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BCS 205, PSY 205
Laboratory in
Development and Learning
Fall 2003
Tuesday 2:00 - 4:40 PM
Meliora 363
The purpose of this
course is to provide majors in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and in Psychology
with a hands-on laboratory experience in human development. As preparation for this course, you are
expected to have some background in statistics, general psychology, and the
neural or cognitive foundations of behavior. Because this is an upper-level writing course, you will each
produce two formal papers in the format of a journal article. In addition, you will present your
results to the rest of the class.
Overall, you will gain general experience with the process of carrying
an idea from its inception to the completion of an empirical piece of research.
In particular, this
course will guide you through the process of conducting research in cognitive
development and to give you experience working with children as research
subjects. You will design and
implement a research project with 2 or 3 other students. That is, you will generate a detailed
empirical question, devise data collection methods to address this question,
collect the data, meet to analyze the data, write a journal-article style
report, and present your findings in a class "conference" in early
December. Along the way, you will
have learned the basics of experimental design, statistics, scientific writing,
and presentation to an audience of your peers. Library materials to help with lab projects can be found at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=11&TheClass=4056.
The course is also
intended to give you some of the flavor of academic or research psychology as a
profession, and is good preparation for those considering graduate school in
psychology or cognitive
science. To that end, your work
will be relatively independent and your time largely
self-scheduled,
particularly in the second half of the semester as you conduct your group
projects. Do not be fooled by this freedom. Resist the temptation to procrastinate. Children do not
always cooperate with the goals of science or your personal schedule, and it
can take longer to collect your data than you expect. Don't let last-minute problems like a printer breaking down
or a bout of chicken pox make you miss a deadline.
Instructor Richard
N. Aslin
Professor
of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
406
Meliora Hall
275-8687
Office hours By
appointment (schedule by phone or email)
or
just drop by my office (I’m usually in)
Readings Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition
[Recommended
that you purchase this from the bookstore, but one key
chapter
will be copied and distributed in class; a copy of the entire volume
will
be available for reference purposes in Meliora room 102]
Jaeger,
R. M. (1990). Statistics: A
spectator sport. Newbury Park:
Sage.
[A
great non-mathematical introduction to statistics; selections will be
copied
and distributed to all members of the class]
Requirements and
Grading
1. Attend class, do the readings in
advance, and participate in discussions [15%]
2. Written report of in-class research
project (data will be provided) [20%]
3. Written report of out-of-class research
project (data collected with other students) [50%]
Note: 15% will be assigned to your “draft”
version and 35% to your “final” version
4. Group oral report of out-of-class
research project [15%]
One of the main ideas
behind the advanced writing requirement at the University of Rochester is to
provide students with feedback regarding their work so they can improve their
writing. At any time during the semester,
feel free to bring me earlier drafts of your report and I will provide you with
comments to help you improve it before you pass in your official
"first" draft. These earlier drafts will not affect your grade. You must provide me with at
least one draft of your out-of-class report by December 2.
Projects
There are three
possibilities for data collection.
You can work with children in their homes, you can ask that they be
brought to campus, or you can go to a local preschool. Each method has advantages and
disadvantages. At the preschool
you will have access to several children of
different ages and could
do a nice comparative study. At
home and at the University you can set up a video camera and code the
videotapes afterwards, thus capturing more detailed responses. Think about how
many children you want to study and how much time you want to spend with
each child as you plan
your experiment. You also should
consider transportation issues. If
you would like to work in a preschool, let me know very early in the semester
so we can start obtaining permission from school administrators and parents.
Select an area of
cognitive development and do some background reading. You might start with a
textbook (see me if you want to borrow a copy) to be sure you have a general
understanding of the topic, and then look at some recent articles for specific
methodologies and findings.
Where to look? Try the Annual Review of Psychology
or one of the mainstream journals in development: Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive
Development, Infant Behavior and Development, or Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology.
I also highly recommend the search engine at:
http://www.google.com. And of
course you should check out the Voyager system on the Web to conduct a
literature search or to access journals electronically:
http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/resources/
Resources
• Voyager on the web
• PsycINFO
• Medline (PubMed)
• ISI Citation Databases
• Library Subject Web Pages, including
Brain and Cognitive Sciences Internet Resources, a library subject guide
• Voyager's Electronic Journals web page
provides links to several large collections
of electronic journals;
IDEAL is the collection from Academic Press
NOTE: Room 102 in Meliora Hall has several
Macintoshes available for your use to access the Web and to perform statistical
analyses. Off-hours access to room
102 or to the computer classroom (127) can be arranged through David Parsons in
Meliora Hall room 103.
Be sure to choose a
topic pertaining to cognitive development, such as sorting and naming
abilities, language acquisition, Piagetian stages (e.g., performance on
conservation or object permanence tasks), concept development, reasoning,
memory, problem solving, expertise, etc. Steer away from physical or social
development (such as motor control, aggression, toy choices, play styles,
etc.).
Think about classic
questions in development. What
factors (biological or experiential) might account for children's variability
in performance on cognitive tasks?
How do they vary systematically by birth order, sex, age, or life
experience? What kind of training
or exposure might affect children's performance? What does this reveal about how that particular ability
develops?
-------------------------------------
BCS/PSY
205 Course Schedule
September 2 Course
overview
September 9 Lecture: APA publication format;
Sample experiment;
Preliminary
discussion of out-of-class projects
Reading: APA publication manual,
Chapter 5, Manuscript preparation
and
sample paper
September 16 Lecture: Statistics (t-test,
correlation, Chi-square, ANOVA) using
SPSS
and StatView on the Mac
Reading: Selections from Chapters 9-13
of Jaeger (1990) Statistics: A
spectator
sport, pp. 163-174, 194-202, 215-223, 236-244,
260-270,
285-295
September 23 Discussion
of out-of-class group projects: Reality check
September 30 Final
assignment to groups; Sample experiment written reports due
October 7 Experimental
design (groups will meet separately as needed)
October 14 Data
collection
October 21 Data
collection
October 28 Mid-project
review (all groups will report to each other in class)
November 4 Data
analysis
November 11 Data
analysis and drafting of written report
November 18 Preliminary
preparation for group oral presentations
November 25 Thanksgiving
break: No class
December 2 Final preparation for
group oral presentations
*** Draft version of out-of-class
written report due ***
December 9 Class
mini-conference (group oral presentations)
December 16 ***
Final version of out-of-class report due by 5 PM ***
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Last modified: 9/9/2003
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