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Intelligence, IQ, Theorists and Problems

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Research Methods for Year 11 Psychology

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VCE Psychology 2015 – Unit 2

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Visual perception – individual, changeable and potentially illusory

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February 19, 2013

2:29 am

Last year’s students – their visual stimuli for the first outcome

I’m a big girl, sure, but in reality I’m not bigger than my husband, who is cowering over in the corner… This Ames Room in the north of England made me look like a giant, while he suddenly transmogrified, at least in the eyes of a perceiver, into a midget.

Visual perception is a paradox.

On the one hand, we have remarkably stable perceptions despite the rapid and bizarre changes in our retinal image.

On the other hand, our perceptions can be flawed. Sometimes the rules that normally allow us to view the world quite accurately lead us to make perceptual errors. For instance, we assume that the Ames Room is square and regular in shape and this leads us to perceive the two people at opposite corners as a giant and a midget. We know the perception is wrong. But the illusion is unavoidable. You can watch Phillip Zimbardo’s video explanation of this illusion at this link.

To find out more about visual perception, try these links and pages on this blog:

The wonderful human eye

A simple test of your blind spot (recommended by Dewansh)

Introduction to visual perception

The Müller-Lyer Illusion

A brief introduction to visual illusions and other perceptual phenomena

We hope you enjoy this topic and occasionally catch yourselves in the act of perceiving.

Kind regards,

Ms Green and Ms Bottrell

Revision Handouts for Unit 2 Exam, 2012

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November 14, 2012

10:12 pm

group with hearts — Thanks for a very good year, Year 11 students. We wish you the very best for your exams and next year.

Dear Year 11 students,

These three documents should help you to prepare for the exam. You could use a kind of traffic light method to determine your priorities for revision. A green dot beside a topic means you feel totally confident about it, a yellow one means you’re not so sure, and a red one, in the memorable phrase used by Ms Simkin, means “freak out”!

Then become your own examiner. As you tackle the more difficult content for the exam, try to dream up all kinds of nasty questions. What are the questions that you, as a vicious and punitive examiner, a kind of exam-writing superego, would ask?

Kind regards,

Ms Green

Simple questions and answers on the content of the course: Revision Quiz for Psychology Unit 2, 2012
Badly designed studies with buzz words and ideas for fixing them: Psych Fixer with Answers
Dot points for revision: Exam Revision Unit 2 2012

Measuring kindness

September 9, 2012

7:31 am

Dear Year 11 students,

As you have no doubt realised after a year or more of study, psychologists like to assign numbers to seemingly immeasurable qualities, just to show that every human behaviour can be studied in some way. It seems that even kindness can be quantified.

Kindness may not seem a very scientific concept, but if you call it prosocial behaviour instead, generate precise definitions of what constitutes it and set up experiments to discover when people show it and when they don’t, you can begin to get a handle on this nebulous idea.

Prosocial behaviour means helping another person or, in a broader sense, acting in a way that benefits society as a whole. It encompasses activities such as helping an old person across a road, donating money to charity, giving aid when someone is injured or even donating a kidney to a person with kidney disease. In other words, prosocial behaviour is a phrase for the act of being kind to the other people who inhabit the world.

Not surprisingly, research psychologists have come up with some entertaining and occasionally alarming ways of studying prosocial behaviour. For instance, in the footage below, which is completely silent but strangely compelling, you can observe whether a person, when left alone, decides to report a fire. You can then watch how a person in a group reacts to exactly the same stimulus: that is, smoke pouring into the room. Whether the person is alone or not affects the reaction, as you will see. The possible reasons for the different response are introduced in the slideshow beneath the footage.

Having observed this relatively old study, you might like to attempt the true/false quiz in the slideshow below, then watch a recent study about rats, one of my favourite animals. As you will see, the rats in this study showed that humans have no monopoly on kindness. Of course, the researchers did not call it that. Their name for it was “empathically motivated helping behaviour”.

Kind regards,

Ms Green

Prosocial Behaviour

Being obedient…

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August 12, 2012

5:23 am

Dear Year 11 Psychology students,

Even though I don’t want you to start swinging from the rafters during my classes, I do want you to appreciate the dangers as well as the advantages of obedience. That’s why I’m publishing this presentation on Milgram’s experiment. I find his study chilling, both because of its results and because he dreamed it up in the first place. But the message of the experiment, however suspect its ethics, is one that should be made clear to every soldier, every teacher, every person in authority, every person whose deference to an authority figure, a dictator or a maniac could lead to human suffering. In short, to every person on earth.

The experiment included a fake generator

Milgram’s study arose partially from the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials, where the Nazi war criminals frequently said that they had only been following orders in the death camps. They did not say, “I did the wrong thing,” but instead, “I did what I was told”.

I do not believe that everyone in the world is capable of the kinds of actions that the Nazis carried out. There were many other historical factors at work in the development of Hitler’s dictatorship and the implementation of the Nazis’ genocidal policies. But all the same, Milgram examined that suspect, horrifying defence, “I did what I was told”, and discovered that ordinary Americans – and people of other nationalities – were often more prepared than he would have thought to be senselessly cruel to innocent strangers.

A source of hope and consolation, perhaps, is that Milgram found one factor in particular that reduced this numbing willingness to obey the authority figure. Read the presentation below to find out what this factor was.

Of course, you need not obey.

