AP Psychology
Homework
Online
Calendar
AP
Scores
Summer
Reading
Unit
1: Science of Psychology
Unit
2: Memory
Unit
3: Biological Psychology
Unit
4: Sensation and Perception
Unit
5: Learning
Unit
6: Cognition
Unit
7: Intelligence
Unit
8: Motivation and Emotion
Unit
9: Lifespan & Development
Unit
10: Personality
Unit
11: Abnormal Psychology
Unit
12: Social Psychology
Summer
Reading Assignment
Greetings AP Psychers! I hope you are ready to have some serious fun this year because if you aren’t laughing, you aren’t learning and learning is what I’m here to make sure you do lots of. My goal is to make sure you never see or analyze your world the same way again after this course. We will blow the doors off your understanding of yourself and the people around you. We will work very hard, but I promise you in return, a lifetime of seeing your learning in action. For our summer assignment, we will start at the beginning. In a 3-4 page paper due on the first day of class you are to answer the following question: What is Psychology?
Now I know, psychology is one of those classes you might’ve put on your schedule without quite knowing what you were taking. When you selected US history, you pretty much knew what you were going to learn. With Psychology, it might be a bit fuzzier, so let’s bring some clarity before we go any further. Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. Since this short definition packs quite a punch, let us break it down into its three assertions.
First, this definition empathically proclaims that Psychology is a science. While you might be getting a history credit for this class, trust me, it’s a science. Psychology uses the scientific method to carefully craft creative experiments and meticulously compute complex data. Psychology might not have the epistemological assuredness of physics or chemistry, but really, when’s the last time an electron lied to his lab technician or a molecule changed her response because she thought that’s what the researcher wanted to hear. Psychologists study very complex things – humans – and we do our scientific best with the subject we’re given.
Second, this definition let’s you know that psychologists study human behavior. This is good since if you’re going to be all scientific about understanding people, you better be able to actually see what you’re talking about. Behavior is certainly something you can see. From a child’s temper tantrum to an adult’s body language during speed dating, psychologists use human behavior both as data points for their research and hopefully that research helps explain, or even predict, future behaviors.
Third, but certainly not least, psychology is the study of mental processes. Have you ever been thinking something completely different from how you’re acting? Maybe you’ve been here before? It’s seventh period and you’re planning what to do after school, but you’re still nodding along with your teacher’s lecture as if you were listening?. Yeah, that’s the type of behavior vs. mental process disparity we’re talking about. Human behavior is really only half the equation with mental processes making up the other half. This presents a problem, though. You can’t see thoughts, and as scientists, if we can’t see it, we can’t study it. Well . . . this would be the case if psychologists were devoid of two things: imagination or brain imaging tools. Tools like fMRIs and PET scans help psychologists see the inner workings of the human mind, while wonderfully creative experimental designs help us get access to what would otherwise be a black box. Armed with these two, psychologists can mine the inner workings of mental processes.
You might be thinking that I’ve pretty much done your summer reading essay for you - copy paste and you’re all set. Well, you would be wrong. While you’ll find universal agreement among modern psychologists on the presence of these three assertions, trying to find out their relative importance and underlying causes will net you lots of different answers. These different answers arise due to differing approaches to Psychology. Think of approaches as different lenses you can wear to study psychology. If you approach psychology from a biological perspective you might ask questions about how a person’s biology determines their behavior. If you approach psychology from a social perspective you might explain a person’s behavior by looking at how the presence of other people altered their behavior. These lenses help determine the questions and thus conclusions their wearer asks and gets. This is much like if you wore orange sunglasses, everything you’d see would be a bit orange. In our class we’ll focus on the following seven approaches.
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Psychodynamic
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Behavioral
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Cognitive
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Biological
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Social
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Humanistic
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Evolutionary Psychology
You are to strategically read the following six articles. They range from peer reviewed articles to magazine articles and represent the various approaches to psychology. Keep in mind that regardless of what approach you take to psychology, it is always a science. Successful papers will synthesize these articles using them as evidence to support your defintion of psychology/thesis. You will be assessed on the school’s written communication rubric.
Additional grading consideration will also be given
to:
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your ability to meaningfully use all six articles in your response.
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your ability to follow all MLA citation guidelines including both in-text citations and a works cited. (Please consult the WHS Research Manual should you have any questions).
Failure to hand in this assignment when it is due will result in the full loss of credit and put your ability to remain in the AP Psychology program at serious jeopardy. These readings and the essay will not be easy, however if you work through it, you will gain some wonderful psychological insights. As always at the AP level, should you encounter a word or term for which you cannot define in the context of a reading, it is your responsibility to seek additional sources. Should you have any questions feel free to email me at justin.galusha@weymouthschools.org you can also post questions on our Facebook page at WHS AP Psychology.
This
is a college-level class. While not required, it is highly recommended, that
you buy your own copy of the textbook like you will in college. This
will allow you to mark up the readings, make the book work for you, and have
it as a reference while you complete the summer assignment. You can purchase
the text used from Amazon by clicking
here.
|
Summer Reading: Scholarly Articles |
| Psychodynamic - This approach views the the
human psyche as an energy system. Desires or anxieties build up like
energy in the unconscious and must be released or bad things will
happen to a person’s mental health. Part
of the following article talks about how unconscious problems may
result in the development of human homosexuality.
Sexual Orientation Neuroendocrine and Psychodynamic
Influences by Richard C. Friedman |
| Behavioral - This approach only studies observable human behavior focusing on how we learn, react and manipulate our environment. The following article highlights the most important researcher in this field, Ivan Pavlov. |
| Cognitive - This approach studies cognitive process like problem solving, emotions, memory, creativity, language etc. This article is written by Joseph D. Novak, the psychologist who developed concept maps. We will be using his method of strategic reading quite a bit this year. He developed this method during a research program where he sought to follow and understand changes in students' scientific knowledge. The article not only highlights the cognitive approaches but it also defines concept mapping and summarizes the rationale for its seminal importance in education. |
| Biological
- This approach studies how the brain and the body provide the
biological mechanisms create our psychological responses. In a
wonderfully ironic move we'll use the same article that we'll used for
the psychodynamic approach also contains a biological explaination of
human homosexuality. Why is this ironic you ask? These two
approaches are pretty far apart on the psychology spectrcum.
Sexual Orientation Neuroendocrine and Psychodynamic Influences by Richard C. Friedman
|
| Social - This approach studies how the
individual is influenced by other individuals or other groups of
people. This article details one of the most famous experiments in
social psychology. It shows how powerful a bad situation can be.
Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison by Phillip Zimbardo
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| Humanistic - This optimistic approach to
psychology studies how humans can reach their full potential.
This article serves as a nice overview of this approach.
What is the Good Life? by Brent D. Robbins
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| Evolutionary Psychology - This approach tries to explain human behaviors by looking for the reproductive edge they may have given to previous generations. |
If
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