Their “[m]ission is to make scientific research more accessible to students and educators in order to increase the use of evidence-based study strategies among students.” Launched on Februrary 5, 2016, their first blog post, “Communication Breakdown Between Science and Practice in Education,” nicely explains why they decided to create this blog. In short, there needs to be a more direct pipeline between cognitive science and the people who use it, such as students and teachers. Those of us who teach psychology are professional interpreters and translators of psychological science, and as such, we have a responsibility to share what we know. Kudos to Drs. Smith and Weinstein for taking psychology to the streets. More recent blog posts include information on the testing effect and its benefits, the danger of relying on intuition, how confirmation bias can steer us wrong, and tips on how to study from a textbook by applying self-testing and spacing. Since their content is directed at students, I just added this blog as a feed to my course announcements. That means that every time a new blog post goes up, it will automatically be sent out to my students as a course announcement. While my college uses the Canvas learning management system (LMS), this ability should reside in whatever LMS your institution uses. To the people who run your LMS write, “I have an RSS feed (http://www.learningscientists.org/) I want to automatically push out to my students through our LMS, say, as an announcement. How can I do that?” While I love what Smith and Weinstein are doing, I’m not expecting huge changes in my students studying behavior. We know there is a (BIG) difference between knowing what we’re supposed to do and actually doing it. (Do you get as much exercise as you know you should? Do you eat as well as you know you should?) Of course we have to know what we should be doing – thus praise for their efforts – before we can start feeling guilty about not doing what we should be doing. Stephen Chew tackled the how-to-study problem in his 6-part How to Get the Most Out of Studying video series, and I know a number of faculty, in and out of psychology, who use at least parts of his series with their students. A couple years ago I did an hour-long session at my college titled The Science of Being a Student. It was recorded, so I have my Intro Psych students watch it and answer a few questions as an assignment. Students always report getting a lot out of it. But for most students, it has no discernible impact on exam grades. Perhaps for some students, they are looking for a magic bullet where none exists. Learning is hard work, and there is no way around that. But for those students who are ready to make a change in how they study, let’s make sure they know the best evidence-based techniques. And LearningScientists.org is a great place for our students to start. ... View more

I admit it. Development is not my favorite Intro Psych chapter. That makes me extra thankful to Intro Psych textbook authors who put one of my favorite cognitive psych concepts in this chapter. Understanding schemas can help students get inside their own heads and realize that how they think the world works may not actually be how the world works. Also, and I have no evidence for this, understanding schemas may help students be more patient with others. “Oh! I can see what schema you’re working from. It’s wrong, but I can see it.” The website Not Always Right gives those working in customer service an opportunity to share some of their more frustrating or baffling interactions with customers. Not Always Learning does the same for education with both those working in education and students sharing their experiences. We have schemas for social interactions. We carry a set of assumptions for how different social interactions will go. Probably every barista has greeted a customer with “Good morning. How are you?” only to have the customer respond with “I’ll have a tall coffee” (I’m Feeling Pretty Coffee Myself Too). The customer’s schema for barista-interaction has the barista asking, “What can I get you?” (or, more  and more frequently, what Starbucks has brought us, “What can I get started for you?”), so that is the question that is answered. In a noisy coffee shop with a sleep-deprived and not-yet-caffeinated customer, the actual question, “How are you?” may not have even been heard, and if it was, not processed. The customer relies on his or her schema to drive the interaction. We have schemas for how technology works. When a customer purchased a portable gaming system, the customer assumed that the system came with its own ability to connect to the Internet (Wireless, Clueless, Hopeless, Part 24). Through the interaction with the salesperson at the video game store, it becomes clear that the customer doesn’t have an accurate e schema for how the Internet works. While we’re not privy to the customer’s Internet experience, it’s reasonable to assume that the customer has a smartphone that doesn’t require anything special to connect to the Internet. It just does it. The customer’s schema for “connecting to the Internet” may include the idea that small electronics all come with an automatic ability to access the Internet. We have schemas for something as simple as how to make copies. A library patron has something in print, perhaps pages from a book, and wants a physical copy of it (Sloppy Copy). For those of us who spent too much of our time in college and grad school in front of copiers, our schemas for how to get a physical copy of book pages includes taking the book to the copier and, well, copying it. For those who grew up in a digital age, they are very familiar with printing, but probably not so much with copying. This patron was trying to figure out how to scan the book and then print it, not recognizing that photocopying directly was a possibility. And then try explaining mimeographs. As an out-of-class assignment or an in-class small group activity, send students to these websites, and ask them to find other examples of schemas gone awry. ... View more

I was looking at how my students did on my Intro Psych exam questions this past fall. One item on split-brain jumped out at me. I have such a question on the first exam and another on the final. Both questions posit that something is briefly shown in the left visual field and another something is briefly shown in the right visual field of someone who has had split brain surgery. The answer choices ask the student to identify what the person can do, e.g., use their right hand to point at the first something, say what the other something was. Last fall, how did my students do on the split brain questions? Not so well. On the module exam, about 50% of my students got the question right. On the final exam, about 20% did. I know this is a tricky concept. Initially I was thinking I could do some sort of in-class demo to help students see the difference. I had some ideas that involved student volunteers, but then when it came time to do it in class, I thought, "There is no way this is going to work. They're going to leave being more confused." So I didn't do it. At my next department meeting, I said that I was trying to find a way to help students grasp split brain and was wondering if anyone had ideas. Rod Fowers said that he had created a worksheet [download here] that helps students think it through. He acknowledged that a 2-page worksheet for this concept may feel like overkill, but he was also trying to model to students how to break something that is complex into smaller chunks to make it more digestible. That makes sense. I sent the worksheet to my students as a 5-point extra credit opportunity (over 600 points in the course) via our course management system on Friday. The instructions were to print it out (or manipulate it digitally), follow the instructions (which includes drawing), and get it to me by the beginning of class on Monday (day of their first exam, an exam that included a split brain question). About half of my students completed the worksheet correctly. (Only one student who turned it in didn't earn credit for it.) How did they do on that first exam split brain question? Of the 26 who successfully completed the worksheet, 69% answered the question correctly. Of the 28 who didn't do the worksheet, 25% answered the question correctly. I can see that difference even without a statistical test. Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Sue, it's the students who tend to do better on tests who do the extra credit." I removed the split brain question from my students' total exam scores. Was there a difference in their adjusted exam scores? Nope. Next up is the final exam. Will I see an increase in performance on that split brain question as well? I'll let you know in a couple months. I have data at this point to include this split brain worksheet in my classes next term as a required assignment. I may even make it part of an in-class small group activity like my colleague Ruth Frickle did yesterday. Although I will probably modify the worksheet, removing the questions about how each eye is halved since that's a bit more than I really want my students to know. If you try this worksheet, I'd love to hear how it works for you! ... View more