Notices and Late-Breaking News

• Fri Jan 5: Over the past 2 days, the TAs and my lab manager went over all of the experimental/article summaries. There were a number that were missing and so I have just submitted a number of grade changes. I will also post the updated list of credits and final grades by Friday early afternoon. So sorry for the errors, but they are now being corrected and the proper grades will be in place.

• Mon Jan 1: Notes about the final exam and marks:
  • The spreadsheet for the entire course will be posted by Tuesday, Jan 2, at noon. Location: PAS 3rd floor, around the corner from the elevators (this is the area where you waited for experiments on the 3rd floor).

  • If there are any errors on this spreadsheet, let us know (with appropriate documentation). I would then submit a change-of-grade form to the Registrar. Please note: Although the "deadline" for the submission of the marks is Jan 3, that is a deadline designed to get faculty and other instructors to submit their grades. It does NOT mean that grades can't be changed!! If there is an error, I will change the grade to rectify the error. And this will happen whether or not it is before or after Jan 3.

  • As indicated in the Course Outline, I do NOT allow special extra credit for students who want to raise their marks. This is because I have already allowed several opportunities for students to raise their marks: (1) the non-linear transformation that elevated every student's grade for MT1; (2) bonus questions for all of the midterms; (3) up to +4% possible for preparing experimental summaries or article summaries; (4) second chance MT1; (5) second chance MT2. With all of these possibilities--I cannot now grant additional possibilities for extra credit. It would not be fair for me to do so for some students and not for others.

• Sat Dec 16, 1:00 pm:
  • Tonight is the final exam. Make sure that you know what room to go to. (Check this website below). Good luck to everybody!

  • There are some review questions from the material on errors and biases in reasoning that are not covered in those lecture notes on errors and biases and so won't be covered on the final (the required MT3 portion): Questions 274-276.

• Tues Dec 12, 9:45 pm: The mp3 files for the answers to the Review questions are here:
  • Tape 1 (7.3 MB)
  • Tape 2 (7.0 MB)
  • Tape 3 (7.3 MB)
  • Tape 4 (5.2 MB)
  • Tape 5 (8.2 MB)
  • Tape 6 (7.5 MB)
  • Tape 7 (6.7 MB)
  • Tape 8 (9.7 MB)

  Sorry--there seems to be some buzzing in the background!!

• Mon Dec 11: For those who missed the two videos on psychotherapy (these were shown on Thursday, Nov 30):
  1. They are available for viewing at the AudioVisual Centre, located in Engineering 2: Room 1309. Cheryl Petrie and her friendly staff have one copy of each of the videos.
  2. They are available for viewing at the following times:
     • Mon Dec 11, 1:00-4:30 pm
     • Tues Dec 12, 8:30-10:30 am and 2:00-4:30 pm
     • Wed Dec 13, 8:30-12:00 and 1:00-4:30
     • Thurs Dec 14, 8:30-12:00 and 1:00-4:30
     • Fri Dec 15, 8:30-12:00 and 1:00-4:30
  3. Please note that there is only one copy, but there is a screening room that will accommodate 5-6 students.
  4. Please note that the office will NOT be open at the 12-1 lunch hour, so even if you are in the middle of a tape at 12:00, you'll have to come back (you can imagine the security problem with leaving the office open with no staff present). So plan ahead so that the total time of the films (95 minutes) will not intrude into the lunch hour or 4:30 pm.
  5. It is likely that multiple students will want to view the videos, so if you arrive and a film is being played, join in. Your best bet would be to get there at 8:30 am and start the films then. Or at 1:00.
  6. If I ask any questions about the films, they will be at the general level--from the questions I provided on the Handout on Films on Psychotherapy.

• Sun Dec 3: Greetings from Bangkok! I have final details on the location of the final exam. Unfortunately, we will have to change the location of the final exam. It will still be held on Saturday, December 16, 7:30-10:00 pm, but it will NOT be in the PAC. Instead, we will be in 6 rooms. Here is the assignment of rooms by the first letter of your last name:
  • Last name begins with A-D: Go to Davis Centre (DC) 1350
  • Last name begins with E-Le: Go to Davis Centre (DC) 1351
  • Last name begins with Li-O: Go to Math & Computing (MC) 4020
  • Last name begins with P-Sh: Go to Math & Computing (MC) 4021
  • Last name begins with Si-T: Go to Math & Computing (MC) 4059
  • Last name begins with U-Z: Go to Math & Computing (MC) 4061

  I'm very sorry about this change. The Registrar moved my section out of the PAC for the first time in about 15 years.

• Tues Nov 28: The Final Exam Home Page is up and running. It contains news, the review questions for the MT3/Final, the short answer questions from last year's final/MT3. The answers will be available on Tuesday, Dec 12.

