experimental-psychology

This is a good introduction to behaviorism and its history.
The book is rather short which is a good thing if you want a
brief introduction to the field (or a bad thing if you are
looking for more). Behaviorism is seeing a resurgence in AI
robotics with the work of Brooks and others. Staddon defines
enough versions of behaviorism that some of them blend into
cognitivism and the distinction becomes blurred. One possible
distinction would have been the presence or absence of internal
state. Watson's and Skinner's behaviorism allowed no state.
Cognitive science does. A discussion of state "in the world"
(scent trails, etc.) would be an interesting way to work state
into radical behaviorism. But Staddon allows state in "modern
behaviorism" and his model behaviorist theory is quite simply
a finite state machine (automaton). Another possible distinction
might have been consciousness but this is not explored in any
great detail in this (short) book. Behaviorism should be of
interest to AI people. In its more radical forms it represents
a minimalist attempt at a theory of intelligence. As such it
would be a good place for AI to begin.

Behaviorism is an excellent book that lays the foundation for the understanding of radical behaviorism and the principles of modern behaviorism in an entertaining fashion. The text is very philosophical yet very scientific in the discussion of the ever evolving field of one of most important branches of modern psychological thought. This essay easily dispels any and all of the rumors and misconceptions about the two major proponents of the field of Behaviorism being Burrhus Frederic Skinner and John Broadus Watson. Very thought provoking and informative.

Coles introduction to his book begins with his own story of being raised by parents who were much engaged in reading the classics. His parents, his father in particular, stressed to him that novels contained wisdom that could guide one throughout life. This idea holds true throughout Coles' own life as he practices psychology and then becomes a teacher. In this book, he offers examples of how this principle has helped his patients, students, friends and family deal with times of crisis and times of growth. For Coles, every reader has his or her own powerful response to a writer's work. These responses generally result from recognition of the change in a character and can lead to moral introspection where the reader begins to identify similar changes in himself. As readers connect with the character, they are able to see the ethical considerations affecting the character's situation, learn about their responsibilities to themselves, friends and society, and can make adjustments in their own lives. Coles believes that the responses to these ethical questions make us who we are. Coles specifically mentions using the works of William Carlos Williams, Tilly Olsen, Ralph Ellison, Mark Twain, Dickens, Hardy, Tolstoy and many others in his psychology practice and as a professor at Harvard. He offers examples of the effects these novels had on his patients and his medical, law, business and architecture students because of their ability to engage a reader's growing intelligence and absorb the reader into the emotions of the story line. Further, they make the reader focus on moral development, which is especially important for students who believe that development of their ability to perform a task will protect them from moral danger. The thoughts and feelings that emerge for the reader bring back memories of the past which are then analyzed and expanded in the development of the reader's moral and emotional self.

Calling upon his own memories, experiences and those of his mentor, Dr. William Carlos Williams, Robert Coles wrote a much-needed about the transformative power of stories. In learning with students at all levels one finds Dr. Coles' faith in "moral imagination" and the "call of stories" borne out.

In the first paragraph of this book, Dr. William Glasser, captures the attention of everyone concerned with the state of education in our country today by immediately identifying our number one problem. At least half of the students in any given classroom are unmotivated to learn. In a world where all teachers are steeped in the behaviorist theories of psychology, through which we are taught to manipulate student behaviors with reward and punishment, it is refreshing to read an author who acknowledges the neglected role of individual freedom and self motivation in the classroom. The students who leave our elementary schools, high schools and universities with the best education possible are those who have chosen to actively participate in the learning process. In this book, Dr. Glasser lays out a strategy for teachers who want to get more of their students involved in that process and a strong rationale for doing so. While, I believe that he sometimes needlessly overstates the potential power of choice theory, in his discussion of migraine headaches and dyslexia, for instance, he rightly presents his solution to the problem of motivating students as one of many possible solutions. He argues for the benefits of the use of a cooperative learning strategy that effectively addresses the problem of motivation by fulfilling student needs he identifies as the desire for belonging, freedom, power and fun. Through this strategy, he argues, teachers can increase student involvement and depth of learning because the students are given the opportunity to become self motivated rather than teacher motivated. His theory should be part of every teacher's base of professional knowledge, as an alternative to behaviorism, and the techniques he shares should be part of every teacher's arsenal of strategies for teaching in today's schools.

This book is the updated of "Control Theory in the Classroom". If you have that book, you don't need this one. If you don't, this is a great book for educators.

For first year graduates in Psychology this is one of the most readable texts currently on the market. As a first year Master's student, I found the text helpful in applying theory to practice. Filled with practical examples, simplicity and a minimum of statistics, this text is a must for statistic phobic graduates. The text also serves as a handy reference guide, and doubles as an invaluable tool in thesis preparation.

