Oh, how I wish I had a book like this when I began teaching psychology. From a visual learner's point of view, this book hits the jackpot. It begins with a history of studying the brain, landmarks in neuroscience and photos of a series of brain scans. You know all those pesky little questions that your students ask, but you're not sure of the answer because your neuroscience course was 20+ years ago and the images (I mean drawings) were in black and white? This book has those answers. There are 70+ pages of pictures and explanations of brain anatomy (all the parts, not just the ones in our texts), brain zones, neurons, and research to satisfy the best of us.
This book has a chapter on the senses, one on movement and control, emotions and feelings, the social brain, language and communication, memory, thinking, consciousness, the individual brain, development and aging, and concludes with diseases and disorders.
Although I have not read every word on every page, just for the illustrations, I am giving this book my highest recommendation. It is a must for every psychology class. Order by clicking below. You will not be disappointed.
Posted by Chuck Schallhorn
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I've been reading from Smithsonian magazine for a number of years, but had never thought to visit their website due to the relatively few directly psych-related articles in the paper-version. In their most recent issue (May 2010) there is an excellent article on memory and how memory works.
Articles on the Brain
Articles on Psychological Issues/Topics
Thought Innovation & Behavior--which could have some articles of interest
Overall, if you like to read quality writing on any topic, I recommend the magazine/website. Great stuff there.
Posted by Chuck Schallhorn
The new big thing in the field of psychology and its natural connection to other sciences is in the field of behavioral economics. I will do some posts on some recommended books later, but for now, you can get your feet wet with an episode of NOVA on PBS called Mind Over Money. I've collaborated with my economics colleagues and have gained some fascinating insights into human behavior as a result of learning more about this field of decision making and money. It also will give you additional examples of any aspect of cognitive psychology.
The show first airs on April 27 and is viewable online on April 28, 2010.
Chuck Schallhorn
This might be a reach, but it feels to me that the contrast between Google and Facebook that relates to the Algorithm/Heuristic stuff we get to talk about in the Thinking and Language (or Cognition) chapter.
In this article, WIRED magazine writer Fred Vogelstein writes about what he sees as the on-going battle between Facebook and Google for "the future of the internet". Briefly, the Facebook idea is that we would search for answers from increasingly sophisticated networks of "friends" instead of doing a google search. I think students could recognize this as a Heuristic - asking your friends for an answer is similar to a rule of thumb problem solving strategy - it doesn't guarantee the right answer, but it sure can be fast!
In this article. another WIRED writer (Steven Levy) writes about his inside look at Google's famous search algorithm, listing many of the complex variables they include in their search engine.
Students might be interested in looking at this example in order to do some analysis about when different kinds of problem solving strategies are effective/successful? And it might be an opportunity for them to examine their own on-line serearch behaviors: in what situations do they use algorithms? heurisitcs? why?
