Sales figures and recollections of psychologists indicate textbooks playa central role in psychology students' education, yet instructors typically must select texts under time pressure and with incomplete information. Although selection aids are available, none adequately address the accuracy of texts. We describe a technique for sampling textbooks' content and evaluating accuracy. Preliminary studies indicated multiple errors in texts we examined. We present a proposed taxonomy of such errors. We speculate that errors are more likely when textbook authors use "deductive" rather than "inductive referencing," but acknowledge that authors frequently are under pressure to use the former. Discipline-wide efforts to assess textbooks' scholarly quality could facilitate improvements in accuracy, providing fundamental benefits to the discipline.
Sales figures and recollections of psychologists indicate text-books play a central role in psychology students' education, yet instructors typically must select texts under time pressure and with incomplete information. Although selection aids are available, none adequately address the accuracy of texts. We describe a technique for sampling textbooks' content and evaluating accuracy. Preliminary studies indicated multiple errors in texts we examined. We present a proposed taxonomy of such errors. We speculate that errors are more likely when textbook authors use "deductive" rather than "inductive referencing," but acknowledge that authors frequently are under pressure to use the former. Discipline-wide efforts to assess textbooks' scholarly quality could facilitate improvements in accuracy, providing fundamental benefits to the discipline.Textbooks are of indisputable importance in training newcomers to the discipline and in giving psychology away to many students who take only one or a few psychology courses. Estimates place the size of the U.S. introductory psychology market for new and used textbooks at 1.2 to 1.6 million students per
Scholars express concern about college students' declining reading levels when the need for critical literacy is growing. Burner's (1985, 1986) theory of two basic modes of thought—narrative and paradigmatic—offers a scheme for categorizing reading assignments. The scientific nature of psychology requires students to read paradigmatic text critically. Empirical evidence suggests that differences among students' reading abilities are related to general ability, domain knowledge, decoding ability, working memory, and study techniques. Task variables (e.g., being required to create analogies or summaries and style or syntax of textual materials themselves) are also important. I conclude with empirically based suggestions for incorporating paradigmatic requirements into the psychology curriculum.
In a study often referred to as "classic," Condry and Condry (1976) showed a videotaped infant to participants, telling half of them the infant was a boy and half it was a girl. Participants who thought they were viewing a boy rated the infant's reaction to a jack-in-the-box as anger; those who thought they were viewing a girl rated the reaction as fear. Participants in the present partial replication of the Condrys' study did not rate the infant differently based on the infant's gender label, although there was evidence that participants' own sex affects their perception of an infant's emotionality. Results were discussed in light of inconsistent results among other gender-labeling studies and relevant methodological, historical, and theoretical issues.
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