Teaching
Courses taught at IWU
Overview of perceptual and cognitive psychology. Topics include visual and auditory illusions, motion and depth perception, face recognition, attention, memory and amnesia, first and second language acquisition, problem solving, judgment and decision making, intelligence, and creativity. Students participate in computer-based experiments that are classics in the field of human perception and cognition. Prerequisite: Psychology 100.
Design, analysis, and reporting of psychological research. This course is writing intensive. Prerequisites: Psychology 100, Psychology 227, and one of the following -- Psychology 211, 212, 213, 215, 217, or 218.
An advanced course in the field of cognitive psychology, specifically in the study of intuition in decision making and problem solving. Students learn to read and evaluate the empirical literature on intuition and conduct experiments to test hypotheses about intuition. The course has two formats: seminar and lab. Seminar discussions focus on the theories and methods of research articles on topics in higher cognition. In lab, students participate in and design experiments to test their own hypotheses about the nature of intuition. Prerequisites: Psychology 212 and Psychology 300.
What does it mean to be "creative?" Can creativity be measured or taught? What do we know about the creative process? Is there such a thing as a creative personality? In this course, students discuss the methods and issues involved in empirical research on creativity from various psychological perspectives. Students also keep a creativity journal and pose questions to experts about their creative work. Prerequisites: Psychology 300 or permission of instructor.
If you are interested in doing a senior thesis, please visit the research page to read about our current work. Please contact me if you are interested in joining the lab.
To access the course websites of these classes, please log in at my.iwu.edu.