Research Toolbox

COURSE OBJECTIVE
Students will be acquainted with some important paradigms currently used in psychology. They receive hands-on experience with one particular paradigm, and consolidate their skills in analyzing data and reporting results. In addition, they will study, present and discuss other common and famous paradigms so that they get a 'toolbox' of experimental approaches used in psychology.

COURSE CONTENT
Students are introduced in detail to classic and current paradigms in experimental psychology. These could, for example, be the Trust Game, Implicit Association Test, Learning Games, Physiological stress measurements, Attentional capture & Emotion, Memory and Language processing.

TEACHING METHODS
Paradigms are first introduced in a plenary lecture. Students then split up in groups of four to five, and run an experiment that is exemplary for a frequently-used paradigm in psychology. They are supervised by one staff member, who provides them with guidance on how to use the paradigm, how to run participants, how to analyze the data and how to write the report. Students work as a group on the assignments. In addition, students will prepare presentations and discussions of other classic and famous paradigms using the book by Eysenck and Groome.

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
Written report: 80% Open-question exam: 20% For the report, students will be graded individually on the basis of their presence and participation in the group (40%), and as a group on the basis of their jointly written report (40%). In the open-question exam (20%), students will briefly explain the original intention and current adaptation of a psychological paradigm discussed in the book by Eysenck and Groome. Partial grades are only valid during the study year in which the grade has been achieved.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Research Methods 2 
Statistics 2