Download Introduction to Psychology Syllabus

Psychology Syllabus
Course Title: Introduction to Psychology
Course Goal: To explore the field of psychology through discussions, analysis of text, case studies, and
term papers.
Textbook: Coon, Dennis. Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior. Australia:
Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2000.
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Course Scope and Sequence:
Students will work in groups through the text as they explore the content of psychology. They will
answer text related questions from all units of psychology and will begin to explore their own behavioral
and mental processes through the course of the year. Students will also be assessed on their ability to
adapt and follow specific processes and protocols which will be assessed through the Habits of Work
portion of their grade.
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Grading:
Marking period grades are an overall average of understandings taught throughout the duration of the
year.
Therefore, Y1 grades are equivalent to the average of M1- M4 grades.
Grades are reported using point system NOT percentages. Therefore, the Y1 grade is an accumulation of
points.
Students who receive below a 70% will have a grade override of NR. Progress reports and report cards
report Ds and Fs as NR (Not Ready).
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Unit 1: The History and Practice of Psychology
Objectives:
Survey the historical and philosophical development of psychology as a science.
Discover how the different perspectives explore and explain human behavior.
Distinguish the theories developed by famous psychologist and examine their contributions to
the field of study.
Essential Questions:
How would you classify the different methods used in the study of animal and human behavior?
How has the study of human and animal behavior evolved over time in the field of psychology?
How would you rate the trailblazers of psychological study?
Research paper # 1
Choose one of the trailblazers of psychology and research this person’s relationship to the field
of psychology. Your paper should explain how this person contributed to the field and study of
psychology, as well as how this person may have influenced other psychologist, scientists, or
other fields of study.
Day 1: The SQ3R Method and Effective Note-Taking/Cornell Notes (introduction)
Day 2: What is Psychology/Discussion (1-4)
Day 3: Psychological Research/Qualitative and Quantitative research (4-7)
Day 4: A History of Psychology (8-14)
Day 5: Psychology Today: Panel Discussion: Five Perspectives on Psychology(14-20)
Day 6: Applications, Explorations and Summary (21-26) Exercise: Conducting a Research Study
Day 7: Scientific Research and Observations (27-31)
Day 8: Understanding Correlation and Causation: Discussion: Ice cream and Crime (31-34)
Day 9: Placebos, Clinical Method, and Survey Method(37-41)
Day 10: Summary and Applications (41-45) Discussion: Research Methods in Psychology
Day 11: Exploration and unit summary (46-49)
Day 12: Review
Day 13: Unit Assessment
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Unit 2: The Brain
Objectives:
Explain the process of neural communication.
Analyze the difference between the neural and hormonal systems.
Identify the parts of the brain and the functions of each.
Essential Questions:
How do nerve cells operate and communicate?
How do we know how the brain operates?
Does the glandular system affect behavior?
Day 1: Introduction to the Brain and Neuroscience. Mini PPT lecture/reading (51-53)
Day 2: Synapses and Neurotransmitters: Mini PPT lecture/reading (53-54)
Day 3: The Nervous System: (54-60)
Day 4: The Cerebral Cortex (60-64)
Day 5: The Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex (64-68)
Day 6: The Sub cortex and the Brain in Perspective (68-71)
Day 7: The Endocrine System (71-74)
Day 8: Applications (75-77)
Day 9: Exploration and Chapter review (78-82)
Day 10: Unit Assessment
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Unit 3: Developmental Cycle
Objectives:
Describe the physical development of infants and children from conception to
puberty.
Analyze the cognitive development of infants and children.
Summarize Erikson’s stages of life.
Discover the psychological challenges of aging.
Essential Questions:
How does hereditary and environment affect development?
What influence does maturation have on early development?
Do parenting styles influence adolescent behavior?
What are Erikson’s stages of life?
