PSYCHOLOGY 461HISTORY AND SYSTEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Spring, 2008 9:00 – 9:50 a.m. Daily PsyB 256 5 Credits

 AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO USEFUL DETAILS

Here's (1) your professor, Warren R. Street, Ph.D. He's sitting in (2) his office, PSY 429, where the clock (3) shows that it’s 10:00, his office hour, and he’s waiting for someone to drop in. You can phone (4) him at 963-3674, send him e-mail at warren@cwu.edu, or browse the psychology history parts of his web page at http://www.cwu.edu/~warren/ . To pass the time until you call, he's reading (5) your text, Hergenhahn's An Introduction to the History of Psychology (5th ed.). This text is so exciting you will want to mummify your copy at the end of the quarter so that your descendents will be able to read and enjoy it down through the ages.

PSYCHOLOGY 461HISTORY AND SYSTEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

COMING ATTRACTIONS

WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING HERE?Humans search out regularities in natural events. The anthropologist Richard Leakey suggested that the single human ability that secured our survival as a species is our ability to remember regular patterns, since it enables us to predict the future from present events. When an event doesn't seem to conform to a known pattern, we orient toward it and talk about it, write about it, and try to repeat the event until we either fit it into a known pattern or make it a new pattern not previously known.

When this analytic impulse is turned upon regularities in the behavior and experience of individual living organisms, it's called psychology. The search for regularities in behavior has a long history as a subject of philosophy, law, politics, medicine, and religion. It has only been recently that the search for regularities in behavior has been based on systematic observations of behavior: scientific psychology. Modern scientific psychology isn't separated from earlier approaches: Every scientific study also represents a position taken on philosophical, legal, political, medical, educational, and even religious understandings of behavior.

PSY 461, History and Systems of Psychology, is an introduction to the development over time (history) of coherent descriptions (systems) of the regularities of individual behavior and experience (psychology). Across the span of history, some problematic issues have continued to confront anyone attempting to build a system to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior. Some of these issues are described in the first chapter of your text and we'll discuss others in class. Our class will focus on these issues, historic and modern attempts to cope with them, and the individual people responsible for major developments in the field.

The table of contents of your text will give you a preview of things to come. We will follow a roughly chronological order of presentation, beginning with Greek systems of thought and continuing to contemporary approaches. Many themes will reoccur during this survey. The goals and assessment methods of the class include:  Goal Assessment A, Describe major problematic themes of systems of psychology and describe where a given system stands on these dimensions.

1.   Conscious mentalism-Unconscious mentalism2.   Behaviorism – Mentalism3.   Determinism-Indeterminism4.   Empiricism-Rationalism5.   Functionalism-Structuralism6    Mechanism - Vitalism7.   Molecularism-Molarism8    Monism - Dualism9    Naturalism-Supernaturalism10.  Nomotheticism-Idiographicism11.  Staticism - Dynamicism

This goal will be assessed by graded answers to multiple choice and short essay questions on the first exam.

B. Describe common problems in historiographyC. Compare at least four views of how science makes progressD. Describe the major figures and contributions to the history of modern psychology made by

Early Greek philosophy, cosmology and idealism.Post-Aristotelian worldly philosophyThe Renaissance and the beginnings of modern science and natural philosophy.Empiricists, sensationalists, and positivists.

These goals will be assessed by graded answers to multiple choice and short essay questions on the first exam.

E. Describe the major figures and contributions to the history of modern psychology made by

Rationalists.Romantics and existentialists.Early experimental psychologistsVoluntarists, structuralists, and other early psychologistsThe Darwinian influence. and the testing movement

These goals will be assessed by graded answers to multiple choice and short essay questions on the second exam.

F. Describe the major figures and contributions to the history of modern psychology made by 20th century developments in

Functionalism.Behaviorism.Neobehaviorism.Gestalt Psychology

These goals will be assessed by graded answers to multiple choice and short essay questions on the third exam.

