Social Studies Curriculum

History/Social Sciences Electives

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Adopted January 1999

Psychology I

Course Description:

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior from early childhood through old age. Students will explore how an organism's physical state, mental, state, and external environment affect behavior and the mental processes.

Sample topics in Psychology include:

• How people learn, think, feel, and behave.
• Important developmental stages are important in the human life cycle.
• How self concept is developed through: relationships with parents, peers, and culture.
• How brain functions are affected by environmental conditions.

The course title and description have been approved by the Anchorage School Board. This course outline is meant to serve as an example of one possibility for organizing this class. It does not represent the only way the course may be organized. Each course outline has been written by a different teacher so there will be differences in the approach used from one course to another.

Course Goals:

Through this course students will:

• Distinguish scientifically supported psychology from the popularized psychology that is represented as “fact” in the world.
• Gain an understanding and practice the ethical principles for research.
• Develop an appreciation for the diversity of the human experience; especially as it relates to interpreting psychological problems and finding their solutions.
• Apply the psychology they learn in class in a practical way in their own lives.
  

Course Objectives:

The student will:

• List and explain the goals of psychology.
• Describe how a psychologist would define a problem and provide a solution for the problem based on any of the perspectives of psychology.
• Explain the various methods psychologists use to obtain data and use those methods in class activities/experiments.
• Differentiate between a correlation and a cause-and-effect relationship and how to determine causality through the experiment.
• Discuss and debate the ethical concerns and practices of psychological research.
• Describe the brain and its functions and explain how these functions relate to right/left brain, gender, language, behavioral abnormalities, and drug interactions.
• Explain the various biological rhythms and describe how these rhythms affect everyday life. (Specifically: the sleep cycle, dreams and dream theories, jet lag, and seasonal affective disorder)
• Compare and contrast the evidence presented on the usefulness of hypnosis as a tool.
• Explain how the body’s senses integrate to provide information about the reality of the world. Then, describe how that reality is organized for perception to occur.
• Examine various sensory illusions and describe how these illusions help to illustrate how the brain perceives the world.
• Explain and diagram how classical conditioning occurs and relate it to how advertising uses these principles to "sell" products and services.
• Describe the effects of consequences on behavior and use these operant conditioning techniques to shape behavior in themselves and others, recognizing the significance of reinforcement.
• Use and apply information about how memory works to improve their own memory.

Course Outline:

1. Definition of psychology
   1. Goals
   2. Early psychology
   3. Perspectives
      1. Behavioral
      2. Psychoanalytic
      3. Cognitive
      4. Physiological
      5. Sociocultural
2. How psychologists know what they know
   1. Descriptive studies
      1. Case histories
      2. Observation
      3. Surveys
      4. Tests
   2. Correlational studies
   3. The Experiment
   4. Statistics
   5. Ethical concerns
3. The Brain
   1. Structure of the nervous system
   2. How neurons work
   3. Brain “parts”
      1. Hindbrain
      2. Midbrain
      3. Forebrain
   4. The Two Hemispheres
   5. Gender Differences
4. States of Consciousness
   1. Biological Rhythms
   2. Sleep Cycle
   3. Dream Theories
   4. Consciousness-altering Drugs
   5. Hypnosis
5. Sensation/Perception
   1. Sensation
      1. Absolute Threshold
      2. Difference Threshold
      3. Subliminals
      4. Sensory Adaptation
      5. Our Senses
   2. Perception
      1. Gestalt principles
      2. Figure/ground
      3. Constancies
      4. Illusions
   3. Extrasensory Perception
6. Learning
   1. Classical Conditioning
      1. Pavlov’s Experiments
      2. Application to real world
   2. Operant Conditioning
      1. Skinner’s Experiments
      2. Reinforcement & Punishment
         1. Types of reinforcement
         2. Schedules of reinforcement
         3. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
      3. Behavioral Modification
   3. Observational Learning
7. Memory
   1. Sensory memory
      1. Sperling's experiment
      2. Deja Vu
   2. Short-Term Memory
      1. Limited capacity
      2. Limited retention interval
   3. Long-Term Memory
      1. Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
      2. 3 Types of long-term memory
         1. Procedural
         2. Semantic
         3. Episodic
   4. Related topics
      1. Eyewitnesses
      2. Retention Strategies
   5. Forgetting - and what it tells us
      1. Interference
      2. Motivated
      3. Cue-dependent

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