Study Tips for General

Psychology 201

Dr. Lantinga -- Dordt College

Background

General Psychology covers an enormous range of material --

each textbook chapter summarizes an entire undergraduate
course (Dordt offers classes in many of these areas), each major
topic within each chapter is an entire graduate-level course, and
some tiny piece of that is a dissertation topic! Because we cover
such a broad range of topics, you must master a great deal of
information: new concepts, facts, theories, and ways of thinking.
Below are several tips for succeeding in this class and helping
you learn how a college student takes his/her task of learning
seriously.

Metaphor #1: Your Mama

The best way to study for my tests is (a) to have read each
chapter before it is discussed in class and (b) to thoroughly
understand each major concept. As the ASK center director puts
it, you should know each concept like you do your mother -- so
that you could recognize it (her) from any angle and with
different clothes on. Just memorizing terms is like trying to
recognize someone you've only met a couple of times -- you're
not able to recognize them from different angles or in different
clothes. My lectures are designed to give you different
angles/examples for the major concepts and in that way build on
your basic understanding of concepts introduced in your text.

Metaphor #2: Baseball

The phrase "throwing like a girl" refers to someone who can
move a baseball for some short distance but apparently hasn't
learned the skills to "throw like a boy" -- to move a baseball for a
long distance and with good form (the gender bias implicit here
will be ignored for now). Studying in high school is similar to
throwing like a girl -- students generally do well enough to move
the ball. However, studying in college requires learning to throw
like a boy -- to succeed at the college level (to throw the ball the
required distance to graduate and become a life-long learner),
you must learn some new skills. Below are some suggestions for
doing so.

Study Tips (in no particular order):

Summary: Study regularly. Think actively. Ask

questions.

Studying does not equal reading or turning pages or

highlighting:

• Studying involves understanding and analysis -- not merely

getting words from the text into your head or turning words
yellow or pink with a highlighter.
• Studying takes more time and effort than reading.
• Studying means reading material slowly, reading it more
than once, and asking yourself questions about the material.

Study regularly:

• Remember: for a 3-credit class you should be

working/studying about 6 hours a week outside of class
time.
• Read the assigned chapters before they are discussed in
class; study them carefully after class
• Make a practice of going over your lecture notes very soon
after the lecture -- this helps you remember material and it
gives you a chance to ask the instructor or classmates about
things you missed or didn't understand.
• Use small bits of time -- make note cards you can study
while traveling or waiting in line, or photocopy the complex
graphs or charts to study in your spare time.

Read your text with an active mind:

• Read assigned material before it is covered in class to

familiarize yourself with the concepts.
• Skim chapter headings before the you read the text. Most folks wouldn't go
on a trip to a new place without looking at a map to get an idea of how to
 get there; in the same way, you should look over the "landmarks" of a
chapter before getting on the road.
• Read with your mind - not your hand. Don't use a highlighter:
making those colorful marks doesn't get information into
your brain and it puts off learning (when you "review" the
highlighted material) until later, before the test. Either:
take notes in a notebook or write notes in your text
margins (e.g, connections to other related material,
examples you think of, etc.). You'll be more likely to
remember and understand information this way.
• Make sure that you can compare/contrast similar theories
(e.g., behaviorism vs. cognitivism) and terms (e.g., sensory
adaptation vs. perceptual adaptation).
• Make sure that you understand the examples of the
concepts given in your text; can you make up your own
examples for those concepts?
• Use mnemonics (pronounced neh-mahn-icks) to remember
material by associating the meaning of new words with
familiar words and clear visual images:
o For example: to remember that the thalamus is the
relay center in the brain, associate the word thalamus
with the similar-sounding word thermos; then form a
mental picture of a relay race where the first runner
hands a thermos to the next runner.
o Research shows that using mental images dramatically
improves both memory and understanding over just
repetition of new words (Carney, R. N., & Levin, J. R.
(1998). Coming to terms with the keyword method in
introductory psychology: A "neuromnemonic" example.
Teaching of Psychology, 25(2), 132-134).

Avoid being a human tape-recorder during lectures:

• Concentrate on understanding what is being said -- if you

don't understand it when you hear it, madly writing it down
probably won't help.
• Write down only the most important points and any
associated examples. One way to do this is to divide your
notepaper in half from top to bottom; write down the
content of the lecture on the left side and any corresponding
examples on the right.
 • Reading the assigned chapter before class will help you
understand the lectures -- which means less frantic note-
taking.
• ASK QUESTIONS -- if you don't understand it, then other
people in the class don't either. Raising your hand in class
will certainly not hurt you (really) -- and willingness to ask
questions is considered positively in your final grade.
• Some students find it helpful to compare their lectures notes
with those of a classmate -- you may be surprised at what
you've missed.

Study your lecture notes -- don't just "go over" them:

• Skim your notes from 1 lecture or topic, close your

notebook, and reproduce as much of your notes as you can
on another piece of paper. Then compare your practice
notes to your lecture notes. This way you find out how
much information has "stuck" and what parts you need to
study some more. This approach will help you more with
memorization than true comprehension, but it's a start.
• Do you understand how your notes, class demonstrations,
and video clips all fit together? How do the video clips
provide evidence for what was said in lecture or in the text?
How does the lecture relate to or builds on the text?

Study with someone else after you've studied alone:

• Write sample test questions for each other, especially those

where you must apply concepts in examples of situations
o you'll learn both by writing the questions and by
answering your friend's questions
• Try to explain material that you find difficult to understand
out loud to each other -- you'll find out what you do and
don't know, and talking out loud forces you to slow down
your thought processes and gives you time to put things
together.
• Work together on comparing and contrasting similar
concepts (e.g., sensation and perception)

"Multiple-choice" does not mean "memorize-and-

regurgitate" on exams:

• The exams in this class focus on how well you can apply
concepts to new situations. Memorizing definitions without
 really understanding the concepts will result in poor exam
performance.
o Therefore, the examples given during lectures and in
your text are important because they illustrate how the
concept can be applied in a concrete situation.
• One way to reinforce your understanding is to make up
multiple-choice questions and answer choices for each
chapter (try to use examples rather than definitions) -- you'll
be surprised at how much you learn by trying to come up
with believeable wrong answers for the questions.

Test-taking tips:

• You need to correctly answer the most questions (or most

points) you can before the time is up
o it is a tradeoff between the number of points you can
get and time
• Look over the whole test first to see whether some questions
are worth more points than others (e.g., essays)
o answer questions worth more points early, so that you
aren't spending most of your time on questions that
aren't worth as much
• Skim through the questions and answer the easiest ones
first, skipping ones you don't immediately know
o then, go through the test again and answer the
questions that take a little more thinking-- skip the
hardest ones
o For questions where you have NO IDEA of the correct
answer:
 try to rule out one or two of the answer choices
(for multiple choice), then just guess -- IT IS
ALWAYS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE TO GUESS RATHER
THAN TO LEAVE IT BLANK
• Think actively on your test: cross out answer choices that
you know are wrong, draw pictures and diagrams, write
notes in the margins or on the back, use your test booklet as
a scratch pad to outline your ideas before writing the final
essay
• If you have time at the end, use it -- NO ONE GETS EXTRA
POINTS FOR FINISHING EARLY
o go over your test and make sure you didn't make silly
errors while recording your answers (e.g., 2 circles
filled in)
• Special multiple-choice test strategies:
o Read the question and try to guess what the best
answer would be BEFORE you look at the choices.
o Read through ALL of the answer choices before
choosing -- there might be a "both A and C" option that
you miss if you just choose A right off the bat
o Be careful with questions that have "not" in them -- the
logic of these is tricky