G. Describe the major figures and contributions to the history of modern psychology made by

Pioneers in early diagnosis, explanation, and treatment of mental illness.Freud, psychoanalysis and its early alternatives.Humanistic (third-force) psychology.Cognitive psychologistsPsychobiologists.Contemporary professional psychologists

These goals will be assessed by graded answers to multiple choice and short essay questions on the fourth exam.

H. Use scholarly resources in the library and internet to write a coherent brief history of a selected event in the history of psychology in proper APA style.

This goal will be assessed by critical evaluation of your term paper.

 There are some collateral outcomes of the class that are not learning goals, but are part of the story of psychology: how people have tried to understand the most complex phenomenon we know of, human thought and behavior. As part of the story, I hope you come to appreciate some of the folklore of psychology, shared by the other psychologists you will join in your professional career. Stories will be found in anniversary events presented each day in class and background stories of historic events presented in class. As part of the story, I hope you develop a sense of historical perspective, humility, and scientific skepticism regarding historic and modern developments in psychology.

Finally, one purpose of this class is to broaden your perspectives. Every person has beliefs about the causes of their own behavior and the behavior of others; each belief reflects one historic position out of many that could have been chosen. Not all beliefs about behavior are equally scientifically valid and this class should give us a better understanding of where we stand and what alternatives are available.

TEXT, READING, TESTS, GRADES, AND ALL THAT

The text for the course is the 5th edition of An Introduction to the History of Psychology, by B. R. Hergenhahn. You will come to love this book so much you will read it from cover to cover without stopping eat, sleep, or work on your Facebook persona. Not convinced? Here's a more believable prediction: You'll read a couple of chapters each week during the quarter, practice your understanding of the material, engage in class discussions, and take four exams over the most recent material. Each exam will be made up of 18 multiple choice items and three 4-point essay items, for a total of 30 points per exam. In addition, there will be an optional 30-item multiple choice comprehensive final/makeup exam that counts 30 points, the same as a regular weekly exam. Finally, you'll write a 7 to 9 page research paper describing an event in the history of psychology, its historical antecedents and consequences. The paper will count 30 points, the same as an exam. The paper assignment will be described further in an attached handout.

On academic honesty: It's academically dishonest to claim that someone else's work is your own (plagiarism) or arrange things to give the impression that you know more about the material than you really do. This includes, but is not limited to, looking at other people's papers during an exam, altering a test after it has been returned to you, consulting notes during a closed-book exam, and including other people’s words or ideas in your term paper without crediting them as your source. A full statement of the university's academic standards may be found in the current university catalog. Look up "Student Judicial Code" in the index and see the section on "Proscribed Conduct." The consequence of one incident of academic dishonesty will be a grade of zero on that exam that will not be replaced by the score on the comprehensive exam. The consequence of a second incident will be a failing grade in the course.

Here's a list of exam dates and reading assignments  

Date ReadingFriday April 11 Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 (except pp. 90-93),

5Tuesday, April 29 Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 10Wednesday, May 14 Chapters 11, 12, 13, 14Friday, May 30 Chapters 15, 16, 17, 18, and pages

562-566, 571-576, 579-581, 589-597, 600-604.

Friday, June 6, 8:00-10:00 Comprehensive Final/Makeup Exam

Other important dates: No Class: Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day)Term Paper: Submit electronically on or before Friday, May 30, 5:00 p.m.

Students with disabilities who wish to set up academic adjustments should give me a copy of their “Confirmation of Eligibility for Academic Adjustments” from the Disability Support Services Office as soon as possible so we can meet to discuss how the approved adjustments will be implemented. Students with disabilities without this form should contact the Disability Support Services Office, Bouillon 205 or dssrecept@cwu.edu or 963-2171.

Now, the point of all this examining is to give both of us an idea of your progress toward some of the goals of the class. Your final grade is based on a simple arithmetic average of the best 4 scores and the grade on the paper. Since there are 5 exams, this gives you one exam score to discard because you had a monster project for another class, because you were sick that week, because you were selling Tupperware for Uncle Rico, because your cat is getting married, or whatever. Make every effort to take all 4 regular exams. You may choose not to take the comprehensive exam if you are satisfied with the grade you've earned on the 4 regular exams. This also means that there are no "makeup" exams: The comprehensive exam serves as a general makeup exam.

