56: 830: 501
Introductory Proseminar
Fall 2009

http://crab.rutgers.edu/~roseman/prosem09.htm

Goals of the Course:

     To familiarize students with the work of members of the department.
     To broaden students' knowledge of the different substantive areas within the field of psychology.
     To increase students' understanding of the choices involved in selecting research questions and methods.
     To suggest possible research opportunities for students and assist them in the eventual selection of a mentor.

Course Description:

     Each week in this course, a different member of the Rutgers-Camden Psychology Department will talk about his or her work with the students enrolled in the class.  During the first half of each class meeting, the speaker will present the research that he or she has done and is now doing.  Speakers may recount how they came to be interested in psychology, and in the research questions they have sought to answer; the work they have already done; how that work led to their current research; and, especially, the details of their current projects.    It is hoped that this will be useful in helping students gain useful insights into the research process, choose tentative thesis advisors and committee members, and identify thesis and non-thesis projects on which they might like to work.

     The second half of each meeting will be devoted to a class discussion of the speaker's work, in which the students can ask questions and offer comments on the research.  Each speaker is providing us with a set of readings about his or her work, and in some cases about the context for this work, and everyone is expected to have done these readings in advance of the class in which the speaker is presenting.  To help us achieve our course goals, I ask that each student come to class prepared to answer 6 questions about each

speaker's work:

 

1. What question or questions is the speaker currently trying to answer in his or her  research?

2. Why has the speaker chosen the methods (s)he is using to answer these question(s)?

3. Is there anything you don't understand about the speaker’s research?

4. What is most interesting to you about the speaker's research?

5. Is there anything you might do differently than the speaker is doing, if you were trying to answer his or her research question (and why or why not)?

6. If you were to do a study to add to knowledge in the speaker's research area, what might it be, and why would this be interest to you and of theoretical and/or practical importance?

 

Everyone should be prepared to take part in this discussion, and in reacting to a speaker’s research you should not hesitate to critique the work or to suggest how this research might be extended or applied.

Attendance:

          To achieve the objectives of this course, class attendance is essential.  Unless an absence is truly unavoidable, students are expected to come to every class.  Please let me know in advance, by phone, voicemail, or email, if you will be missing a class session.

Grading:

            Grades will be based 25% on class participation and 75% on a final paper.  I expect the paper will ask you to choose a research area discussed by one of the speakers, and give an in depth answer to question 6 above.  Further details will be provided later in the semester.

SCHEDULE AS OF 10/31/09

     DATE          FACULTY MEMBER & FIELD                                  READING

Sep 8

Introduction to the course

 

 

Sep 14

Bill Tucker
History of Psychology

Tucker, W.H. (1994). The Science and Politics of Racial Research. Urbana: University of Illinois Press (read pp. 54-87, 97-110).

 

Tucker, W.H. (2003). A closer look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton. Albany Law Review, 66, 1145-1160.

 

Tucker, W.H. (2009). The Cattell Controversy: Race, Science, and Ideology. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. (read chapters 1 and 2)

 

Sep 21

Sean Duffy
Early Childhood & Cross-Cultural Psychology

Shepard, R. (1987). Toward a universal law of generalization for the psychological sciences.  Science, 237,  1317-1323.

 

Duffy, S., & Kitayama, S. (in press). Cultural modes of seeing through cultural modes of being: Cultural influences on visual attention. To appear in E. Balcetis & G.D. Lassiter (Eds.) The Social Psychology of Visual Perception.

Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., & Uchida, Y. (2007). Self as a cultural mode of being.  In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology.  New York: Guilford.

 

Shweder, R.A. (1990). Cultural psychology - What is it? In Stigler, J.W., Shweder, R.A. and Herdt, G. (Eds.) Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development (pp. 1-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Sep 28

Mary Bravo
Visual Processes

Wolfe, J.M., Kluender, K.R., Levi, D.M., Bartoshuk, L.M., Herz, R.S., Klatzky, R.L. & Lederman, S.J. (2006). Sensation & Perception. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates. (read chapter 8)

 

Bravo, M.J. & Farid, H. (2008). A scale invariant measure of image clutter. Journal of Vision, 8, 1-9.

 

Bravo, M.J. & Farid, H. (2009). The specificity of the search template. Journal of Vision, 9, 1-9.

 

Oct. 5

Bill Whitlow

Reasoning & Decision Making

Harris, J.A. (2006). Elemental representations of stimuli in associative learning.  Psychological Review, 113, 584-605.

 

Melchers, K.G., Shanks, D.R. & Lachnit, H. (2008). Stimulus coding in human associative learning: Flexible representations of parts and wholes. Behavioral Processes, 77, 413-427.

 

Whitlow, J.W. Jr., (2009). The effect of outcome valence on positive and negative patterning in human causal reasoning. Manuscript submitted for publication.

 

 

 

Oct 15

Sarah Allred

Allred, S. R., & Jagadeesh, B. (2007). Quantitative comparison between neural response in macaque inferotemporal cortex and behavioral discrimination of photographic images Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 1263 - 1277.

 

Allred, S. R. & Brainard, D. H. (2009). Contrast, constancy, and measurements of perceived lightness under parametric manipulation of surface slant and surface reflectance. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 26, 949-961.