Day 1: Child Development Preview and Newborns ( 85-91)
Day 2: Heredity and Environment (91-94)
Day 3: Early Environment (95-99)
Day 4: Social Development (100-103)
Day 5: Language Development (104-107)
Day 6: Cognitive Development (107-111)
Day 7: Moral Development (111-112)
Day 8: Deprivation and Application (112-116)
Day 9: Life Span Development (126-129)
Day 10: Childhood Problems and Childhood Abuse ((130-137)
Day 11: Adolescence: (137-144)
Day 12: Adulthood (145 -147)
Day 13: Aging (147-152)
Day 14: Death and Dying (152-155) and (163-165)
Day 15: Applications on Effective Parenting (156-163) Test Review
Day 16: Unit Assessment
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Unit 4: Sensation, Perception, and Consciousness
Objectives:
Discuss the differences among the senses of taste, smell, and flavor.
Understand how depth perception influences behavior.
Analyze the effect of perceptual set on everyday sensory experience.
Essential Questions:
Do sensory systems affect behavior?
How do humans perceive colors?
Are the somesthetic senses important?
What is an altered state of consciousness?
Does dream sleep differ from non-dream sleep?
Do dreams really have meaning?
Research paper # 2
Research either of the following conditions (blindness, deafness, or paralysis). Your paper should
explain the causes of these conditions and highlight past treatments, current treatment, and
future theoretical treatments.
Day 1: Sensation, Perception, General Properties, and Psychophysics. (165-168)
Day 2: Vision (169-174)
Day 3: Color Vision (174-179)
Day 4: Hearing (179-183)
Day 5: Smell and Taste (183-185)
Day 6: Somesthetic Sense and Adaptation (186-189)
Day 7: Chapter Review (189-197)
Day 8: Perception Preview and Grouping (200-206)
Day 9: Depth perception and Pictorial Cues (206-214)
Day 10: Perceptual Learning and Motives (214-222)
Day 11: Expectances and application (222-227)
Day 12: Exploration and summary (227-232)
Day 13: Consciousness and Sleep (234-240)
Day 14: Sleep Disturbance and Dreams (240-246)
Day 15: Hypnosis and Deprivation (246-250)
Day 16: Drug Altered Consciousness (251-258)
Day 17: Downers and Marijuana (258-265)
Day 18: Unit Review (266-273)
Day 19: Unit Test
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Unit 5: Conditioning, Learning, and Memory
Objectives:
Describe the fundamentals of classical conditioning.
Distinguish the various forms of reinforcement and punishment.
Apply fundamentals of operant conditioning to diverse situations.
Essential Questions:
Do psychologists define learning?
How does classical conditioning work to create learning?
What are the stages of memory?
Day 1: Conditioning and Learning Preview and Classical Conditioning, (275-281) Discussion on “Classical
Conditioning in Historical Perspective”
Day 2: Operant Conditioning (282-286) Discussion on” B.F Skinner and the Behaviorist Tradition”
Day 3: Operant Reinforcers (286-290)
Day 4: Partial Reinforcement, Stimulus Control, and Punishment (290-297)
Day 5: Cognitive Learning and Modeling (298-305)
Day 6: Applications, Explorations, and Chapter Summary (306-309)
Day 7: Memory Preview and Stages (311-312)
Day 8: Short Term- and Long Term Memory (312-318)
Day 9: Measuring Memory and Exceptional Memory (319-324)
Day 10: Forgetting (324-330) and (342-344) Discussion: Repressed Memories: How useful are they?
Day 11: Memory Formation (338-341)
Experiment: Memory Detectives
Day 12: Applications (339-341) and 345-346
Day 13: Unit Assessment
Unit 6: Cognition, Creativity and Intelligence
Objectives:
Analyze the characteristics of language and evaluate the importance of language.
Describe how fixation, confirmation bias, heuristics, overconfidence, framing, and
belief perseverance influences the ability to solve problems.
Examine how humans encode, store, and retrieve information in memory.
Essential Questions:
In what ways are images related to thinking?
What do we know about problem solving?
How accurate is intuition?
Day 1: Cognition and Creativity Preview, Thinking and Mental Imagery (344-347).
Experiment: Drawing and Describing Mental Imagery
Day 2: Concepts and Language (348-351)
Experiment: Sematic Differentials
Day 3: Problem Solving and Artificial Intelligence (355-360)
Experiment: Problem Solving
Day 4: Creative Thinking (361-366)
Experiment: The Torrance Test
Day 5: Intuitive Thought and Applications (366-371)
More Experiments
Day 6: Exploration and Chapter Summary (372-376)
Panel: How Smart are Animals
Day 7: Intelligence Preview, Defining and Testing Intelligence (387-384)
DISCUSSION: What is Intelligence and How can it be measured?
