Psychology 482 Home Page

Methods of Behaviour and Learning:

The "Rat Lab"

Winter 1997

The course is now over. Here are the grades.

Grades
Student ID	Term Mark (Percent)	Grant Mark (Percent)	Final Grade
222942	69.9	82	7
223994	81.1	88	8
230291	91	80	8
230435	79.3	79	8
251851	65.6	45	6
317918	91.1	94	9
325105	85.3	71	8
332739	56.9	42	5
333586	87.4	88	8
336825	37.1	20	3
337156	94.7	96	9
337968	79.1	66	7
338723	75	12	IN

Instructor

Michael Snyder
Office: P-545 Biological Sciences Building
Phone: 492-5325 / 492-5175
E-mail: msnyder@psych.ualberta.ca
URL: http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~msnyder/homepage.html
Office hours: By appointment

Course Description

This is a laboratory course on the methods used to study behaviour change in the laboratory. We will examine several different paradigms of learning and will discuss their conceptual foundations, their laboratory methodologies, and some of their statistical analysis. A special feature of this course is that students have the opportunity to work with laboratory animals and to conduct the kinds of experiments that form part of our knowledge of learning processes.

General Information

Course objectives
Why should or shouldn't you take this course?
Course requirements
Schedule
Textbooks
Student evaluation
A note on the ethics of using animals

Readings

Experiments

Study 1

Study 2

An example of a good Methods section for this study
An example of a good Results section for this study

Study 3

For a review of classical conditioning, check the slides I used in the Psych 281 course I taught last summer.

Study 4

Check here for suggestions on the discussion section of the lab.
For a quick reminder of what first and second order conditioning and predconditioning is, check these slides.

Study 5

If you need some help with the analysis of the data, take a look at Looking at the Data and Planning an Approach to the Problem.

Study 6

Study 7

Study 8

Study 9

Study 10

Links and Things

This course teaches about learning and behaviour using live animals in a hands-on way. However, not everyone agrees that this is the best teaching solution. A number of groups have developed software designed to supplement or replace animals in teaching. The University of York's CTI Centre for Psychology Softward Directory reviews a number of these simulations. What do you think? Should we be looking more to simulations for teaching purposes?

Just in case you're wondering what possible practical use all the knowledge from this course could be, consider this web page that explains the use of operant conditioning in dog training. Here's a link on training animals at Sea World.

Thorndike's original puzzle boxes were made out of old packing crates he found in a back alley. Every wonder what a real, live, modern Skinner box looks like? Well, here's a picture of one, also known as an operant chamber.

In this course we're taking a largely traditional approach to learning and behaviour. A hot, growing field is cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscientists will study behaviours, but they are interested in the brain structure and neuronal interaction that produce the behaviours. For this reason, cognitive neuroscientists need to have a pretty good idea of what goes on inside the cranium. For a detailed look at a adult male Sprague-Dawley rat's brain, take a look at UCLA's Rat Atlas.

If you have questions or comments, click here to send me e-mail.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that much of the material contained in these web pages is largely derived from course material developed by Dr. C.D. Heth.

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