I had the fortunate experiences of taking a research methods course with the author using the first edition of this text during my masters work, and reviewing portions of the new second edition before publication. Dr. Whitley's text is well written and includes detailed descriptions of topics often under-developed or ignored by other authors (e.g. the social responsibilities of researchers). At all times he keeps the (often difficult) material readable and accessible to students who approach the book with varying levels of previous training, using actual published research as examples instead of the fictional studies often employed by authors. Nothing is overlooked or left to chance. By keeping the text relatively light on statistics, he has allowed even students with statistics anxiety a chance to learn what they need to know to be effective research psychologists. Copies of both editions of this text remain in my personal library and are regularly consulted when I am faced with a question in designing research projects. I am always sure of finding the correct answers.

Most of the chapters are pretty good for learning how useful internet research is going to be to you and discovering effective techniques to use, but if you're not up on decision theory, skip Mike's own. It is so arcane as to be impenetrable unless this is your field.

Generally readable and useful.

The web is a wonderful vehicle for communication and interaction. Psychology seems to finally starts to find its own path in the Internet area. This book covers this yet unchartered territory in a clear and comprehensive way and opens up new possibilities that one can't afford to ignore.

It's a very concise book and describes the theory in a very didatic way. The only problem of the book is the little enphasis to the Item Response theory (IRT).

The thing I most admire about Nunnally is how well his work holds up even decades after the book was first written, and Nunnally's own death. Although academic works such as this typically have a half life of two or three years, it seems that Nunnally may be even more useful now than it was twenty-five years ago. There are other books that address the same type of material, but they all cite Nunnally, and none have, as yet, effectively replaced him.

It was a very clear introduction to research methods. Simple and straightforward.

This book is a very well-written introduction to methods in psychological research. Goodwin's style is friendly and often humorous. The information he provides is interspersed with case studies, historical antecdotes, and other "real-world" examples of research principles being put into practice. I found the reading to go extremely fast and painlessly.

Goodwin covers such topics as the goals of scientific research, types of experimental research, the fundamentals of experimental design, ethics, subject sampling, types of measurement, assessing validity, and analysis of results. He does not go into great detail about statistics or computational analysis, as this is really meant to be a general introduction to methodology of designing research experiments.

Each chapter begins with an overview, so you have a sense of what to expect ahead. He also provides study questions at the end of every chapter which are very helpful to work through. They are in various forms: multiple choice, short answers, essays, etc. so you can practice describing the topics to be sure you understand the material. There is also a study guide published for this textbook, which I would recommend getting if only for additional practice.

Having a thorough grasp of research methods is critical for any student of psychology, and this book is probably required for many methods classes in universities. Luckily, it's a great textbook to use and makes research methodology interesting and enjoyable.

...

"The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron" is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human and how our humanity is, in a sense, created by the society in which we live, defined by our communications and relationships with others. In telling this story, Roger Shattuck has thoughtfully and sympathetically interwoven the factual story of the Wild Boy with the philosophical, psychological and historical background that ultimately makes this story so interesting. Thus, Shattuck explores the historical peculiarities of the Languedoc region from which the Wild Boy came (known for the poetry and song of the troubadors, as well as the Albigensian heresy), the historical forces which made him such a topic of interest (he was a boy seemingly straight from Rousseau's state of nature at a time when the French Revolution had given way to Napoleon), and the philosophical and psychological forerunners (Locke, Condillac, Rousseau) that provided the intellectual impetus for marking this "tabula rasa" of humanity. Shattuck's book also provides interesting appendices containing other published accounts of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, other cases of isolation and deprivation (including Kaspar Hauser, Peter of Hanover, The Elephant Man, and Helen Keller), and a short essay on Francois Truffaut's 1970 film, "The Wild Child," which is based upon the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

While simple in the telling, "The Forbidden Experiment" is a book which poses the deepest and most enigmatic of questions, the question of what it means to be human. Read it, ponder it, learn from it.

In January, 1800, a boy of about eleven or twelve years old walked out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in the Languedoc region of southern France. Except for a tattered shirt, he was naked. He had no shame or concern for his nakedness and had no ability to speak. He made only strange and apparently meaningless sounds and cries. While human in appearance, he lacked any qualities which otherwise would suggest that he was part of any human society.

