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Week 8 · Module overview

Week 8 — Midterm Review & Exam

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 8 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student weighing a new bedside routine and a business major reading that a training program raised sales both need to ask the same thing: how do we know?

In plain language

This week you look back at the first half of the course and see how it fits together. Seven weeks of psychology come down to five questions: what psychology studies, how it knows, where behavior lives, how the world gets in, and how experience changes you. You also get one new tool, the "how do we know?" checklist (three questions you ask of any claim about people). It asks what kind of study produced the claim, what that kind of study is allowed to say, and what hidden factor could explain the result. That habit is what you carry into the second half of the course.

  • Already covered: science and methods, the brain, sensing and sleep, and learning and memory (Weeks 1 to 7).
  • This week: a five-question review, the "how do we know?" checklist, and the midterm.
  • How they connect: the checklist turns Week 2's three questions into a habit.
  • Where we're going next: Week 9, Cognition, Language & Intelligence, carries the checklist forward.

Focus

What has the first half taught you, and how do you know whether a claim about people is earned?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] answer the five review questions with the course's own studies and numbers
  • [ ] run the checklist: design, allowed claim, third variable
  • [ ] explain why Loftus and Palmer earns a causal claim and the sleep data only an association claim

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 8 (about 35 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Do the practice set (about 20 minutes) and the discussion (about 45 minutes).
  3. Use the study guide and practice exam, then take the midterm.

This week's checkpoint: run the three checklist steps on a claim and say whether it earns a causal claim or an association claim.

You've got this

You have done this work before. Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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