 

Allred, S. R. (2009). Approaching color with Bayesian algorithms. In G. Hatfield & S. R. Allred, Visual experience: Sensation, cognition and constancy (book proposal)

 

 

Oct 19

Michelle Verges

Estes, Z., Verges, M., & Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Head up, foot down: Object words orient attention to the objects' typical location. Psychological Science, 19, 93-97.

 

Verges, M., & Duffy, S. (2009). Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery. Cognitive Science, 33, 1157-1172.

 

Oct 26

Naomi Marmorstein
Clinical Psychology

Glantz. M.D. & Leshner, A.I. (2000). Drug use and developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 12, 795-814.


Marmorstein, N.R., Malone, S.M. & Iacono, W.G. (2004). Psychiatric disorders among offspring of depressed mothers: Associations with paternal psychopathology. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 1588-1594.

 

Marmorstein, N.R. (in press). Longitudinal associations between alcohol problems and depressive symptoms: Early adolescence through early adulthood. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 33, 49-59.

 

Marmorstein, N.R., Iacono, W.G., & McGue, M. (2009). Alcohol and illicit drug dependence among parents: Associations with offspring externalizing disorders. Psychological Medicine, 39, 149-155.

 

Nov 2

Dan Hart
Adolescent Development

Evans, G.W. (2004). The environment of childhood poverty. American Psychologist, 59, 77-92.

Hart, D., Eisenberg, N., & Valiente, C. (2007). Personality change at the intersection of autonomic arousal and stress. Psychological Science, 18, 492-497.

 

Hart, D., Atkins, R. & Matsuba, M. K. (2008). The association of neighborhood poverty with personality change in childhood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 1048-1061.

 

Hart, D., & Marmorstein, N. (2009). Neighborhoods and genes and everything in between: Understanding adolescent aggression in social and biological contexts. Developmental Psychopathology, 21, 961-73.

 

Nov 9

Charlotte Markey
Health Psychology

Friedman, H.S., & Adler, N. E. (2007). The history and background of health psychology. In H. S. Friedman & R. C. Silver (Eds.) Foundations of health psychology (pp. 3-18). New York: Oxford University Press.


Markey, C.N., Markey, P.M. & Birch, L.L. (2001). Interpersonal predictors of dieting practices among married couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 464-475.


Markey, C.N., Markey, P.M. & Tinsley, B.J. (2003). Personality, puberty, and preadolescent girls’ risky behaviors: Examining the predictive value of the Five-Factor Model of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 405-419.

Markey, C.N., Gomel, J.N., & Markey, P.M. (2008). Romantic relationships and eating regulation:  An investigation of partners’ attempts to control each others’ eating behaviors. Journal of Health Psychology, 13, 422-432.

 

Markey, C. N. & Markey, P. M.  (2009).  Body Image.  In. R. Levesque (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Adolescence.  Manuscript in preparation.

 

Nov 16

Mike Wogan

Psychology & Law

Wogan, M., & MacKenzie, M. (2002). Anti-social personality disorder in a sample of imprisoned non-sex, non-arson adult male offenders. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 35, 31-49.

 

Wogan, M., & MacKenzie, M. (2007). An inmate classification system based on PCL: SV factors scores in a sample of prison inmates. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 44, 25-42.

 

Wogan, M. (2009). PCL-R and PCL:SV. Handout.

 

 

Nov 23

Luis Garcia
Human Sexuality

Garcia, L., Cavalie, C., Goins, L., King, E.  (2008). Enjoyment of sexual activities and attributions of enjoyment to the other gender. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 17, 173-182.

 

Garcia, L., & Markey, C. (2007).  Matching in sexual experience for married, cohabiting, and dating couples.  Journal of Sex Research, 44, 1-6.

 

Garcia, L. (2006).  Perceptions of sexual experience and preferences for dating and marriage. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 15, 31-41.

 

Garcia, L. (1983). Sexual stereotypes and attributions about sexual arousal. Journal of Sex Research, 19, 366-375.

Garcia, L. & Derfel, B. (1983). Perception of sexual experience: The impact of nonverbal behavior. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 9, 871-878.

Garcia, L. (2006). Perceptions of sexual experience and preferences for dating and marriage. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 15, 85-94.

Garcia, L. & Carrigan, D. (1998). Individual and gender differences in sexual self-perceptions. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 10, 59-70.

 

Garcia, L., Cieselka, C., & Fuchs, D. (1999). Social comparison processes in sexual self-perception,  Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 11, 35-42.

Garcia, L. & Hoskins, R. (2001). Actual-ideal self discrepancy and sexual esteem and depression. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 13, 49-61.

                

 

Nov 30

Ira Roseman
Human Emotions

Roseman, I.J. (2001). A model of appraisal in the emotion system. In K.R. Scherer, A. Schorr & T. Johnstone (Eds.), Appraisal Processes in Emotion (pp. 68-91). New York: Oxford University Press.


Roseman, I. J., Spindel, M. S., & Jose, P. E. (1990). Appraisals of emotion-eliciting events: Testing a theory of discrete emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 899-915.

Roseman, I. J., & Evdokas, A. (2004). Appraisals cause experienced emotions: Experimental evidence. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 1-28.

 

Roseman, I.J., Swartz, T.S., Newman, L., & Nichols, N. (2009). Phenomenology, behaviors, and goals also differentiate positive emotions.  Unpublished Manuscript, Rutgers University.

 

Dec 7

Conclusion