The Marshmallow Study Revisited

I found the article and video below on one of my sociology lists. It calls into question the interpretations made by Walter Mischel and his marshmallow study connecting self-control in children with later success in life.  I've not read the original study, but I'm assuming it was a correlational study in terms of the connection between the ability to distract oneself when a child and later success in life. The doctoral candidate in the video raises some important questions about the role of social environment on decision making.

A colleague (who wished not to have the name posted here) posted this quote and questions on the TEACHSOC listserv on 10/12/2012.  How do children understand or not understand that it's in their best interests to delay gratification?  The replication in the video suggests that there are other trust factors that may go into the decision making of these children and people in general--extending into the sociological realm.

Suddenly, this potentially has much larger implications - for example, how members of a given race/social class may perceive the efforts directed towards them when they've been victimized (or even just let down) by such efforts before. For example, why trust that the police when they've done violence to members of your community? Or why trust a government agency's new policies when the same entity have wronged you in the past? Etc.

This kind of sociological thinking and raising of questions as to the factors can help us as psychology teachers examine human behavior and perhaps make sure we do not fall into oversimplification of conclusions and ideas.


The article is at this link:  http://boingboing.net/2012/10/11/marshmallow-study-and-class.html


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Mapping the Brain: Brain Scans-New Amazing Interactive

I just received my newsletter from PBS about NOVA Spark newsletter--available here: http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/es.aspx?s=2531&e=4434&elq=357d7be649404349bf35470a8e6033a3

In it, there was a link to an amazing brain scan online tool where the user can choose the brain scan, choose the view, and choose the brain part(s) to be examined.  This is just so cool I could spend a couple of hours just playing around and investigating how and where everything is and connects.  Thank you PBS.

In addition to the scans, you see the different views--coronal, sagittal and axial.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/swf/1/mapping-the-brain/mapping-the-brain.html

Check it out--very much worth your time.

Posted by Chuck

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Whitman Journal of Psychology

I'd love to hear from blog readers about any experiences you have with the Whitman Journal of Psychology. This journal publishes research done and written up by high school students.

I've had a couple students publish their work in this journal (quite a while ago) and it was a great experience for them, but I was never successful at getting students to USE the journal well. It seems like it has a lot of potential for classroom use: these are psychological studies performed and written up by high school students, so we should be able to use the heck out of it when teaching Research Methods, but I had a hard time motivating students to really dive in.

Here's the description of the Journal by the editors:
"The Whitman Journal of Psychology is a non-profit, student-run publication. We collect submissions from high school students around the country and publish the  most intriguing and well written submissions that we receive. We consider every submission and are always looking for new articles, so we encourage students to submit their work.

Submissions to the Journal are accepted year round.  Experimental Reports and Literature Reviews within the field of psychology will all be considered for publication. The Journal also accepts black and white photo submissions for the cover as well for the inner folds of the current edition. "

Students submit work online, and I suspect your students might have a valuable learning experience getting feedback from the editors (mine did). 

posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Comments on teaching psych and statistics

Readers: I need your help ASAP! In preparation for a presentation, I would love some comments from real high school psychology teachers about how you feel about teaching statistics. Love it? Hate it? Need help to do it better? Wish it would just go away? Can't wait to teach it every year?

Go to this link http://todaysmeet.com/psychstats and you'll see a screen like below. Enter YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS where it says "What's your name?" and then enter a comment. (If you don't do that, be sure to enter your e-mail address as past of your comment.)

I need this by Wednesday 10/10.12. Thanks!   Again, the URL is:    http://todaysmeet.com/psychstats

-- posted by Steve

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Thinking Critically about fMRI data using a dead fish

Studies that rely on fMRI data have always worried me a bit. The findings can be wonderful and very exciting (e.g. female brains are different than male brains! Google is rewiring our brains!) But when I look at the fMRI scans, it sure seems like there are a lot of opportunities for confirmation bias and wishful thinking to creep into these studies, and the media may report on them prematurely and not very responsibly.

This study about what happens when you put a dead Atlantic Salmon into an fMRI machine is funny and potentially important, I think. The potential for "false positives" is high, and the authors talk about the "corrections" that need to be made in the data, but often aren't. The clever folks over at Mind Hacks share this concern.

So the next time one of our students excitedly brings in an article about fMRI results, it might be a great teachable moment about how to think critically about research!



posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Dang! I told this fib about Watson's sex life for years!

Drat! It turns out that at least one of the stories I told for YEARS about John Watson turns out to be false.

The apocryphal story: John Watson was dismissed from his job at Johns Hopkins "not due to his affair with graduate student Rosalie Raynor, but rather because it was discovered that Watson was conducting research on physiological responses during sexual intercourse."

I can't remember when/where I learned the story (source amnesia!) but I liked talking with students about John Watson's "career arc": from one of the most famous and influential psychologists in the world to a fired professor because of something he might have thought of as "touchy-feely emotional stuff."

