Experimental Psychology in Learning - Assignment Example

Experimental Psychology in Learning Learning involves much more than just getting a space in the classroom and listening to the instructor disseminate information, taking notes, responding to lecture questions and doing the given assignments. It transcends all that. It starts from right within the student. Within the student, there is the ‘interest’ aspect. Interest investigates the learner’s liking for the subject being learnt, and this is the most motivating component. A learner must have something that they really like about the subject. It enhances the connection between the instructor and the learner, both emotionally and psychologically. I am a student taking psychology, a field I am so passionate about. Psychology has been my area of interest ever since I was a young boy. I have reading a lot of articles on psychology since my high school days. I have always had the desire to be a shrewd psychoanalyst, famous and adored like psychologists of yesteryears, such a Sigmund Freud. I have always aspired to make a mark and publish as many books and articles on the subject of psychology. I want to be a part of the people that will be remembered for having prescribed ideas on psychology for the coming generations. However, there is a unit that I find a bit complicated. It is not a simple unit for many. It is psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a branch of psychology that deals with a set of therapeutic and psychological theories advanced by Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician. There are numerous theories under psychoanalysis, and it is often not easy to be able to understand the tenets of all of them. For this reason, students have always not liked it. To them, it is not possible to score an A in the unit. The instructor shows up for our midmorning psychoanalysis class. Everyone frowns, the instructor knows why. He knows from history that psychoanalysis is a hurdle for many students pursuing psychology and seeking to major in it. He begins the lesson by telling us how important the study of psychoanalysis is to those intending to study psychology to the highest levels. He introduces it by taking us through the lesson objectives. He then proceeds to the definitions of the basic terms and the tenets of psychoanalysis. He is articulate and stresses the major points he knows we must understand clearly. I know my expectations, but I instantly realize that I can achieve that and even more. I had done many units in psychology before. I had also read extensively o the subject. Many things the lecturer mentions sound familiar. I had read most of them in articles. I decide to stay attentive taking notes on the things the instructor mentions that I think are important. Deep inside, I already think it is nothing hard. Terms like id, ego and superego are no strange. I get the idea that psychoanalysis will be simpler unit than I had ever thought. I am active throughout the lesson, answering lecture questions and asking some, if I find anything unclear. The first impression totally changed my perception of the subject. It looks like on hurdle any more. I decided to be a big part of the teaching-learning process. I decided to be as much psychologically connected to the instructor and my desk-mates as I could. It was the only way I always approached lessons on topics that appeared difficult from the face-value. I got much more motivated by the fact that psychoanalysis wasn’t the only unit I had ever thought was difficult. My major undoing was I had the tendency of judging subject as hard or not from testimonies of other students who had done them. At some point, we were told that behavioral psychology wasn’t the easiest of units, but when I did it, I realized it wasn’t. The lecturer provided breaks within the two-hour lesson to allow for student-student discussions and interactions. This way, my desk-mates and I, just as other students seated close to each other, were able to unravel some of the complicated concepts and theories, and gather amongst ourselves questions that the lecturer could help out with. In the end, I realized that psychoanalysis was going to be one of the simplest units I ever had to do. The lesson objectives were achieved, and what I managed to grasp personally surpassed my pre-lesson expectations. The one thing I realized I needed to improve on is this idea of using people’s past experiences in a subject area to judge that the subject is difficult or not ad realize that people have different attitudes towards things, which is what makes them like or hate those things, or think they are manageable or otherwise. Individuals should make such judgments based on their personal experiences, and that only happens when they have faced the subject unit themselves. Save for the initial attitude caused by prejudgment, my performance in the lesson was quite impressive. It contributed much to the lesson outcomes for me and many other students. As to what I was unable to understand during the lesson, I can comfortably say none. I could handle the take-home assignment easily and ended up getting everything right. It wasn’t the same thing for everybody else. Going forward, I will make sure that I don’t let sentimentality lead me in judging what units are difficult or not. References Tsal, Y. (1983.Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance. New York: Crown. Read More