Describes a classroom demonstration that uses daily horoscopes to show the effect that expectation can have on judgment. Addresses the preparation, procedure, and results of the demonstration, and student evaluations. States that the demonstration appears to be effective for teaching students about expectancy confirmation. (CMK)

States that teachers should consider developments in clinical psychology toward manualized, prescriptive treatments for specific diagnoses when considering recommendations of the American Association for Higher Education for peer review and communization of teaching. Explains that peer review and communization of teaching could lead to educational…

In this article we describe a new classroom exercise for introducing the actor-observer bias in social perception. We describe 2 experiments that compared our new technique (which involves resolving interpersonal dilemmas for oneself and another) with a previously established technique (judging the applicability of traits for oneself and another).…

Students enrolled in a single-subject design course studied the repeated acquisition of response sequences by using CHAINS, a QuickBASIC 4.5 program, which runs in DOS or Windows. For about 2 months, students examined the learning of such sequences as a function of various treatments. Each week students graphed their data, discussed their…

Conventional wisdom is that some topics in introductory psychology are more difficult for students than others. Such wisdom seems reasonable given mismatches between students' and instructors' expectations and variations in both instructor expertise and student motivation across topical areas. Five instructors pooled students' exam performance…

This study investigates the management and the effectiveness of a personalized system of instruction (PSI) in higher education. The study examined the number of behavioral objectives completed during a lab period as a function of the grade achieved in the course. The study also compared course ratings from students who are receiving instruction in…

Describes an educational psychology course which incorporates students' requests for competency requirements, self pacing, grading based on a combination of criterion- and norm-referenced measures, flexible class format, and field experience within educational environments. (Author/AV)

Findings showed that students with little or no previous experience with exceptional children changed their attitudes in a positive direction as a result of doing volunteer work. Many students reported wanting to do more volunteer work in the future, and some continued volunteering their services. (RM)

Discussed are presentations and evaluations of Freud found in psychology textbooks from 1908 to 1975 in terms of the empirical versus the nonempirical views about the proper subject matter of psychology. Findings indicate that psychologists remain divided in their attitudes toward Freud. (Author/DB)

To make psychology course content more relevant to college students, popular television presentations can be used to illustrate psychological concepts. Students in a theories of personality course wrote brief essays explaining the behavior of their favorite TV characters. (RM)

The purpose of this survey was to identify the statistics texts most frequently used by psychology departments and to see if a typical survey of textbooks used by a partial sample of psychology departments would be accurate in describing the entire sample of departments. Partial returns resulted in a meaningful error. (RM)

The need to set up classroom conditions under which students can interact with each other about course material is discussed. Micro-labs are suggested as a means of serving this need. (Author/DB)

Described is an innovative teaching method for developing student psychological literature search skills. The method involves empirical analysis of cliches and writing abstracts of psychological studies used in support or rejection of cliche hypotheses. (Author/DB)

Examines the relationship among senior psychology student scores on the Major Field Test in Psychology (MFT), the student characteristics, and the effects of courses taken by the students. Finds that students' scores correlated with other measures of success and with the number of psychology courses already completed. (CMK)

Asserts that current animal research enables students to understand basic developmental principles. Presents results from a study that evaluated the content of 24 developmental textbooks published between 1995 and 2000, demonstrating that older studies are typically used. (CMK)