• Tues Nov 28: Today was the LAST lecture, BUT you still need to come on Thursday, Nov 30 for two films on psychotherapy. You received a handout on the two therapy films . Please arrive no later than 8:20 am because the two films together last about 85 minutes or so. (Sorry about that!). You WILL be responsible for the content of the films (at the level of the questions that are in the handout).

• Tues Nov 28: Because the last lecture was cancelled (Tuesday, Dec 5), I have instead provided my lecture on errors and biases in reasoning--this material will be part of the material for MT3/final. Here is the lecture outline and here are the lecture notes on errors and biases.

• Tues Nov 28: Midterm #2 Notes:
  1. The overall average was 63.3%, compared to 63.5% from last year's MT2.
  2. If you have questions about the marking, please contact the grader/TA who marked the relevant question:
     • Questions 1-4: Tara Elton Marshall teelton@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
     • Questions 5-11: Sook Ning Chua snchua@artsmail.uwaterloo.ca. Please note that for this week, Sook has changed her office hours from Friday, 11-12 to Thursday, 11-12.
     • Multiple Choice: Ada Law akwlaw@watarts.uwaterloo.ca

  3. There was a change made on the number of points for Question 5 of the short answer section. The original number of points possible was 6. But there were 9 separate answers required. Having each worth 2/3 point would be very awkward. So we made each worth 1/2 point instead, so that the total number of points possible went from 6 to 4.5. That means that the total number of points possible for the short answer section went from 35 to 33.5, and thus the total number of points possible for the entire midterm went from 70 to 68.5. My apologies for this change.

• Mon, Nov 27: Brief notes about the final exam (more will be coming; this is just an outline):
  1. The Final Exam will be more like an Midterm #3 rather than a fully comprehensive final

  2. The MT3 will consist of: (a) multiple choice questions from Chapters 14, 16, 17, and 18 inclusive (the remaining 4 chapters in the textbook), (b) short answer questions from my lectures since MT2 AND from my lectures at the beginning of the course on research methods (starting with determinism/empiricism, through correlational/survey methods, sampling, law of large numbers, Literary Digest, experimental methods, Bandura bobo doll study, Liebert and Baron, external and internal validity, etc.) because research methods are such a foundational part of this course.

  3. There will be two OPTIONAL parts of the "final exam": second chance MT1 and second chance MT2, each of which will consist of short answer questions from content covered by the original MT1 and MT2. You will be able to see these questions and make a decision whether you want to go for answering each or both of these. If you do, your % on this second chance MT will be AVERAGED with your original MT1 (or MT2) % (that would be the transformed MT1%). That will happen even if you do WORSE than the original. This is fair: you will have full access to the questions when you make this decision. This will be described in the Final Exam Page and in the review questions that will be distributed in class on Tuesday, Nov 28.
  4. Note about averaging: the second chance MTs will be short answer questions ONLY (from my lecture material for that particular MT); there will be NO multiple choice questions from the book. Yet, if you decide to count the second chance MT, I will average your second chance MT % with the ENTIRE MT % (for MT1: the T% for the short answer AND the multiple choice together; same for MT2).

• Mon Nov 27: Points about the experimental summaries:
  1. There is a maximum of 8 credits (4 required + 4 extra credit)
  2. No--you do NOT have to get the experimenter's signature; SONA allows us the possibility of checking participation by computer
  3. The "maximum" listed by SONA is "8.5" because I needed to allow the possibility that a student who was at 7.5 could actually sign up for a 1.0 credit study. But PLEASE NOTE: the maximum credits still remains at 8.0. The 8.5 was just necessary to allow for this rare situation.
  4. To allow for the possibility that some studies are finishing after the last lecture day, I am extending the deadline for submission of all experimental summaries and article reviews to Noon, Monday, December 11 in the mailboxes of one of the TAs (preferably Ada's mailbox because she is the administrative TA for the course). They are located on the 3rd floor of PAS. Please make a photocopy/disk copy of anything you turn in.

• Tues Nov 14: Here are all six mp3 files of the answers to the review questions (sorry for the delay--I've had some technical problems, and the transfer rates have been very low tonight):
  • Tape 1 (12:19--10.3mb)
  • Tape 2 (13:58--11.1mb)
  • Tape 3 (14:57--11.9mb)
  • Tape 4 (10:35--8.4mb)
  • Tape 5 (10:59--8.8mb)
  • Tape 6 (8:29--6.8mb)

• Tues Nov 14: The Midterm #2 Home Page is now up and running. It contains:
  • The Review Questions for Midterm #2, including the FINAL list of questions omitted for consideration on this Midterm #2. These OMITTED questions (the ones you do NOT have to know for the midterm) are: 131, 132, 133, 160, 161, 175, 177, 178, 190, 191, and 208 and all questions after 208.