Day 8: Variations and the Mentally Gifted (384-390)
DISCUSSION: What is a Gifted Person?
Day 9: Heredity and Environment and New Approaches (309-396)
DISCUSSION: Gardner, Sternberg, and the Future of Intelligence Testing
Day 10: Applications, Explorations and Chapter Summary (396-404)
DISCUSSION: Cultural Biases in Standardized testing
Day 11: Unit Test
Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, Health, Stress, Gender, Sexuality
Objectives:
Identify ways we can motivate others.
Recognize the physiological changes that occur when people experience different
emotions.
Explain how intrinsic motivation is more beneficial than extrinsic
motivation.
Essential Questions:
What is motivation?
In what ways are pain avoidance and the sex drive unusual?
How does arousal relate to motivation?
Research paper # 3
Choose, research, and report on one of the following experiments, Milgram’s study of
obedience, Asch’s study of conformity/social pressure, Harlow’s study of Motivation/social isolation. Or
Zimbardo’s Prisoner Guard experiment.
Day 1: Motivation and Emotion Preview, Motivation, Primary Motives, Hunger (404-406)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 2: Hunger rand Primary Motives (406-414)
In class essay: Explaining eating disorders
Day 3: Stimulus Drives (415-419)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 4: Learning motives and motives in perspective (419-424)
Activity: Personal Essay
Day 5: Dissecting an emotion and physiology and emotion (425-430)
Panel: Think, Pair, Share
Day6: Expressing emotions and theories of emotion (430+-436Panel: Which of the three theories of emotion makes the most sense?
Day 7: A contemporary model and applications (436-439_)
DISCUSSION: Emotional Intelligence
Day 8: Exportation and Chapter Summary (440-444)
Panel: Types of Loves
Day 9: Health, Stress and coping preview and health psychology (518-521)
DISCUSSION: Leading a balanced life
Day 10: Stress and frustration (522-527)
Panel: How young adults can deal with stress
Day 11: Conflicts and physiological defense (527-532)
DISCUSSION: the defense mechanism
Day 12: Learned helplessness (532-534)
DISCUSSION: Young adults and learned helplessness
Day 13: Stress and Health (534-540)
DISCUSSION: Cancer and Stress
Day 14: General Adaptation Syndrome and Applications (541-548)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 15: Exploration and chapter summary (548-552)
Panel: Meditation
Day 16: Gender and sexuality preview and gender development (446-452)
Panel: Are gender differences biological or cultural?
Day 17: Androgyny and sexual behavior (452-459)
DISCUSSION: does social change create androgyny?
Day 18: Human sexual response and attitude (460-469)
Day 19: Applications, exploration and chapter summary (470-477)
Day 20: Unit test
Unit 8: Personality and Psychotherapy
Objectives:
Describe how the different perspectives such as : psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and
social-cultural, approach the study of personality.
Assess the advantages and drawbacks of each theory of personality.
Define how psychologists assess personality according to the various
perspectives.
Essential Questions:
How do psychologists use the term personality?
Are some personality traits more important than others?
How does self-monitoring affect behavior?
Day 1: Personality preview and do you have personality? (*480-483)
DISCUSSION and activity: self-concept and self esteem
Day 2: the trait approach (484+488)
Think, Pair, Share: My personality
Day 3: Psychoanalytic theory (488-492)
DISCUSSION: Freud Revisited
Day 4: Psychodynamic theories (492-+494)
DISCUSSION: Another look at Jung
Day 5: Learning Theories (494-498)
DISCUSSION: A behaviorist view of personality
Day 6: Humanistic Theories (499-502)
DISCUSSION: A Theory in decline
Day 7: Personality theories and assessment (503-507)
Activity: a comparative essay
Day 8: Projective tests, sudden murderers, and applications (508-512)
DISCUSSION: Personality testing
Day 9: Applications, exploration and chapter summary (512-516)
DISCUSSION: Shyness
Day 10: Abnormal behavior preview and what is normal? (554+556)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 11: Classifying mental disorders (557-562)
DISCUSSION: How valid is the DSM?