The boy was captured by a villager, transported and kept for several months in an orphanage in a nearby town, and eventually transferred to Paris in June, 1800, where "The Wild Boy of Aveyron" was claimed "for science and humanity" by the newly-formed Society of Observers of Man. In Paris, the boy was given over to the Abbe Sicard, a famous educator and the head of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes. "Miracles were expected of Sicard, for some of his deaf-mute pupils had made a reputation by their intelligence and wit in answering written questions before large audiences." Sicard, however, apparently believed that he could never train the seemingly wild creature and made no efforts to do so. Instead, he left the boy to run wild at the Institute and a commission appointed by the Society of the Observers of Man subsequently declared him to be an incurable idiot.

It is at this point, however, sometime in the summer or fall of 1800, that the course of the Wild Boy's life took a different course. A twenty-five year old medical student, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard began working at the Institute and became interested in the boy. More or less simultaneously with the declaration by the Society of the Observers of Man that the boy was an incurable idiot in November of that year, Itard was hired and given a room at the Institute for the sole purpose of working with the boy. Itard named the boy Victor and went on, over the course of the next six years and with the able assistance of a motherly figure by the name of Madame Guerin, to train the boy in accordance with principles Itard had derived from the writings of Locke and Condillac. These principles were intended to give the boy the ability to respond to other people, to train his senses, to extend his physical and social needs, to teach him to speak, and to teach him to think and reason logically. While Itard was never fully successful in achieving all of his objectives, his work was remarkably original and his observations and experiments have left the world with a fascinating picture of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

"The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron" is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human and how our humanity is, in a sense, created by the society in which we live, defined by our communications and relationships with others. In telling this story, Roger Shattuck has thoughtfully and sympathetically interwoven the factual story of the Wild Boy with the philosophical, psychological and historical background that ultimately makes this story so interesting. Thus, Shattuck explores the historical peculiarities of the Languedoc region from which the Wild Boy came (known for the poetry and song of the troubadors, as well as the Albigensian heresy), the historical forces which made him such a topic of interest (he was a boy seemingly straight from Rousseau's state of nature at a time when the French Revolution had given way to Napoleon), and the philosophical and psychological forerunners (Locke, Condillac, Rousseau) that provided the intellectual impetus for marking this "tabula rasa" of humanity. Shattuck's book also provides interesting appendices containing other published accounts of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, other cases of isolation and deprivation (including Kaspar Hauser, Peter of Hanover, The Elephant Man, and Helen Keller), and a short essay on Francois Truffaut's 1970 film, "The Wild Child," which is based upon the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

While simple in the telling, "The Forbidden Experiment" is a book which poses the deepest and most enigmatic of questions, the question of what it means to be human. Read it, ponder it, learn from it.

Shattuck writes a beautiful, poignant account about an event that forever influenced the course of modern day psychology. Shattuck not only discusses "Victor" himself (behavior, reactions, etc.), but also discusses the recupercusions his capture, attempted treatment, and attempted enculturalization had philosophically, morally, and psychologically. This is definitely a well written, well researched, 3-dimensional book. It explores the subject on every level possible.

Maxwell & Delaney is better conceptually. And Winer is just work whereas Maxwell & Delaney is a pleasure. I would give Winer more stars if I didn't have the better alternative book though.

This is the source for statistics related to experiments. Everything from single factor ANOVA to complex latin squared designs are covered. It is a hard read, but worth it. Not for the novice.

Could you tell me more about what to do about unequal sample sizes within groups? Since the F ratio becomes sensitive to the non equality of variances if the group sample sizes are unequal, this becomes a very important question for the validity of the ANOVA.

"Student-Centered learning" is the current fad in educational circles, and it's a great concept if you're fortunate enough to have students who are centered enough in their own learning to respond effectively to the great ideas presented in this book. However, way too many of us do not have the luxury of teaching at a college where, according to Finkel in the Afterword, there are "no requirements for students, no majors, and no grades." In other words, the students are there to learn, and unfortunately this isn't the case in most colleges today, especially the community colleges, where, on the average, students are consumers who view meaningful learning as a bump in the road to their success, especially when they work two full time jobs, have 17 kids, and insist upon taking 18 hours a semester.

While I enjoyed reading about Finkel's teaching strategies, I found myself wondering how all this would work with my students at a community college in South Carolina, a state with a horrendous secondary educational system, where the best and brightest leave for greener collegiate pastures in other states, and the local colleges are stuck with those passive souls who have never been required to perform and don't expect to do much of anything except to be entertained.

Don't get me wrong. Finkel has some wonderful ideas about student-centered learning, but when I have used this approach in the past, my students tended to respond negatively. On evaluations, they have said that my student-centered approach was "an excuse for not being prepared." "He needs to learn how to lecture," one of them wrote. In other words, these T.V. babies want to be spoon fed, and, although Finkel correctly argues that a great teacher "refuses to teach" in the traditional sense, the student evaluations tell the tale, and that's the tale that number-crunching administrators hear.

