Psychology 10: Introduction to Psychology
Spring Semester, 2006

Office hours : Tuesday at 11:00 am, Thursday at 2 pm, or by appointment.

This course is the introductory survey course for psychology, investigating the major concepts, theories and trends related to the study of thought and behavior. Our emphasis will be on a research-based approach to understanding the questions we encounter as we explore the biological, cultural and social origins of psychological functioning. The class is lecture-based, but students will also learn about the subject matter through classroom demonstrations, laboratory exercises and an original research project. A more detailed description of the exercise and project will be distributed separately.

Course Policies

• Attendance is expected, but if you do happen to miss a class session you should get the notes from one of your fellow students as they will not be available from me.
• In order to experience all aspects of the research process, students also will be required to participate as a subject in three hours of psychology experiments. Instructions and sign-up sheets for subject participation will be posted. Failure to participate will result in the lowering of the overall course grade, but additional participation will add credit to exam scores.
• No make-up exams will be given. Students missing an exam for a valid and verified medical reason will be able to negotiate an alternative assessment procedure.
• Written assignments for this course should generally follow the guidelines published by the American Psychological Association. Publication manuals are available at the bookstore, and an overview of the guidelines is available at PsychWeb ( http://www.psywww.com).

 Course Grading

The final grade in this course will be a weighted sum of the scores received on the exams, laboratory write-up, group presentation project, and class participation. The contributions are as follows:

The exams will be a mixture of objective (i.e., multiple choice) and essay questions. Each will cover approximately one-fourth of the lecture and reading material, and the fourth exam given during finals week is not cumulative. The laboratory write-up is an individual assignment and will be described more fully in a separate handout. The final research project due at the end of class can be either a group or individual project. Results from this research will be presented in a poster format at the end of the semester. The due dates for these assignments are noted in the schedule that follows.