This is another good example why we, and our students, should try to think critically about information we find in textbooks. The article documents how this fib entered the lore of psychology and how it was perpetuated. I wonder how many other apocryphal stories are floating around in our books?

By the way, the site this article is from, Advances in the History of Psychology, is a good one! LOTS of historical information that teachers could use to fill in background on our topics.



posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Teaching Psychology When You No Longer Teach Psychology

NOTE FROM STEVE: Today's guest post is from Patrick Mattimore (patrickmattimore1@yahoo.com) whose name should be well-known to veteran high school psychology teachers. Pat taught in California for many years prior to moving to Asia as he documents below. I love this post and hope that you will leave your thoughts in the comments below!


Teaching Psychology When You Don’t Teach Psychology

I live in Ho Chi Minh City and teach a variety of test prep classes to Vietnamese students.  I try and work some of psychology’s lessons into my classes even though I am not specifically teaching a psychology course.  For example, recently I used a rumor chain exercise (from the TOPSS activities) to introduce the students to some principles of memory.

From 2009 until earlier this year, I worked in Beijing and taught Chinese lawyers a course in legal reasoning about the American legal system.

At the beginning of each class, I did a reasoning exercise because Chinese lawyers are just as prone to confirmation bias and belief perseverance as everyone else. My goal was to convince the students to investigate problems deeply and to continue asking the next “what if” question.

One exercise I use to induce students to ask questions is intended to develop students’ critical questioning abilities. I tell students a made-up story about the contents of an empty box which I have placed in front of the class. I tell my students that inside the box is an award-winning contest model of a prototypical American high school in 2050, complete with an architect’s plan. Students then ask “yes” and “no” questions in order to attempt to guess the design. I let students guess at the “school’s design” for five minutes or so before revealing to them the empty box.

As they seize upon new information during the activity, guided by other students’ questions and my responses, students are revising their own thinking about the school’s design. Learning to adapt one’s original hypotheses based upon new information is a useful process for laypersons and psychologists alike. My job as teacher is to keep track of students’ questions in order to insure consistent answers.
The follow-up is to get students reflecting upon and discussing their own thinking processes during the activity.

Since many of my Chinese students worked as judges and prosecutors, I also wanted them to know about some basic psychological research so that they understood, for example, that our memories are fallible, leading even confident eyewitnesses to make mistakes. I gave my students a copy of an article I wrote for the San Francisco/Los Angeles Daily Journal, California’s primary legal newspaper. The article is about how a “recovered memory” was used to convict a Boston priest, despite the testimony of memory expert Elizabeth Loftus, which cast doubt upon the alleged victim’s testimony. As a follow-up to that article, students research the California Supreme Court case of Taus v. Loftus, which involves the legal issue of right to privacy, tying it to Taus’ supposed recovered memory.

China and Vietnam’s Criminal Law Codes are undergoing major revisions, but torture is still commonly used to coerce confessions. I want my students to understand why those confessions are inherently unreliable, findings directly related to the work of social psychologist Richard Ofshe.

With my Vietnamese students who intend to study or work in English-speaking countries, I am most interested in getting them to speak English since usually their English comprehension is already pretty good. One of the keys I’ve found to helping those students speak is role-playing, similar to what therapists might do to get patients to break down boundaries. My motto is speak before you think.

Another of psychology’s lessons is that we remember those things best that are most interesting to us.
So, as a homework assignment, I might ask a student to research US universities which she might like to attend or find out about music groups in Vietnam that have incorporated English lyrics in songs and then teach the class the songs.

One way psychologists can give psychology away is to write op-eds for newspapers. For the last nine years, I have been writing op-eds, often about psychological topics. It’s a great way to stay current and educate the public, if not your classes, about psychology.

Here are some suggestions. Write about how social norms can be useful to influence behavior. In China, a major health problem is smoking. There are more smokers in China than anywhere else in the world and it’s estimated that over half of the adult male population smokes and that about 40% of doctors smoke. Smoking is everywhere and is encouraged at social events where bowls of cigarettes are sometimes placed on food tables and cigarettes are a treasured gift. Obviously, since few women smoke, (about 3%) one target of campaigns to wipe out smoking in China can be that gender imbalance which seems to have encouraged males (but not females) to smoke. Here are links to some articles I wrote for Chinese newspapers about that issue.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2011-08/17/content_13129872.htm
http://archive.tobacco.org/news/306712.html
http://archive.tobacco.org/news/313648.html

Teachers can also write about how understanding basic statistical information can help people become better informed citizens. For example, in China the newspapers often report statistical surveys that are based upon poor methodology. Sometimes, policy makers propose new legislation relying on a few vivid anecdotes. When that happens, it’s a good opportunity to highlight the availability heuristic and point out that policies should be based upon data, not drama.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-09/30/content_13822942.htm

Finally, teachers can interview famous psychologists and let the public know about the important work those people are doing. Here’s a link to an interview I had with Dr. Phil Zimbardo that was published by China Daily Online.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2011-07/04/content_12827760.htm

Most psychology teachers want their students to absorb and apply psychology’s lessons when they leave their classrooms. When psychology teachers enter new fields, they should bring psychology with them too.