Here's a table of letter grades and the total points, percentages, and average test score equivalent of each. To find your grade at any time during the quarter, divide the number of points you've earned by the total available and compare your percentage to the table below:

Perfect score: Total = 150 points (100%) [30 points per exam]

  B+ = 124 (82.5%) [24.8] C+ = 109 (72.5%) [21.8] D+ = 87 (57.5%) [17.4]A = 132 (87.5%) [26.4] B = 117 (77.5%) [23.4] C = 94 (62.5%) [18.8] D = 79 (52.5%) [15.5]A- = 128 (85%) [25.6] B- = 113 (75%) [22.6] C- = 90 (60%) [18.0] D- = 75 (50%) [15.0]

PSYCHOLOGY 461 HISTORY AND SYSTEMS OF PSYCHOLOGYTERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

The goals of this assignment are to familiarize you with library resources in the history of psychology, to make you an expert in at least one passage in psychological history, and to write a coherent description of it. A coherent description is one in which the events all relate to some common theme. In most successful papers, one event is the focus of the paper and other events help us to understand its importance.

For this assignment, you will receive an icon, a picture that represents an important event in the history of psychology. Protect your icon from damage. Don't write on it, punch holes in it, or staple it to things. Don't fold it up. Don’t feed it to indiscriminate omnivores. Some icons are copied from books that are not easily accessible and will be difficult to replace. These are well-known people and events and many of them appear in textbooks of psychology. Some icons represent events that took place over a long period of time, for example, E. L. Thorndike's entire research career. Some are more restricted in time, such as the Boulder, Colorado conference on graduate education in clinical psychology. Your job is to write a brief history in which your icon has a prominent place.

The story should have three parts: the history of events that led up to your icon event, the event in your icon itself, and related events that happened after your icon. All three phases of the history are necessary to understand the significance of your icon. I want you to enjoy telling the story of your icon and the more you know about it, the easier it will be. Please don't hesitate to see me for advice about sources related to your icon.

Your final paper should be written in APA style, as described in the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). You need to follow instructions for applying APA style to term papers, reviews of the literature, or theoretical papers. Your paper will not have the methods, results, and discussion sections that APA experimental report articles have. Most of you will not have any tables or figures.

You should submit your paper electronically, using a commonly-available word processor, such as Microsoft Word, to create it. I expect your final paper to be composed of: 1. A cover page, including title, author, institution, short title, and running head. 2. An abstract page. 3. The body of your paper, no less than 7 pages and no more than 9 pages in length. This means that the body of your paper will end on page 9, 10, or 11. 4. A list of references consulted. 5. Any tables or figures.

Your reference list must have at least five references listed. That’s the minimum, not the maximum. At least three of them must be journal articles, not books. Don’t cite material found on the web or use it as primary source material in your paper. Use internet resources only to lead you to published books and articles. This is because many internet resources are not reviewed for accuracy and change frequently. Their best use is to guide you to books and journal articles reviewed by other scientists and historians (“juried” articles). Online “full text” versions of peer-reviewed journals and books, however, are the same as the published versions and will count as valid references for your paper.

I'll read and comment on preliminary drafts of your paper submitted to me at least two weeks before the due date. The more you hand in, the more I will be able to advise you about. The final copy of the paper must be submitted in an electronic version by email by 5:00 p.m. on the last regular day of class before finals week and the icon must be returned by that day as well. Up to 5 points will be deducted for late submission.

Attached are the rubrics I use to grade your term paper, to help you anticipate what I’m looking for in the best papers.

PSYCHOLOGY 461HISTORY AND SYSTEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

COURSE PAPER RUBRICBelow Expectations (1) (2) Meets Expectations (3) (4) Exceeds Expectations (5)

I.Reasoning

1. Presentation is illogical, disordered.2. Inferences are unsupported by evidence.3. Disconnected facts are presented without attention to synthesis.

1. Logical, orderly presentation is apparent.2. Inferences are supported by evidence.3. Effort is made to synthesize facts and ideas from different sources.

