Understanding how science arrives at its conclusions is acknowledged to be of equal or greater importance than knowing a list of scientific facts. This project develops an introductory course which concentrates on psychology as a laboratory science studying physiological and cognitive processes (a separate course already covers the social and applied areas of psychology). A series of laboratory projects is used to organize and introduce the means and methods (as well as the results) of three of psychology's main divisions of research: Physiological Processes, Sensation and Perceptual Processing, and Learning, Memory, and Cognition. The addition of six computers allows students to participate as subjects and experimenters (e.g. demonstration of iconic memory, the Sternberg task and working memory, semantic priming, etc.). Four of these computers are equipped with psychophysiological measurement modules for monitoring muscle activity, heart rate, and skin conductance allowing students to reproduce basic psychophysiological phenomena (e.g. elicitation and habituation of orienting, classical conditioning and modification of reflexes, etc.). This curriculum will prepare departmental majors for their required sequence of research courses and increase the scientific literacy of non-majors taking the course as an elective.
