Laboratory & Research Manual for Psychological Science

Anna Cash Ghee, Ph.D.

This laboratory manual is designed for learning Psychological Science, especially for courses that have a laboratory component. It aims to enhance learning through engaged and active discovery and reasoning—providing hands-on experience and practice exercises for observation, data collection, measurement, statistical analyses, and critical thinking. Students are introduced to fundamentals of Psychological Science in the areas of scientific versus non-scientific thinking, sensation and perception, learning, memory, psychological health, and social psychology. Each module incorporates succinct background information, interesting research findings on the topic, and focused experiments and activities for students to conduct during classroom time. Included are guided, step-by-step procedures and examples for students to follow as they incorporate the scientific method and statistically analyze the results using both hand-calculations and software. Students are directed to draw conclusions using their results and knowledge they have acquired within the modules.