In Psychology 202, you will study human behavior and mental processes in the areas of:

• Learning
• Memory
• Thinking and Language
• Intelligence
• Personality
• Psychological Disorders
• Therapies
• Stress, Coping and Health
• Social Psychology

Learning requires understanding and remembering new ideas and information, and the first assignment in each unit provides presentations and exercises to help you do this.  But meaningful learning also requires analyzing and comparing new ideas and information to what we and others know, applying new ideas to real life, and assessing the value of what we are learning.  Therefore, the course includes assignments that involve applying and discussing what you are studying.  This requires that everyone work through the course on the same weekly schedule and, participate in the discussion forums in a certain time frame.

If you do well in this course, you will be able to:

• Explain how organisms learn through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
• Identify processes involved in the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information and how these processes impact your own memory.
• Explain how people think using concepts, solving problems, and making judgments; describe how language develops and how thinking and language reciprocally influence each other.
• Describe varying conceptualizations of intelligence and identify genetic and environmental influences on intelligence; demonstrate an understanding of the principles involved in test construction.
• Define stress and describe its effect on health; identify coping strategies and explain how stress and health relate to your own life.
• Identify the major theoretical perspectives of personality and articulate their similarities and differences; describe psychological findings on the self and recognize the influence of the self in your own behavior.
• Differentiate between abnormal and normal behavior; identify the symptoms of major psychological disorders and explain what roles biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors play in causing these disorders.
• Identify the major psychotherapy and biomedical therapies used to treat psychological disorders and articulate their effectiveness.
• Explain the major social psychological concepts involved in how people think about, influence, and relate to one another and describe how these relate to your own life.

Your course grade will be determined according to the following points:

Extra Credit

You may submit up to five (5) current outside examples of concepts covered in the course. Each will be worth 7 points. These should be posted in the Current Events forum on the Blackboard course site.

There are 3 proctored exams in this course.

Last Updated: May 2, 2012