  • The Short Answer Questions from Midterm #2, Fall 2005 and the Answers to those Short Answer Questions from last year's Midterm #2

  I will be posting the mp3 files containing the answers to the review questions later tonight.

  
  The Psych 101 HotLine will be up and running on Wed Nov 15, 9:30-10:30 pm. The phone number is 519-886-4732.

• Sat Nov 4: As I mentioned during our lecture on Thursday, the lecture on Tuesday, Nov 7 is CANCELLED. I'm in Boston for a meeting and a conference. However, I did distribute a handout/lecture on Hypnosis. That will be required material for the midterm #2, just as a lecture would be.

• Sat Nov 4: Further clarifications on the credit requirements (and extra credit) for the course:
  1. There is NOW a maximum of 8 credits possible, which means a maximum of 4.0 credits extra credit (and the 4.0 credits required).
  2. The reason why SONA says that there is a maximum of "8.5 credits" is to cover the situation in which a student has 7.5 credits and there is no 0.5 credit study. That student could do a 1.0 credit study to make up the final 0.5 creditfor the maximum of 8.0. If SONA didn't allow 8.5 credits, then that student would be permanently stuck at 7.5. Thus, we are allowing SONA to say 8.5, but only 8.0 credits will count. Hope this makes sense--we just needed to "trick" the system to allow this situation.
  3. Final policy on the on-line credits: maximum of 4.0 on-line credits (including the mass testing and validation questionnaire, if you completed that before it was taken off-line).
  4. I am aware that there are a few studies whose final session is either very close to the deadline for submitting the summaries or after that time. Please be assured that you can continue to participate in those studies because you can hand in those summaries after the deadline. That way, you can fulfill the requirements of the study and the experimenter won't have lots of drop-outs. So--no need to ask the experimenter for information about the hypotheses of the study. I will say more about the final deadlines for the summaries after I return to Waterloo next week.

• Thurs Nov 2: We just handed back the MT1 and already it's time to prepare for Midterm 2, which will be held 8:30 to 9:50 (our regular class time) on Thursday, Nov 16 (two weeks away!). One important clarification/correction about the chapters in the textbook that will be covered on MT2. Here they are: Chapters, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15 (14 will be saved for the final). There will be 5 multiple choice questions from each of the 7 chapters, for a total of 35 points. As with MT1, short answer questions will be taken from my lecture material (and including the handout on infant perception and the upcoming handout on hypnosis).

• Thurs Nov 2: Update on the experimental credits:
  • You now have the possibility of earning up to +4% extra credit (up from the original maximum of 3% extra credit). Same rules apply--can be from an experimental write-up or an article summary. I checked with the regadmin people and the Validation Questionnaire is no longer available. Sorry!
  • You do NOT have to get your experimenter's signature. SONA keeps track.
  • Please get your experimental write-ups to Ada or another of the TAs AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. It would be good for the TAs to be able to begin the process of tabulating over 2,000 experimental write-ups as soon as possible so that there is less to do at the end of the term, when they are busy grading the final.
  • If an experimenter fails to show up, please submit just a single sheet of paper with your name, student number, etc. And also list the date and time of the experiment. What happened? And the number of credits for that study. You will get credit without a write-up

• Wed Oct 18: (1) I have fixed the format problem on the the pdf version of the answers to the review questions. Thanks to Ahmed for alerting me to this; (2) the Psych 101 HotLine will be up and running tonight--9:30 to 10:30 pm. GOOD LUCK ON THE MIDTERM!!

• Tues Oct 17: (1) The last question that will be covered for Midterm 1 is Question 115 (even though I talked about material beyond Q115 in today's lecture); (2) I made a mistake on the answers to #12: It is now corrected on both the website and on the pdf version of the answers; Thanks, Sukhraaj, for pointing this out to me! (3) the Psych 101 HotLine will be up and running to answer any questions on the midterm. The Psych 101 HotLine will be available Wed Oct 18, 9:30-10:30 pm. Please don't call outside those times.

• Mon Oct 16: The answers to both the Review Questions and the Fall 2005 short answer questions are now posted. Go to the Midterm 1 Home Page to find them.

• Mon Oct 16: Sorry, but I have decided that I WILL post the answers to the review questions tonight (that is, I am cancelling my last notice of October 15). We won't have hard copies of the answers at tomorrow's lecture, so I think I should give you the answers tonight. So I'll post by 10:15 pm tonight. So sorry for the confusion and the back-and-forth!

• Sun Oct 15: During Thursday's lecture I mentioned that I would post the answers to the review questions on Monday at about 10 pm. Instead, they will be posted on Tuesday by noon. The reason is that I will know then exactly what material will be covered on the midterm and will then indicate the last question that will be covered on the midterm. So sorry about the correction, but this is consistent with the notice below (Oct 12)!

