Developmental Psychology - Syllabus

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Developmental Psychology

Professor Prof. C. U. Ceallachán
Fall 2011
Email: [e-mail] (Please include "[H/W]," "[Assignment]," or "[Other],"including brackets, as part of the subject line depending on what your e-mail is about.)
Class Location: Golisano
Office Hours: Monday to Friday 11am - 6pm or by appointment
Office Location: Golisano
Class Length: 80 minutes (20 minutes allocated for breaks during class)

Course Description:

We can look into the cribs of newborn babies and wonder what they are thinking and who they will become. How do they make sense of the buzzing confusion around them and, in just two years, learn hundreds of words? We can watch pre-school children playing and wonder if they are just little adults or if there is something fundamentally different between childhood and adulthood. We can see high school students mastering calculus while others struggle with arithmetic. What accounts for the individual differences that develop between us? Do we become our adult selves because of something driving us from within or are we shaped by outside forces like parents, schools, and society? In this class, we will learn what science, yes science, can tell us about development and how scientists figure these things out. Now don't be fooled it may seem that this class is going to be boring and that we'll be more concentrated on the science aspects. Your efforts in this class will help you understand people in new ways and prepare you to study development scientifically.

There's also another term for this class and that would be Evolutionary psychology, this examines psychological traits — such as memory, perception, or language — from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychology applies the same thinking to psychology, arguing that the mind has a modular structure similar to that of the body with different modules having adapted to serve different functions. Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.

Psychological adaptations, according to EP, might include the abilities to infer others' emotions, to discern kin from non-kin, to identify and prefer healthier mates, to cooperate with others, and so on. Consistent with the theory of natural selection, evolutionary psychology sees organisms as often in conflict with others of their species, including mates and relatives. For example, mother mammals and their young offspring sometimes struggle over weaning, which benefits the mother more than the child. Evolutionary psychology emphasizes the importance of kin selection and reciprocity in allowing for prosocial traits such as altruism to evolve. Like chimps and bonobos, humans have subtle and flexible social instincts, allowing them to form extended families, lifelong friendships, and political alliances. In studies testing theoretical predictions, evolutionary psychologists have made modest findings on topics such as infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price and parental investment.

Expectations & How to Succeed in Class[/size]

It is my hope that your interest will be sparked in this course so that long after it is over you will continue to pursue answers to the questions that interest you most, whether in your careers as psychologists, as teachers or parents, or in your own introspection about yourselves. It is my expectation that you will do your best to learn as much as you can, even if this means seeking me out after classes, or even calling me at one in the morning with a question (I've had someone do that to me before). I am always happy to meet with you during office hours to discuss any course-related issues on your mind. I arrive to class 5-10 minutes early, and stick around after class for another 5-10 minutes. Please feel free to use this time for quick questions or to schedule a time to meet with me. If it helps then I'll even start up a Psychology Homework Club for you my students.

I have some minimum expectations:-

• Please if you must leave early, please let me know before class begins, if that can't be helped then it can't be helped.
  
• Be prepared for class. (Make sure to read the texts that you've been set with.)
  
• Try to focus your attention during class on our class; for example, do not attend our class while completing work for another class.
  
• In addition to the reduction in your grade, cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty violate university policy.
  
• To help you structure your notes and follow the ideas discussed in class, an outline of each class is available and the papers with the outlines will be on your desk at the beginning of each session.
  
• Eating/Drinking, eating and drinking are allowed in my classes, you can bring food and drink with you to lectures, however make sure to keep the room tidy.
  
• Music, for those of you who concentrate better with background music, you may listen to your music so long as it's at a low enough level that you can hear the class over it.
  
• Smoking, you cannot smoke in class however, if we do have smokers in the class I'll allow TWO ten minute breaks during the class so that would be, twenty minutes of the lecture, then a break, another twenty minutes, then another break and then the last twenty minutes of the class. Please be aware that if you're late back from that break, the class will resume without you.
  
• Respect, I respect you and you respect the other members of the class and myself. It's a two way street so let's all get along without any condesending and callous comments towards each other.
  

Classes and how the effect your grades

You should attend every class. I understand that extenuating circumstances arise that can make this difficult, but please let me know before class if you cannot attend, a phone call or e-mail will do, if not then tell the office and they'll deliver the message to me. If circumstances make you miss more than 5 classes during the semester, you may have over-extended yourself and you should consider dropping the class. Though I neither require you to attend nor penalize your grade for missing class, students who attend regularly consistently get better grades (r=.72). Here is a table that summarizes attendance by final course grade for 362 students over the last 5 semesters.

Letter Grade	No. of Classes missed
A	3
B	6
C	9
D	12
F	18

Sometimes students may tell me that they skip class because they get notes from classmates. I decided to do some research and so surveyed last years students about their class preparation. Students who used another students' notes had course averages 5 points lower than the class average; students who missed more than 5 classes and used somebody else's notes had course averages 34 points lower! Students with higher ACT standardized test scores did no better in this class (r=.06) though students who do well in their other classes (i.e., GPA) are more likely to do well in this class (r=.30). You can retake tests and redo your assignments, as I'll make sure that we do a mock up of both, just for you as I'd like it if even the worst students can pass.