One of Finkel's great ideas is to write each student a letter (usually four to five paragraphs) in response to each paper that they write. If I did that, I would still be writing letters from two semesters ago, because at my college we are required to teach five classes each semester, and most of these are composition courses consisting of as many as 23 students, some of whom can barely write a sentence. In these courses there are usually six papers due each semester. Can you imagine writing 690 letters a semester? I can't. But then again, Finkel isn't teaching composition, and for that he is to be commended.

To be fair to Finkel, I must say that anyone who is foolish enough to get into the educational field and fortunate enough to teach in a place that genuinely values education over consumerism, this book is definitely for you.

Finkel (may his soul rest in peace) outlines the joys and the difficulties of helping students connect with their most powerful and enduring teacher, themselves. I have long employed simulation and personal reflection as mediums for teaching adults, and found within this book much of the wisdom I have discovered for myself. Finkel notes that for many, their most powerful learnings have not happened in a classroom with a teacher present. Even so, we persist in creating classroom "learning" situations, just as if that were the proper medium for learning.

As another reviewer noted, these techniques might not gain immediate acceptance from students or administration. Remember, resistance IS the first stage of acceptance. For me, the tangle centers around my neediness to control how the learning will unfold battling with the student's neediness to simply be told. Since for most learning, there is (and can be) no simple "just do this" explanation, whenever I crumble under my neediness and simply tell, I steal a learning opportunity from my student. Stealing learning opportunities might not be the best use of any teacher's energies. Finkel explains how to set the stage and how to win this wrestling match with yourself. Explaining these opportunities away because of "unmotivated students" or "unsupportive administrations" merely guarantees that the neediness will win.

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It should be considered essential reading for anyone fool enough to pin the title of "Teacher" to their lapel. Like every competent professional, teaching requires that the practitioner understand that they cannot delight their customer by simply giving them what they want in the way they want it. True delight creeps in under the guise of novelty and surprise, as unexpected as Christmas in July. It sometimes requires that the teacher turn their mouth to the SHUT position so their student's brain can find its own ON position.

Book Review: Teaching With Your Mouth Shut, By Donald L. Finkel Reviewed by Ellie Marshall, M.S., Management Core Faculty, Connecticut Valley Region, College for Lifelong Learning, Lebanon, NH.

In what situations have you learned the most? Could it be that a teacher told you what to know or did you have to discover something for yourself? Here's how to get out from between the material and your students. _Teaching With Your Mouth Shut_ should be used as a guide to letting students do the hard work of learning with you guiding more as coach, mechanic, or spotlight operator than an expert, lecturer, and insuperable role model. Students interact with each other. The teacher's prime role is to design experiences that lead to discovery of the conceptual material.

Some may doubt, but it is possible to teach this way, even in a state community college system. I have used many of these methods for years. Back in 1998 I thanked this book's author, Don Finkel, my most memorable undergraduate mentor, during my acceptance speech as I received the Distinguished Faculty Award at The College for Lifelong Learning's graduation ceremony in Durham NH. A gymnasium filled with over 150 grandparents, parents, and adult children received Associates and Bachelor degrees, cheered on by their families in the bleachers. "He had an exemplary way of modeling good, curious learning behavior both as he was teaching and teaching with a colleague." I said at the podium. Don constructed and orchestrated some of the best learning environments I have ever experienced. Sadly, I read in 1999 that Don had died of cancer, but thankfully he left his sabbatical project _Teaching With Your Mouth Shut_, published in 2000 by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

"So this is what he was doing," I think as I read about using original author great books and book seminars where the students do the leading and talking. Don adheres to John Dewey's conviction of education as an active and constructive process and Socrates' practice of inquiry, because "knowledge is grounded in some other process than transfer from an unimpeachable Authority"(p.35). Teaching With Your Mouth Shut describes the powerful possibilities in a classroom where the faculty deliberately keeps the authority but turns the power over to students. To supplant teaching as the act of telling, written papers, conceptual workshops, student-to-student feedback on papers, and faculty letters to students about their ideas and the writing used to convey them, fulfill the process of reflection and learning. If you strive to cross-pollinate and belong to a high caliber learning community I highly recommend _Teaching With Your Mouth Shut_. It is written for all college and graduate level teachers in the hopes that they too will join in trying to chart a journey for their students, or in Don's words, "sustain a train of thought across a transformation" (p.89). Can we really teach with our mouth shut? Given the competition in higher education today, we will benefit by this inquiry, in order to "test it, to sharpen it, and to stabilize it (p. 89)." There is even a design for a conceptual workshop in the appendix so that we might experience the mouth shut process and see for ourselves what teaching can become.