Teaching Research Methods and Cognitive Psychology Laboratories with a Networked Microcomputer Cluster

这项建议是我们增加心理学专业学生参与独立科学研究计划的一个组成部分。我们有两个目标：一是提高我们专业的科学思维质量，让他们接受更有效的通识教育；二是鼓励更多的学生投身认知科学事业。所要求的微型计算机集群将使我们能够整合关于学习、记忆和认知以及感知的研究方法课程和认知核心课程。此外，我们将有更大的灵活性，为实验室增加及时的实验。学生将能够操纵这些实验的参数，以便他们能够更全面地参与整个研究过程，而不是简单地通过实验来确认原理。最后，心理系的监督小组将为学生提供使用计算机的专家帮助，并将创造一个学生可以聚集在一起，开展研究项目，并讨论结果的地方。这增加了学生对研究的参与，应该会导致更多的学生进行独立项目。因此，我们设想了一条综合的、以实验室为基础的课程道路，从研究设计和分析的基本指导开始，最终完成一项独立的研究。

This proposal is one component of our plan to increase the participation of psychology majors in independent scientific research. We have two goals: One is to increase the quality of scientific thinking among our majors so that they will receive more effective liberal educations; the second is to encourage more students to pursue careers in cognitive science. The requested microcomputer cluster will allow us to integrate research methods courses and cognitive core courses on learning, memory and cognition, and perception. In addition, we will have greater flexibility to add timely experiments to the laboratories. Students will be able to manipulate the parameters of those experiments so that they can participate more fully in the entire research process rather than simply doing experiments to confirm principles. Finally, a supervised cluster in the Psychology Department will give the students expert assistance in using the computers, and it will create a place where students can gather, carry out their research projects, and discuss the results. This increased student involvement in research should lead to more students performing independent projects. Thus, we envision an integrated, laboratory based curricular path beginning with basic instruction in research design and analysis and culminating in a piece of independent research.