Since this is a 4000 senior-level college class, I assume that you are fully capable of learning through reading chapters and notes. Class-time is an opportunity to push yourself to learn more deeply and thoroughly than you can completely on your own. Class-time is also enjoyable because we generally have more of a discussion rather than lectures and we make concepts concrete by watching videos and other things that are based on studies, which have already been done, this is to further your learning curve. Your questions about developmental psychology are always appreciated.

Grading

Your efforts in this class will help you understand people in new ways and prepare you to scientifically study development across the lifespan of a person or persons. Learning means knowing key concepts from the major content areas of developmental psychology. The course calendar provides a broad list of the content areas. Before each class begins, I display an abbreviated class outline with major themes. During class I emphasize the key concepts in the titles of slides and in words emphasized in BRIGHTLY COLORED BOLD AND UNDERLINED TEXT!. Learning also means thinking critically about the content: make connections between concepts and apply these concepts to your other classes and to the rest of life. Grades reflect this learning.

Exams are designed to assess your mastery of core concepts covered in lecture, discussion, and the assigned readings.
You will take 3 exams accounting for 93% of your grade.
Exams should only take approximately 45 minutes to complete, but please take your time and remember that you have the full class meeting allotted (80 minutes).
Exams will be comprised of different kinds of questions such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and essay. Though some questions will ask you for basic, factual information, most questions will ask you to integrate concepts or apply what you learned to a new situation, this also allows you to express your own views and support them with your own facts and knowledge.
This means that the exams are definitely challenging.
But please do not let that discourage you!
Each exam is out of 114% so you can get questions wrong and still get a perfect score.
I provide additional points for attendance and active class participation.
Remember from the "How to Succeed in Class" section above, you almost certainly will get an A or B if you attend regularly, engage with the class, and conscientiously complete assignments.
Scaled grades will be posted on the course website.
A handout about preparing for exams will be availiable; we will discuss it in depth about one week before the first exam.
You can review your exam with me.
You do not need to provide any excuse for missed exams.
However, make-up and retake exams will only be given at the end of the semester during the hours that will be specified.
Students majoring in this class can enroll for extra credit by becoming involved in conducting some developmental psychology research with my lab.
Students majoring should see me for details.

To foster thinking about psychology beyond the classroom, you will complete at least 6 points of assignments worth 6% of your final grade (see table below).

There are 12 points to choose from and you can do every assignment for the 6% and earn extra credit of up to 6% on your final class grade.

Handouts on the course website describe each assignment in more depth.

A simple assignment to provide a photograph of yourself accounts for 2% of your grade.

I would like a photograph of each of you so that I can learn your names quickly at the beginning of the semester.

Points	Connection-to-Developmental-Psychology Assignment
2	Analyze a popular culture reference (e.g., song, tv show, movie) or a scholarly source outside psychology (e.g., literary novel, philosopher's theory, artistic movement) for its developmental themes. How does it understand development in comparison and in contrast to developmental psychology?
3	Critique two related peer-reviewed developmental psychology empirical journal article. Compare and contrast the studies and compare and contrast them with class. In the process you may learn to use PsychINFO, the card catalog of psychology articles.
3	Create a video clip (.mpg or .mov) that illustrates a developmental concept or study. Write a one-page description. This assignment may be done in small groups and a Moodle discussion board provides a place to find classmates for collaboration.
2	Write a personal reflection on a conceptual change. What did you used to believe, what did you come to believe, and what were the mechanisms of change?
2	Write a personal reflection comparing and contrasting an aspect of your development with an aspect of developmental psychology discussed in class. How did class influence the way you look back on this aspect of your development?

At the end of the semester, additional scaling of the final course grade of up to a full letter grade (10pts) will take into account improvement over the semester and compensate for one particularly bad grade. Scaling most benefits those who 'bomb' exam 1 and then show dramatic improvement. In previous semesters, at different places, many students who failed exam 1 have seen the TA or their tutor for help. They learned more about where they went wrong, how to study for conceptual questions, and how to answer essay questions. On exam 2 many have scored 20 points higher and a little higher still on exam 3. With the scaling, many who began the semester with D's and F's have earned A's and B's for their overall class grade!


Readings

Rather than reading a typical textbook, which provides an overview of a topic, we will read a book specifically written to emphasize how developmental psychologists discovered something new. We will discuss the assigned reading in class, so be sure to think critically about what you read. Each chapter ends with several discussion questions that you should ponder before class. The required book is:

Dixon, W. E. (2003). Twenty studies that revolutionized child psychology.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

I choose this because it's easier to study the way a child develops psychologically from birth to adult hood rather than an adult, since there's much that changes in the earlier years of a persons life.

Our class readings also include 3 journal articles that are available as PDF files through the course website (accessible through your University account). These studies are not mentioned in our book so they will help fill in gaps to provide you with a thorough perspective on developmental psychology. Reading primary sources also gives you the opportunity to learn more about the process of conducting research in psychology. Citations of the journal articles are in the class schedule.

With that...

GOOD LUCK[/u][/i]