Please note that the current edition of the textbook is not the same as the edition used in this course in previous years. You must obtain a copy of the fifth edition of the textbook. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. New York: W. Norton, Much of the lecture material that is not in the textbook may be found here.
It is therefore recommended. Available at the Coop and most bookstores. A few additional readings will be put on the course web site. Library Systems Consultant: Librarians from the Harvard College Library System are familiar with the course requirements and will introduce you to the library resources that will help you with assignments.
The course liaison is Susan Gilroy sgilroy fas. About the Course: Catalogue Description: An introduction to the workings of the human psyche as illuminated by experimental psychology, neuroscience, genetics, evolution, artificial intelligence, and the social sciences. The main academic discipline that studies the human mind is psychology, but insights about the mind can come from fields ranging from molecular biology to literary criticism.
This course focuses on the scientific study of the mind, that is, on research that aims to explain the greatest number of facts with the fewest number of assumptions, that formulates hypotheses which are falsifiable by empirical tests, and that connects its findings to other sciences, particularly biology.
At the same time, the course will touch on the social sciences, because social phenomena arise when individual people perceive and react to one another. And it will touch on the arts and humanities, because works of art and scholarship are products of the human mind. The course will expose you to four streams of information.
The Psychology textbook presents the smorgasbord known as psychology in all its wondrous variety. The readings for your papers will introduce you to competing viewpoints and the primary scientific literature.
Lectures: You must attend all the lectures; as a rule lectures will not be videotaped. Anything mentioned in a lecture may be on the exams, including material that is not in any of the readings. If you miss a lecture, it is your responsibility to find out what was covered.
All the lectures have handouts. They are intended to spare you from having to write down every diagram and term mentioned in the lecture; they are not a substitute for attending the lecture and taking notes.
Sections: Also required. To facilitate the weekly discussions and to provide a regular feedback mechanism about your mastery of the course material, short quizzes will be given at the beginning of each section meeting. Ten percent of your grade will come from section participation, including completion and discussion of the quiz questions which will not themselves be graded.
Backup readings: The passages from How the Mind Works are a backup to the lectures, and will overlap with them, though not perfectly. They are not a substitute for the lectures. And many parts of the lectures will not be in any of the readings. The readings will clarify major parts of the lectures; you are not responsible for any material in them that was not mentioned in the lectures.
Papers: Forty percent of your grade will be determined by written assignments. The primary paper, about fifteen pages for the final draft, will require you to research some topic in greater depth than you will find in the readings. These assignments have a number of goals. Research on the human mind can be intensely controversial. I have opinions on many of these controversies, which are reflected in the lectures and the selection of readings. The assignment presents you with an opportunity to explore contrasting opinions.
In addition, the assignment will force you to immerse yourself in an empirical literature on a topic and to read articles in the primary scientific literature. The first and final drafts will be graded independently and given equal weight. You will also be asked to submit four short assignments during the semester.
They include requests for you to think about some issue, previews of your major paper, and reports of participation in psychology department experiments. Serving as a participant is an excellent way to get a feel for what research on the human mind actually consists of, and to learn about areas of ongoing research that are not covered in the lectures or textbook. You will receive detailed guidelines about the writing assignments, beginning in the second week of class.
Students are responsible for knowing what constitutes plagiarism; please refer to pp. Papers that are late will be subject to a late penalty of ten percentage points about a letter grade per day. The late penalty will be waived only in cases of sickness, inescapable conflicts, or other emergencies, and only with a letter from your House Master or Senior Tutor or, in the case of freshmen, Assistant Dean of Freshmen. Students intending to write a thesis should plan ahead to avoid deadline conflicts; this course has not allowed assignment deadlines to be moved in order to accommodate thesis deadlines.
Assistance in Writing: Harvard has a number of sources of support for assistance in writing. We encourage you to use them, especially if your first assignment shows that you could use the help.
It will be given during a class period and will last about an hour and a quarter. The final exam will cover the entire course. It will be given during the exam period and will last three hours. The readings are keyed to the lectures. When page numbers are given, begin reading at the major section heading on the indicated page. Making the familiar seem strange. Examples of remarkable feats of the human mind: seeing, thinking, moving, emotions about things, emotions about people.
HTMW: Chapter 1, pp. Psychoanalysis Freud ; Behaviorism Skinner. Components of the modern approach: Cognition; computation; neuroscience; evolution. Cerebral Cortex, 15, Hauk, O. Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex. Neuron, 41, Suggested: Pulvermuller, R. Brain mechanisms linking language and action. Nature, 6, Neuroimaging of Memory. Wixted, J.
A theory about why we forget what we once knew. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, Corkin, S. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, Medial and temporal lobe function and memory. Functional dissociation among components of remembering: Control, perceived oldness, and content. The Journal of Neuroscience, 23, Beta Adrenergic activation and memory for emotional events. Nature, , Suggested: Anderson, A.
Emotion enhances remembrance of neutral events past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, , Implicit memory: History and current status. Schacter, D. Priming and the brain. Neuron, 20, Ashby, F. Category learning and multiple memory systems. The automaticity of social life.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, Lieberman, M. Intuition: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Psychological Bulletin, , Working Memory. Science, , Jonides, J. Working Memory and Thinking. Davachi, L. Domain specificity in cognitive systems. Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. What can research on shizophrenia tell us about the cognitive neuroscience of working memory?
Neuroscience, , Reuter-Lorenz, P. New visions of the aging mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, Working Memory and the Mind. Scientific American, , Dissociating the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex in cognitive control. Egner, T. Cognitive control mechanisms resolve conflict through cortical amplification of task-relevant information. Nature Neuroscience, 8, Attention and the frontal lobes.
The Neural Bases of Mental Function. In Neuropsychology, Chapter 10, pp. Van Veen, V. Conflict and cognitive control in the brain. Levesque, J. Neural correlates of conscious self-regulation of emotion. The Journal of Neuroscience, 21, Ochsner, K.
Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, The cognitive control of emotion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 5 , Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game.
McClure, S. Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Judgement under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Problem solving.
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