Computer Based Laboratory Instruction in Human Information Processing

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校正在开发一种以计算机为基础的实验心理学实验室教学设施。每个工作站都有辅助硬件，使其能够用于专门的实验练习。该项目改进的初级课程是心理学领域的高级实验室课程，称为人类信息处理。人类信息处理研究关注人类如何感知、学习、记忆和思考信息。这三门实验课的总体结构是一样的。学生们以小组形式一起进行一系列的心理实验。随着课程的进展，学生对实验的设计承担越来越多的责任。课程结束时，学生们进行自己设计的扩展实验项目。这三门课程中的每一门都专注于不同的内容领域：一门是关于记忆、学习和推理的，一门是关于注意力和表现的，一门是关于感知和心理物理学的。除了教授一般实验室技术外，这些课程的一个目标是向学生介绍计算机在现代研究和数据分析中的使用。使用计算机组织和分析信息的能力是当今许多专业工作的必备技能；因此，让学生熟悉个人工作站上可用的技术是大学教学任务的重要组成部分。对于理科学生来说，这些课程是教学生如何使用计算机进行数据采集和分析。

The University of California at Santa Barbara is developing a facility for computer based laboratory instruction in experimental psychology. Each work station has ancillary hardware which enables it to be used in specialized experimental exercises. The primary courses improved by this project are in upper level laboratory courses in the area of psychology known as Human Information Processing. Research in Human Information Processing is concerned with how humans perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. The three laboratory courses have the same general structure. Students work together in small groups to conduct a series of psychological experiments. As the course progresses, students take progressively more responsibility for the design of their experiments. The course concludes with students conducting an extended experimental project of their own design. Each of the three courses is focusing on a separate content area: one on memory, learning, and reasoning, one on attention and performance, and one on perception and psychophysics. In addition to teaching general laboratory techniques, a goal of these courses is to introduce students to the use of computers in modern research and data analysis. The ability to use computers to organize and analyze information is a necessary skill for many of today's professional jobs; therefore, it is an important part of the teaching mission of a university to acquaint students with the techniques available on personal workstations. For students who go in science, these courses are teaching students how to use of computers for data acquisition and analysis.