Kind regards,

Ms Green

Social Influence Milgram

Afterword:
At this link is a short video and a transcript of an interview with several Australians who were involved in an experiment similar to Milgram’s in the 1970s at La Trobe University. The long-term effects on the participants are explored in a compassionate way. Their mental suffering, even decades afterwards, highlights the cruelty of the study and the ethical principles it breached.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3489852.htm

Year 12 PP Slides

by felicitysj

March 21, 2012

6:54 am

2 Comments on Year 12 Unit 3 SAC 1

Year 12 PP Slides – are now all up in a pdf format so hopefully everyone can easily access them -Ms Shiel-Jones

Year 12 Unit 3 SAC 1

by felicitysj

March 2, 2012

3:56 am

Year 12 Unit 3 SAC 1 – Please revise by completing Activity 5 page 9 and Activity 6 page 10 of the psych book VCE Units 3 & 4. It will be a test on research methods, states of consciousness and sleep. Study up on stages of sleep and the different states of consciousness.

Revision topics for the first test – Year 11 Psychology

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February 26, 2012

5:30 am

Study these flash cards | Study psychology flash cards

Quizlet, revision, Year 11 Psychology

meek rat — Even clever, quick-witted rats need to revise the twists and turns of the maze frequently. I'm guessing it's the same for you humans.

Below is a list of the topics that will be covered in the first test. The test is quite long but not particularly hard – especially if you work through each dot below with a conscience.

An important hint:

Psychology teachers and examiners get all worked up when you define a word by using the word that you are actually meant to be defining:

e.g. “Behaviour is, like, well, you know, behaviour that you do when you do something.”

No, no, no! You must use different words!

An improved version:

Behaviour means observable actions or responses by an organism.

e.g. “Naturalistic observation means, you know, you observe people or animals in their natural habitat.”

Nope, that won’t work either.

An improved version:

Naturalistic observation is a research method in which psychologists watch the behaviour of humans or animals in their normal environment, without intervening or influencing them in any way.

Emma's drawing — Emma sat in my lessons last week, doing all the set work AND creating remarkable drawings, including ambiguous stimuli that astounded me and impressed the whole class. Watch this space for more of her drawings. She doesn't even seem to have to try... Sigh.

https://psychologyrats.edublogs.org/about/downloadable-handouts

Topics for first test:

Definitions of psychology, behaviour, empirical research
Differences between psychology and psychiatry
Different fields of psychology: eg. clinical, educational, organisational, forensic, sport, research, counselling, community, health
Different methods of research in psychology, and the advantages or usefulness of each
The scientific method: seven steps of psychological research
Control and experimental groups; why experiments usually have both
Quantitative and qualitative data
The work and contribution of ONE of the great psychologists in the history of psychology: e.g. Freud, James, Ebbinghaus, Piaget, Watson, Rogers
The differences between visual sensation and visual perception
The processes of visual sensation (reception, transduction and transmission) and visual perception (organisation and interpretation)
The structures of the eye and their functions: the cornea, pupil, iris, lens, optic nerve, retina, rods and cones
The Gestalt perceptual principles: figure-ground organisation, closure, similarity and proximity

Finally, a little quizlet to help you embed the new words and terms of psychology in your long-term memory:

;

School is nearly out…

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October 17, 2011

11:54 pm

advice for exam preparation, Gemma, Michelle, research methods PDF, Rosie, Stephanie, Ying

Gemma and Stephanie in the quadrangle, 17 Oct 2011. Three days left...

Some revision suggestions

In order to revise the basics of research methods, download this PDF of the class powerpoint.

The hints below could be useful for all your subjects. But of course, you’re only allowed to use them for Psychology.

LITTLE AND OFTEN – OFTEN BEING THE OPERATIVE WORD… Spaced practice is better than massed practice. In other words, half an hour a day is better than 3 and a ½ hours once a week. Of course, massed practice (or cramming) is better than nothing at all.

photo-100 — And if all other advice fails, use a plastic axe or a sonic screwdriver...

A LONG, SLOW PROCESS The longer the length of time you spend learning something, the better the retention. That’s why it’s worth concentrating all year long and not just swotting like mad at the end. But of course swotting is also better than nothing. Start early with your revising. Don’t do it all the day before the exam.

YOU ARE NOT A DROOLING DOG…Active learning is vital. Studying for an exam is best done through active forms of learning, not through “hoping it will get it there somehow”. The drooling dog should not be your model.

OVERDO IT! It is better to overlearn material, because in an exam, the extra tension and physiological arousal can have an adverse effect. Overlearning reduces the likelihood of forgetting, even when under pressure.

MORPH INTO AN EXAMINER… Students like working through old exams and of course that is a worthwhile strategy. All the same, it is not always the most active method of revising. If you are working through exams and finding them easy, then you will feel reassured, but it won’t help you all that much with the nasty question the examiner springs on you in November. Therefore, try to second-guess the examiner. Morph into an examiner yourself. Say to yourself, “What if he/she asks me THAT horrible question?” Make up some seriously nasty questions that demand in-depth understanding. Then answer them. Put that nasty little examiner inside you in his place.

INFUSE YOUR LIFE WITH LEARNING… Just for these two to three weeks, try to use a psychology term or phrase for everything that happens to you. When you learn something new from a friend on the computer, repeat the four processes of observational learning to yourself. When you hear music and it reminds you of a happy time with a close friend and therefore produces a warm inner glow, remember that this is a conditioned emotional response that you may have acquired through classical conditioning. When you get a fright, recall the symptoms and details of the fight-flight response. When you are practising your driving and recall a route without officially having learned it, ponder on cognitive maps and latent learning.

Kind regards from

Ms Bottrell and Ms Green

rat pic 4 — ...and don't forget me! I may be "just a rat", but I've got feelings too. Good luck, guys!

Holiday extra class