1. The writing is logical, orderly, internally consistent, and well developed. Elegant.2. Inferences are well supported by evidence.3. Facts and ideas are well synthesized, forming a coherent whole.

II.Communication

1. Word choice is inappropriate. Informal, stilted, arcane, or idiosyncratic. 2. Incoherent organization fails to lead to the intended conclusion.3. Lack of awareness of reader’s perspective.4. Poorly formed sentences and paragraphs, with many awkward passages.5. Heavy reliance on quotations or paraphrasing.

1. Word choice is acceptable for the intended audience.2. Generally good although obvious organization.3. Shows awareness of reader’s perspective.4. Sentences and paragraphs relate to each other, though connections are occasionally remote or obscure.5. Original writing supported with occasional quotations, paraphrasing.

1. Words are well chosen. Scholarly expository style2. Organization is so excellent as to be unnoticed.3. Appreciation of reader’s perspective is obvious.4. Writing is flowing and easy to follow.5. Limited quotations and paraphrasing well integrated with original writing.

III.Technical

Usage

1. Inappropriately chooses lay terminology when technical terminology is appropriate.2. Uses technical terminology incorrectly.

1. Generally makes the appropriate choice of lay language or technical language.2. Uses technical terminology correctly.

1. Technical language or lay language is appropriately selected.2. Usage is precise, appropriate, parsimonious and enlightening.

IV.Grammar

1. Grammatical errors substantially detract from the communication.

1. Grammatical errors are minimal and do not detract from the communication.

1. The document is free of grammatical errors.

V. APA Style

1. Many features of APA style are ignored.

1. Few errors in APA style and most are inconsequential.

1. APA style is employed perfectly.

VI.Mechanics

1. Spelling, punctuation, or format errors are abundant.

1. Minimal spelling, punctuation, or format errors.

1. No spelling, punctuation, or format errors.

VII.Content/Focus

1. Sources of ideas are inadequately documented.2. No evidence of purpose or direction. Unclear theme.3. Excessive reliance on biography of historical figures.4. Scant or no coverage of events preceding icon, or those following icon, or those in the icon itself.

1. Sources of ideas are mostly documented, some inferences needed.2. Purpose and direction discernable. Theme is clear and partially limited.3. Biographical details are subordinate to the psychological contributions of historical figures4. Events preceding icon, following icon, and the icon itself are all clearly represented.

1. Sources of ideas clearly documented for further research.2. Clear purpose and direction. Theme captures reader’s attention and sustains the paper.3. Focus is clearly on the psychological contributions of historical figures.4. Events preceding icon, following icon, and the icon itself are well balanced in an engaging story.

VIII.References

1. Inappropriate references. Fewer than 5 sources or fewer than 3 journal articles. Reliance on web sources.2.. Many errors in the form of citations in either the body or the reference section.3. Many references in the body not cited in the reference section and vice versa.

1. Citations are appropriate, although not ideally matched to the content of the paper. Five sources and at least three journal articles.2. A few incorrect citations are noted in either the body or the reference section.3. A few citations in the body do not match those in the reference section.

1. Citations are appropriate to the content of the paper in breadth, depth, and currency. Many more than the minimum number of sources.2. Citations are correctly cited in both the body and the reference section.3. Citations match in the body and in the reference section.

Psychology 461 Term Paper Grading Checklist Name                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        .  

Summary Of Course Paper Rubric  Below (1) (2) Meets (3) (4) Exceeds

(5)Comments

I. Reasoning            

II. Communication            

III. Technical Usage           

IV. Grammar            

V. APA Style            

VI. Mechanics            

VII. Content, Focus            

VIII. References            

 Additional Comments: Coverage of the history of events that led up your icon  Additional Comments: Coverage of events in your icon itself  Additional Comments: Coverage of events related events that happened after icon  

 _____  Icon attached_____  Text ends on page 9, 10, or 11._____  Cover page format OK_____ Abstract summarizes in 150 words.

 _____  Overall Rating Excellent Range 30 29 28 27 26Superior Range 25 24 23Good Range 22 21 20 19 18Deficient Range 17 16 15Inadequate 14 and

below

Up to 5 points subtracted for late submission of paper