Developing Visual and Auditory Experiments for a Perception Laboratory

我们系相信，如果学生能够参加比我们目前提供的两门基于实验室的课程更多的课程，他们将学到更多关于心理学的知识。我们还相信，更多的实验室经验将为我们的学生提供更积极的参与学科的实质性领域，这应该会导致他们对所学材料的更多掌握。为了实现这些目标，我们有兴趣在几门课程中增加计算机驱动的实验组件，从感知课程开始。为了做到这一点，在接下来的18个月里，我们将开发一套12个计算机化的视觉和听觉实验室练习。这些练习将作为感知课程实验室部分的核心，该课程将从3学分的非实验室课程转变为4学分的实验室课程。由于学生对实验室将创建的本科计算机设施的需求增加，以及一些实验室练习的计算机密集型性质，我们需要增加学生可以使用的计算机的数量和功能。除了感知课程，改进后的设施将支持实验心理学课程的实验室部分，并允许我们在不久的将来增加统计课程和认知课程的实验室部分。学生将继续在一系列课程中使用该设施进行统计分析。我们相信，许多教授感知的教员将能够利用我们开发的练习--即使他们的课程没有特定的实验室组成部分。我们将在几个地方宣布这些练习的可用性，包括TIPS(心理科学教学列表服务)，并使用万维网和各种电子媒体来传播我们开发的实验练习。

Our department is convinced that students will learn more about the science of psychology if they can enroll in a greater number of laboratory-based courses than the two we currently offer. We also believe that increased laboratory experiences will provide our students with more active involvement in substantive areas of the discipline, which should lead to increased mastery of the material they are learning. To accomplish these goals, we are interested in adding computer-driven laboratory components to several courses, beginning with the perception course. In order to do so, over the next eighteen months we will develop a set of twelve computerized visual and auditory laboratory exercises. These exercises will serve as the core of the laboratory component of the perception course, which will change from a 3-credit non-laboratory course to a 4-credit laboratory course. Because of the increased student demand on our undergraduate computer facility that will be created by the laboratories and because of the computer-intensive nature of some of the laboratory exercises, we need to increase the number and power of the computers to which students have access. In addition to the perception course, the improved facility will support the laboratory component of the experimental psychology course and allow us to add laboratory components to the statistics courses and the cognition course in the near future. Students would continue to use the facility for statistical analyses in a range of courses. We believe that many faculty who teach perception would be able to make use of the exercises that we develop--even if their courses do not have a specific laboratory component. We will announce the availability of these exercises in several places, including TIPS (the Teaching in Psychological Science list serve) and use the World Wide Web and various electronic media to disseminate the laboratory exercises that we develop.