The readings will be available as pdf files on the web at least one week before class. Readings can be accessed using the Blackboard system. You will need to use your Texas EID to access these articles. On most weeks, a student may be asked to lead the discussion. Leaders for a particular class may have to read one or two additional articles to get a better background in the topic for that week. The class leader for that week should prepare a brief (30-40 min.) presentation on the topic for the week, and should come prepared with discussion questions.
In order to get into class each week, everyone has to turn in a `ticket'. Tickets are 1-2 page reactions to the readings for the week. The tickets should not be a summary of what you read. Rather, I'd like your opinions. Is the theory or the studies presented by the authors sufficient to explain what the authors would like to explain? Are there things that are not well explained by the theory presented? Is there other evidence you know about that would suggest a problem with the authors' approach? What do you think are the main advances of the work, or how does it fail to take into account other work. Feel free to draw on your own expertise in other areas of psychology or from other disciplines. If you think a particular theory would be helpful for some problem you have been thinking about, say so. If you felt a particular article was confusing, say that too.
For those of you taking this class for credit, your grade will depend primarily on two things: your tickets and a paper. For the paper, you have a number of options. One possibility is to find an area of research that you think is interesting. If you are currently involved in a research project, you may use that area. Trace the evolution of the representation-process pairs that have been used to study that area. Then, describe what you think is an adequate representation for that area. You might also want to sketch a set of empirical studies that you might run to test your hypotheses. Another possibility would be to outline the simulation of a process. This option is well suited to people with some background in computational modeling or programming. The main idea is to expand succinctly on a good research question. I expect that the papers will be about 20 pages long. In order to facilitate writing the paper, everyone should turn in a paper proposal no later than March 8. The proposal should be at least a couple of paragraphs describing what you would like to do.
| Date | Topic | Presenter | Readings |
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| January 25 | Introduction | ||
| February 1 | Basic constructs | Brehm, J. W., & Self, E. A. (1989). The intensity of motivation. Annual Review of Psychology, 40, 109-131. Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the structure of behavior. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, Inc. (Chapters 1 and 2)
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| February 8 | Goals | Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J. Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. Y., & Sleeth-Keppler, D. (2002). A theory of goal systems. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 331-378. Markman, A. B., & Brendl, C. M. (2000). The influence of goals on value and choice. In D. L. Medin (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 39, pp. 97-129). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Trotschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1014-1027.
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| February 15 | Goal activation | Aarts, H., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Hassin, R. R. (2004). Goal contagion: Perceiving is for pursuing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 23-37. Fishbach, A., & Shah, J. Y. (2006). Self-control in action: Implicit dispositions toward goals and away from temptations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 820-832. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: "Seizing" and "Freezing". Psychological Review, 103(2), 263-283. |
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| February 22 | Goal satisfaction | Gollwitzer, P. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493-503. Oettingen, G., Pak, H.-J., & Schnetter, K. (2001). Self-regulation of goal-setting: Turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), 736-753. Loewenstein, G. (1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 272-292.
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| March 1 | Motivation and Emotion | Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267-286. Berkowitz, L., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2004). Toward an understanding of the determinants of anger. Emotion, 4(2), 107-130. Ashby, F. G., Isen, A. M., & Turken, A. U. (1999). A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition. Psychological Review, 106(3), 529-550. |
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| March 8 | Somatic Markers | Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., & Damasio, H. (2000). Emotion, decision making, and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 295-307. Dunn, B. D., Dalgleish, T., & Lawrence, A. D. (2006). The somatic marker hypothesis: A critical evaluation. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 30, 239-271. |
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| March 15 | No Class, Spring Break |
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| March 22 | Cognitive neuroscience and motivation | Frank, M. J., & Claus, E. D. (2006). Anatomy of a decision: Striato-orbitofrontal interactions in reinforcement learning, decision making, and reversal. Psychological Review, 113(2), 300-326. Daw, N. D., O'Doherty, J. P., Dayan, P., Seymour, B., & Dolan, R. J. (2006). Cortical substrates for exploratory decisions in humans. Nature, 441, 876-879. Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: Adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28, 403-450. |
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| March 29 | Cognitive neuroscience and motivation | Montague, P. R., Hyman, S. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Computational roles for dopamine in behavioural control. Nature, 431, 760-767. Schoenbaum, G., Roesch, M. R., Stalnaker, T. A., & Takahashi, Y. K. (2009). A new perspective on the role of orbitofrontal cortex in adaptive behavior. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 885-892. Read, S. J., Monroe, B. M., Brownstein, A. L., Yang, Y., Chopra, G., & Miller, L. C. (2010). A neural network model of the structure and dynamics of human personality. Psychological Review, 117(1), 61-92. |
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| April 5 | Regulatory Focus | Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52(12), 1280-1300. Shah, J., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Expectancy * value effects: Regulatory focus as determinant of magnitude and direction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 447-458.
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| April 12 | Regulatory Fit | Maddox, W. T., Baldwin, G. C., & Markman, A. B. (2006). Regulatory focus effects on cognitive flexibility in rule-based classification learning. Memory and Cognition, 34(7), 1377-1397. Worthy, D. A., Maddox, W. T., & Markman, A. B. (2007). Regulatory fit effects in a choice task. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 14(6), 1125-1132. Maddox, W. T., Filoteo, J. V., Glass, B. D., & Markman, A. B. (in press). Regulatory match effects on a modified Wisconsin Card Sort task. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Maddox, W. T., Markman, A. B., & Baldwin, G. C. (2006). Using classification to understand the motivation-learning interface. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 47, 213-250. |
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| April 19 | Stereotype Threat |
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811. Beilock, S. L., Jellison, W. A., Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., & Carr, T. H. (2006). On the causal mechanisms of stereotype threat: Can skills that don't rely heavily on working memory still be threatened? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(8), 1059-1071.
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| April 26 | Choking under pressure | Masters, R. S. W. (1992). Knowledge, knerves, and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 343-358. Gray, R. (2004). Attending to the execution of a complex sensorimotor skill: Expertise differences, choking, and slumps. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10(1), 42-54. Markman, A. B., Maddox, W. T., & Worthy, D. A. (2006). Choking and excelling under pressure. Psychological Science, 17(11), 944-948. Worthy, D. A., Markman, A. B., & Maddox, W. T. (2009). What is Pressure? Evidence for Social Pressure as a Type of Regulatory Focus. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16(2), 344-349. Beilock, S. L., Kulp, C. A., Holt, L. E., & Carr, T. H. (2004). More on the fragility of performance: Choking under pressure in mathematical problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(4), 584-600.
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| May 3 | Motivation in education and in the workplace. | Pintrich, P. R. (2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 667-686. Elliot, A. J. (1999). Approach and avoidance motivation and achievement goals. Educational Psychologist, 34(3), 169-189. Lord, R. G., Diefendorff, J. M., Schmidt, A. M., & Hall, R. J. (2010). Self-regulation at work. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 543-568. Pomerantz, E. M., & Dong, W. (2006). Effects of mothers' perceptions of children's competence: The moderating role of mothers' theories of competence. Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 950-961. |