--posted by Steve

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3D Brain App--Great Review Tool

We've highlighted the Genes to Cognition website before, but one of their most interested and fun segments has been made into a phone/tablet app.

The description from the iTunes page with the app says this,"Use your touch screen to rotate and zoom around 29 interactive structures. Discover how each brain region functions, what happens when it is injured, and how it is involved in mental illness. Each detailed structure comes with information on functions, disorders, brain damage, case studies, and links to modern research."


This is what I sent my students today.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, check out this app--it is excellent for seeing the brain and reviewing the brain parts.  The app is free.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/3d-brain/id331399332?mt=8

The Android/Windows 7 phones have it here:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/3d-brain/org.dnalc.threedbrain

posted by Chuck Schallhorn 

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Engage students with current research

Engage students with current research in psychology at a level appropriate to their understanding.

Prospective Memory? Human Factors? Combine current research with increased exposure to additional interesting terms and topics. 

Sign up to receive a free e-mail update with the table of contents of psychology journals as they are published.  For example, from Sage publications, you can see a long list of psychology journals by viewing here http://online.sagepub.com/browse/by/discipline including:

• Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
• Psychological Science in the Public Interest
• Current Directions in Psychological Science
• Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
• Health Psychology

Titles alone give students an increased understanding of content areas and help them realize how psychology continues to evolve. Abstracts are free on-line providing slightly more in-depth information on articles of interest.

From Current Directions in Psychological Science:
Motivational Salience and the Amygdala http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/21/1/54.abstract provides evidence of more recent research and current understanding of the role of the amygdala as being attentive to what is salient, beyond the domains of fear and aggression.  A short read of this one clarifies the meaning of prospective memory http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/21/4/215.abstract

Even better news, searching the Teaching High School Psychology archives https://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/learn_more.cfm originally posted by Kent in 2009 is specific to high school teachers, and still provides access to Current Directions in Psychological Science.

-- Posted for Nancy (by Steve)

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Using the new AP Psychology practice test

Take the Challenge!

As we noted on the blog earlier, the College Board has just released a new secure practice test.  This has potential for us as teachers to "take the challenge" as well as to use this as a teaching tool in the classroom.  Please keep in mind that great questions are hard to find, so maintaining the integrity of the test is critical.

To help in selecting possible questions or helping students identify areas of weakness later when you may give this exam, below is a table of the items sorted by topic.  As each text is somewhat differently organized, it may not be a perfect match, but the material is in chapter-like groups in the first table, and in College Board Score report groups in the second table.

** You can also download this list as a Word document.

By TEXTBOOK CHAPTER (the numbers refer to the questions on the 2012 released exam)

1 - History, approaches, and subfields of psychology - 1, 6, 44, 65

2 - Research methods, ethics, statistics - 3, 22, 31, 34, 40, 41, 48, 56, 78, 85

3 - Biology of the mind/neuroscience - 4, 18, 19, 29, 33, 50, 73, 80, 81

4 - Sensation/Perception - 10, 11, 16, 28, 43, 46, 61

5 - States of Consciousness - 9,15, 77

6 - Learning - 45, 53, 55, 60, 62, 86 

7 - Cognition - 37, 51, 58, 79, 83, 89, 93, 95, 100 

8 - Motivation and Emotion - 12, 25, 64, 71, 72, 75, 88, 97

9 - Lifespan Development - 5, 14, 21, 32, 42, 52, 67, 87

10 - Personality - 13, 17, 26, 35, 39, 47, 74, 84

11 - Testing and Individual Differences - 24, 49, 59, 63, 66, 69, 92, 98

12 - Psychological Disorders - 2, 7, 68, 90

13 - Treatment of disorders - 20, 23, 30, 38, 57, 70

14 - Social Psychology - 8, 27, 36, 54, 76, 82, 91, 94, 96, 99

BY COLLEGE BOARD TOPIC DESIGNATIONS

Methods and History, Testing and Individual differences
1,3, 6, 22, 24, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 44, 48, 49, 56, 59, 63, 65, 66, 69, 78, 85, 92, 98

Biology/Sensation/Perception/Consciousness
4, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 28, 29, 33, 36, 43, 46, 50, 61,73, 77, 80, 96

Learning and cognition
37, 45, 51, 53, 55, 58, 60, 62, 79, 83, 86, 89, 93, 95, 100

Developmental/Social
5, 8, 4, 21, 27 32, 36, 42, 52, 54, 67, 76, 82, 87, 91, 94, 99

Personality/Motivation/Emotion
12,13, 17, 25, 26, 35, 39, 47, 64, 71, 72,74, 75, 81, 84, 88, 97

Abnormal Behavior/TX of Abnormal Behavior
2, 7, 20, 23, 30, 38, 57, 68, 70, 90



-- written by Nancy/posted by Steve

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