Charles A. Doan, PhD

Fall 2018-19

This course is about the scientific study of the human mind: how humans sense, perceive, conceptualize, store, and use information from the environment (and from the mind itself) in order to function in the world in which they live. Discussions will pertain to key historical findings and debates associated with mental capacities pertaining to: perception, attention, similarity assessment, learning, conceptualization and categorization, memory, language, reasoning, problem solving, and judgment and decision making.  Throughout the seminar, the level of scientific rigor will be high and will include the study of influential formal models pertaining to many of the aforementioned mental capacities.

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Select Readings Include:

• Chomsky, N. (1957). A review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26–58.

• Biederman, I. (1987). Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding. Psychological Review, 94(2), 115–147.

• Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84(4), 327–352.

• Wickens, D.D. (1973). Some characteristics of word encoding. Memory & Cognition, 1(4), 485–490.

• Bahrick, H.P., Bahrick, L.E., Bahrick, A.S., & Bahrick, P.E. (1993). Maintenance of foreign language vocabulary and the spacing effect. Psychological Science, 4(5), 316–321.

• Miller, G.A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97.

• Vigo, R. (2011). Representational information: A new general notion and measure of information. Information Sciences, 181, 4847–4859.

• Nosofsky, R.M. (1984). Choice, similarity, and the context theory of classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10(1), 104–114.

• Murphy, G.L., & Medin, D.L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coherence. Psychological Review, 92(3), 289–316.

• Nosofsky, R.M. (2015). An exemplar-model account of feature inference from uncertain categorizations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(6), 1929–1941.

• Murphy, G.L. (2002). Induction. In The big book of concepts (pp. 243–269). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Gick, M.L., & Holyoak, K.J. (1983). Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1–38.

• Johnson, J.G., & Busemeyer, J.R. (2010). Decision making under risk and uncertainty. WIREs Cognitive Science, 1, 736–749.

• Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458.

• Oppenheimer, D.M., & Kelso, E. (2015). Information processing as a paradigm for decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 277–294.

Spring 2018-19 and Spring 2017-18

The focus of this course is to introduce students to the field of psychology. The course has three broad objectives:

          1.) To introduce students to the ways in which different kinds of psychologists think about and

          approach questions about cognition and behavior. You will find that different kinds of psychologists

          (e.g., biological, clinical, cognitive, social, etc...) approach psychology from different, but typically

          complementary perspectives.

          2.) To introduce students to the body of knowledge, research findings, and underlying principles

          that currently exist in the field.

          3.) To motivate students to think about how the material we cover in class applies to their daily lives.

Spring 2018-19, Spring 2017-18, Fall 2017-18, Spring 2016-17, Fall 2016-17, Fall 2015-16, Spring 2014-15

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The focus of this course is to examine and discuss the scientific study of the human mind: how humans sense, perceive, conceptualize, store, and use information from the environment in order to function in the world in which they live. Course content includes both theoretical and experimental investigations of a number of cognitive processes including the process of learning in humans.

By the end of the course, students will have a broad understanding of the field including the type of research cognitive psychologists do as well as the methods that are used. Students will also gain detailed and specific knowledge about essential cognitive processes (perception, attention, concept learning, reasoning, etc.) with an emphasis on understanding how these processes interact and relate to one another.

Fall 2018-19 and Spring 2015-16

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This course is designed to equip students with the knowledge of proper statistical techniques for data analysis in Psychology. The statistical tests covered include Analysis of Variance, Chi-Square Test of Association, Correlation, Independent-Samples T-Tests, Paired-Samples T-Tests, Regression, Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance. Additionally, students complete laboratory assignments where they demonstrate the application of these statistical tests for answering particular research questions.

Fall 2014-15, Spring 2013-14

The objectives of the course are to provide the student with basic knowledge of research in psychology and to foster the application of this knowledge to a research problem or question of interest. 

Goals to be obtained as the course progresses are:

          1.) Providing the students with the tools that they need to become sophisticated research consumers by

          thinking critically about claims based on research

          2.) Gaining an understanding of how to properly structure a scientific research report according to

          APA format

          3.) Gaining knowledge of the proper use of statistical tests on various types of research designs.

Goals to be obtained before the culmination of the course include:

          1.) A completed group research project

          2.) A group presentation regarding the research

          3.) A final paper reporting the findings of the research.