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Volume 10, Number 4: February 2004

PsychLab On-Line: Virtual Experiments for Psychology Students

by John C. Hay,
Professor Emeritus,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Since my retirement six years ago from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I've experienced the fun of teaching in a new and quite informal (unpaid) way, by means of my website at UWM. Others have shared in the fun. In October, 2001, the Neuroscience for Kids Page of the Month was PsychLab On-line. I quote from them:

"Work with one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs in Classical Conditioning, train a bird to peck a button in Operant Conditioning and guess what a split-brain patient will do when items are presented to his right or left brain in Split-Brain Syndrome. Professor Hay warns that some students will need a teacher's guidance with the experiments. I agree! Many of the terms and abbreviations used in the simulations are not explained. Nevertheless, PsychLab On-line is great training for future experimental psychologists."

All this creative effort stems from my wife's retirement gift to me: a brand new computer, along with an elegant piece of web-programming software known as Macromedia Director. The latter is a wonderful tool for turning anybody with a lot of time on his or her hands (me) into a movie director--movies better than most because the watcher gets to be in them.

My interactive movies consist of two kinds. In the first, the student plays the part of the psychologist testing a simulated research subject--a dog, a pigeon, a human brain-surgery patient--just the sort of subject that would be impractical or unethical to bring into a student laboratory. These movies provide simulations of typical behavior reported in the scientific literature.

In the second kind of PsychLab On-Line movie, the student designs and carries out experiments on real human subjects--friends or fellow-students. In this case, the result is a real data set upon which the student can practice both statistical and psychological skills.

All my movies are deliberately designed for use in programs of study organized by knowledgeable teachers. Links to my web movies have been incorporated into college courses from UW-Madison to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia). And a professor at York University (Canada) has added a French-language version to my web site. Interested readers can look at lists of current online users by clicking on the little red-and-blue chart at the bottom of each movie's page.

In addition, I have freely given stand-alone copies of my movies to teachers and organizations around the world. Some of these have been incorporated into other people's websites, with due acknowledgment to me. My Operant Conditioning is on an animal training website in Arizona: http://www.dogtrainingathome.com/shockwave.html. My Classical Conditioning and Visual Search movies are at student-only web sites at York University (UK). Most recently (and surprisingly to me), a Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma asked me for a stand-alone copy of my 3d Mental Rotation movie to use in her dissertation research on Sexual Victimization. She's promised to send me her results!

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