Day 12: Personality disorders and sexual deviance (562-564)
DISCUSSION: Date rape
Day 13: Anxiety based disorders (564-569)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 14: Four Pathways to anxiety and applications (596-571)
Panel: Which view of anxiety is most valid?
Day 15: Major mental disorder preview, psychosis and delusional disorder (572-575)
DISCUSSION: Psychosis and its treatment
Day 16: Schizophrenia (571-582)
DISCUSSION: Will Schizophrenia ever disappear?
Day 17: Mood disorders (582-584)
DISCUSSION: Mood disorder or typical ups and downs?
Day 18: Treatment- medical approaches (584-587)
DISCUSSION: Prozac and other wonder drugs
Day 19: Applications (587-590)
Panel: Suicide prevention
Day 20: Explorations and chapter summary (591-595)
Panel: Does mental illness really exist?
Day 21: Therapies preview and psychotherapy and its origins (597-601)
Panel: Who needs therapy?
Day 22: Psychoanalysis and humanistic therapy (601-605)
DISCUSSION: Combining two disparate approaches
Day 23: Behavior therapy, aversion therapy and desensitization (605-609)
DISCUSSION: When is behavior therapy best?
Day 24: Operant principals, extinction and token economies (610-613)
Activity: Think, Pair, Share
Day 25: Cognitive therapy and group therapy (613-617)
Panel: Evaluating two newer approaches
Day 26: Psychotherapy at a distance and an overview (617-620)
Panel: Is radio therapy helpful?
Day 27: Applications (620-628)
DISCUSSION: Finding a therapist
Day 28: Exploration and chapter summary (628-9632)
Panel: Culturally sensitive therapy plus review
Day 29: Unit test
Chapter 9: Statistic and Social Psychology
Objectives:
Describe industrial-organizational psychology, personal psychology, and theories of
management.
Assess the impact of stressful environments on society
Define how psychology affects jury selection and behavior.
Essential Questions:
How is psychology applied in business and industry?
What have psychologist learned about the effects of our physical and social environment?
What does psychology reveal about juries and court verdicts?
Day 1: Statistic from head to tails and descriptive statistics (A-1 to A-5)
Activity: Calculating mean, mode, median
Day 2: The normal curve inferential statistics and correlation (A-5 to A-10)
DISCUSSION: Rising to a real challenge
Day 3: Social behavior preview, social context and personal space (634-638)
Experiment: personal and social space
Day 4: Social perception and affiliation (638-642)
Experiment: Attribution
Day 5: Interpersonal attraction (642-648)
DISCUSSION: the roots of attractiveness and mate selection
Day 6: Social influence (648-650)
DISCUSSION and experiment: the Asch Experiment
Day 7: Social power, obedience and compliance (651-655)
DISCUSSION: The Miligram Experiment
Day 8: Applications, explorations and chapter summary (658-663)
DISCUSSION: The proper level of assertiveness
Day 9: Attitudes change and forced attitude change (666-668)
DISCUSSION: Cognitive dissonance theory
Day 10: Attitude change and forced attitude change (668-673)
DISCUSSION: Cognitive Dissonance theory
Day 11: Prejudice and intergroup conflict (674-680)
DISCUSSION: Adorno’s Research and Its implications for police screening
Day 12: Aggression (680-685)
Panel: Controlling violence on Televisions
Day 13: Pro-social behavior and application (685-690)
Panel: Promoting pro-social behavior
Day 14: Exploration and chapter summary (691-694)
DISCUSSION: the sociobiological perspective
Day 15: Unit Test
Final Review
Day 1: Applied Psychology Preview and IOP (A-2 to A-8)
DISCUSSION: Using Psychology as a manager
Day 2: Environmental Psychology (A-9 to A-16)
Panel: Improving our quality of life
Day 3: Educational Psychology, Psychology Law (A-17 to A-20)
DISCUSSION: Jury Selection and the OJ Simpson Case
Day 4: Sports Psychology and Applications (A-20 to A-29)
DISCUSSION: Improving Athletic Performances
Day 5: Explorations and Chapter Summary (729-733)
DISCUSSION: Wrapping it up