• Thurs Oct 12: The Midterm 1 Home Page is now up and running. It has the Review Questions, Short Answer Questions from last year's Midterm #1. On next Tuesday, Oct 17, I will post the answers to all of those Review questions and to the short answer questions from last year's Midterm #1. But NOT yet...my advice is to work on answering the questions yourself FIRST--before seeing the answers.

• Tues Sep 28: Here are some clarifications about the experimental credits:
  1. The SONA system refers to a maximum of 7 credits. That consists of 4% required and up to 3% extra credit.
  2. The Mass Testing Questionnaire (which you MUST complete by Wed, Oct 4 to get credit for it) is the ONLY credit for which you do NOT have to write a summary.
  3. You must write an experimental summary to get credit for an experiment. This includes on-line studies.
  4. If the study is listed as 1.0 credits, then write a 1-2 page summary, per the example in the course outline. If it is a 0.5 credit study, then write a summary that is about half that length: 0.5-1 page summary. If it is a 1.5 credit study, then still write a 1-2 page summary.
  5. You will get credit for whatever you turn in. If you have 3.5 credits at the end of the term, you will get credit for 3.5%. If you have 4.0 credits, you will get credit for 4.0%. In other words, we won't withhold any fractional credits just because they are fractional.
  6. If the study is a multi-visit study, you only need to write one summary of 1-2 pages. But indicate in your summary that you are getting 2.0 or 3.0 credits (whatever the study is; and we'll check to verify).
  7. Don't worry about getting an experimenter's signature from on-line studies. If you just tell us the study number and time/date of participation we'll have what we need to verify.

• Tues Sep 28: The procedure for recruitment and participation in psychology studies has just changed this term. Instead of experimenters calling students on the phone, students will be able to check for, and sign up for, ongoing studies on-line. Shannon has prepared this description of the new procedure:

  The Research Experiences Group (REG) has now moved to a new online system (SONA), where students can view and sign up for experiments without waiting to be contacted by researchers. To get started, visit the REG website:

  http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~regadmin/index.html

  From here you can log onto SONA using your UW user id and student number. Once logged in, follow the instructions to set up your account. You will then see a page that lists a number of options, including "Study sign-up".

  To sign up for a study: navigate to the "study sign-up" page where you will see a list of all the experiments that you are eligible to participate in (Note: this is the same page where the mass testing questionnaire is found). From here you can view study descriptions and available time slots. You must sign up 24 hours in advance, and you can cancel at any time.

  For a more complete description of SONA, available options, and a statement on ethics, please see the REG website (link above), which has comprehensive instructions on how to use SONA and a detailed FAQ.

Organizational Matters

• Course Outline for Fall 2006 NOTE: this link is not up yet because of some minor changes that will be completed by late afternoon, Sept 28

• Conversion Guide from Modules to Chapters in the Myers Textbook, 8th Edition

Lecture Outlines and Materials Presented in Class

• Lecture Outline 1: Introduction to Psychology
  • Psychology Pre-Test: A nice demonstration of how our intuitions about psychology are not very good.
  • Levels of Analysis Overhead: How different disciplines might explain the failure of bystanders to help Kitty Genovese.

• Lecture Outline 2: Assumptions and Methods of Psychology; Correlational Research
  • Relationship Between Sample Size and Sampling Error: Handout/overhead that provides details on how larger sample sizes lead to smaller sampling errors. CAUTION: this only applies to random samples. With nonrandom samples, the nice relationship does not hold at all!

• Lecture Outline 3: Example of Psychological Research: Does Television Violence Cause Aggressive Behavior?
  • Flowchart of two laboratory experiments: (1) Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) Bobo doll study; (2) Liebert and Baron (1972)

  • Review of research on TV violence and behavior from Cook et al. (1983)

• Lecture Outline 4: Biological Bases of Behavior
  • Handout on some important neurotransmitters.

• Lecture Outline 5: Topics in Developmental Psychology
  • Notes from developmental psychology lectures PLEASE NOTE: This handout is MORE COMPLETE than the version I handed out in class (it has the brain development material; the handout version only had the infant perception material--so THIS is the one to use)

• Lecture Outline 6: Subliminal Perception: Claims and Reality

• Lecture Outline 7: Sleep and Dreams

• Lecture Outline 8: Hypnosis
  • Lecture Notes on Hypnosis Note: I will NOT be giving an in-class lecture on hypnosis, but you WILL be responsible for this material on the midterm.

• Lecture Outline 9: Learning

• Lecture Outline 10: Memory

• Handout on the two psychotherapy films, being shown in class on Thurs. Nov 30 (starting at 8:20 a.m.--please arrive no later than 8:20 at the Humanities Theatre; sorry!)

• Lecture Outline 11: Errors and Biases in Reasoning: I didn't give an in-class lecture on this, but you will be responsible for the material in this lecture on errors and biases in reasoning.

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