Introduction to Psychology

University of Illinois at Chicago

Course Goals: This course will give you an overview of the field of psychology and expose you to the many sub-disciplines that make up the science of psychology. By the end of this course, students will be able to:

Apply concepts, language, and major theories from psychological literature to explain human behavior across a variety of contexts
Critically evaluate research (articles and news reports) that purport to explain human behavior
Design simple experiments that test various explanations of human behavior

Introduction to Psychology -Lab

Lake Forest College

By the end of the laboratory sequence, students will be able to:

distinguish between basic types of research designs
identify the distinguishing characteristics and key components of an experiment
identify major methodological strengths and weaknesses in psychological research
use SPSS to (a) summarize data using graphs and some basic descriptive statistics; and (b) evaluate simple hypotheses using some basic inferential statistics
design and conduct simple studies to test hypotheses about human behavior

Research Methods in Psychology

University of Illinois at Chicago

This course is designed to provide an overview of the most widely used methods employed by psychologists and other behavioral scientists. You will get a basic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the various research strategies used by psychologists so that you can a) become an informed consumer of research, and b) have the skill set necessary to conduct research.

Upon completion of this course you will learn to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various research strategies so that you will be able to read, evaluate and report on research in the behavioral science literature and in the media. In addition, you will develop a set of research skills that will enable you to formulate a testable research question and design a research study to test your prediction.

Psychology of Language

Lake Forest College

Language characterizes one of the most important and pervasive aspects of human behavior. Yet it’s easy to take language for granted. It comes so easily to use that we barely have to think about it as we transform thoughts into words and sentences anyone can understand. In fact, we use language so effortlessly- most of the time - that we rarely stop to think about what is involved in learning it, producing it, understanding it, and using it to accomplish goals, or how it affects our social lives and social status. So what is language and how does it work? How do we communicate our thoughts to other people? This course will introduce you to some of the fundamental insights and major issues about the nature of human language use in everyday life.

At the end of this class, you should be able to a) think critically about research and theories related to psycholinguistic phenomena, b) identify and investigate a psycholinguistic topic of personal interest, and c) effectively communicate your findings and conclusions in both oral and written forms.