Experimental Psychology: Course Outlines (APSY-406)

Unit # 1 Introduction To Experimental Psychology

• An overview to experimental psychology
• Experimental report writing
• Psychophysics, importance of psychophysics, psychophysical methods

Unit # 2 Sensation

• The five senses: vision, hearing and other
• Psychophysics: absolute threshold, signal detection theory, just noticeable difference and sensory adaptation

Unit # 3 Perception

• Definition
• Learning and socio-cultural  factors in perception
• Gestalt laws of organization
• Depth perception
• Perceptual illusion

Unit # 4  Thinking / Cognitive Process

• Reasoning
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Creative thinking

Unit # 5 Learning

• Definition of learning
• Classical or pavlovian conditioning, the nature and acquisition of conditioned response CR , maintenance and extinction of classically conditioned response, application of classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning, Thorndike law of  effect, the basis of operant conditioning, acquisition, nature, schedules of reinforcement, generalization, discrimination, extinction, application of operant conditioning

Unit # 6 Memory

• Definition of memory
• Sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory
• Measurement of memory
• Forgetting

Unit # 7 Motivation

• Definition of motivation
• Theories of motivation: Helson and Atkinson

Unit # 8 Emotion

• Definition of emotion
• Theories of emotion: James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory Schechter-Singer theory

The course is designed to train students in designing, conducting and reporting lab experiments both on human and animal subjects; to provide conceptual clarity about cognitive processes and acquaint students with latest research in areas of learning, perception, and memory; to develop an experimental approach among students

• The students will be able to design the psychological experiment

• The students will be able to conduct and report the lab experiments both on human and animal subjects.

• The students will gain the knowledge about experimental psychology and psychophysics.The students will acquire knowledge about the latest research in areas of learning, perception, and memory

EXPERIMENT 1: Determination of two point threshold

EXPERIMENT 2: Determination of Muller-Lyer illusion

EXPERIMENT 3: Effects of practice in human maze learning

EXPERIMENT 4: Transfer of learning

EXPERIMENT 5: Comparative study of proactive and retroactive inhibition