Teaching Resources

The following sites are Internet sites that teachers might want to consider as they develop their courses in introductory psychology. Some of the sites are themselves listings of sites or demonstrations while other sites are specific demonstrations. Some of the demonstrations will require you to download other software players, such as those needed to play Shockwave, Flash, or Mathematica.

Finally, if you find specific sites that are particularly great, or that are not functioning, please contact Dr. Timothy Bender.

General Resource Sites

  • Association for Psychological Science (APS)
  • American Psychological Association (APA)
  • PsychScholar is John Krantz’s mega-page at Hanover College. If you scroll down from the first page, you will find nice list of links to psychology tutorials.
  • The Internet Psychology Lab is a good site from Leonard Trejo and Gary Bradshaw. It currently has demonstrations in Visual and Auditory Perception, as well as Cognition. It continues to be developed, so keep checking back. Most of the demonstrations are designed to be completed by individual students rather than as in-class demonstrations.
  • ePsych is a very good site from Mississippi State. It is always growing, so keep checking back here. It is set up in an entertaining way and many of the demonstrations are very good. Most of these are designed to be completed by individual students rather than as in-class demonstrations. The amount of explanation is good.
  • The Centre for Psychology Resource site from Athabasca University is a mega-listing of psychology-related sites. If you scroll down the Academic Content Sites column, you will come to the specific link to their Demonstrations and Tutorials. These are worth taking the time to explore.
  • The Classroom Links for Interactive Psychology (CLIP) site from Penn State provides links to demonstrations and activities in many areas of psychology. You need to click on the drop-down menu at the top of the page for the list of areas.
  • The Encyclopedia of Psychology is mostly a listing of other Internet sites. You might find something you can use, but you will need to do extensive searching.
  • This extensive list of Links for Introductory and Physiological Psychology is provided by Charles Long at the University of Memphis. You will need to do some extensive exploring.
  • The Exploratorium is part of the Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception in San Francisco. You will need to explore to find the sites that are related to Psychology. Some of the sites are very good and have nice explanation and some are very limited in the amount of explanation. This site is worth exploring.
  • Various psychology-related demonstrations. Be sure to click on the different colored dots to move between content areas. There are more exhibits here than you might think. Psychology-related content areas include Seeing, Hearing, Mind, and Life Sciences.
  • Psych Web is a mega-site created by Russ Dewey at Georgia Southern. You will need to do some exploring, but you will find some nice links here.
  • AmoebaWeb: Psychology on the Web! is a mega-site created by Douglas Degelman at Vanguard University of Southern California. You will need to explore, but you will find some nice links.
  • Learner.org is provided by the Annenberg Foundation. This site provides a streaming source for the Discovering Psychology video series. You need to register to get access.
  • Psychology Demonstrations, Tutorials and Other Neat Stuff is from Linda Walsh at the University of Northern Iowa. Some of the links are no longer working, but others can lead you to nice information.
  • PsychLabOnline helps students explore classic experiments. You will need to provide them with some help in using this site. It is provided by John Hay from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. You need Shockwave.
  • ePsychlopedia presents some tutorials and videos.
  • The Presentations of Science Database is a collection of on-line presentations over various topics.
  • Brain and Behavior demonstrations and links from Serendip.

Experiment Site

At the following sites, you can participate on-line in experiments. These are NOT experiments that count for the PSY 121 research requirement. Some of the experiments may be very useable and some may not. The amount of explanation will vary from experiment to experiment. If you want to have students doe some of these, I recommend that you explore the experiments first then assign specific experiments to the students.

  • Internet Psychology Lab from the University of South Dakota provides mostly sensation and perception experiments and cognitive psychology experiments. Check out the system requirements and the directions. To get to the experiments you need to click on the Conduct an Experiment link.
  • The Online Psychology Laboratory from the American Psychological Association (APA) contains several interactive experiments and demonstrations. The level of explanation is very good, but may require a bit of searching at times.
  • PsychExperiments: Psychology experiments on the Internet from the University of Mississippi contains a wide variety of experiments. Some are designed for classroom lab use and others are designed as research experiments.
  • The Web Experimental Psychology Lab presents various psychology experiments on the web - worldwide.

Research Methods

Statistics Links

History Links

Physiology Links

Brain Physiology

Split Brain Demonstrations

  • The Split-Brain Experiment game from Nobelprize.org is an animated demonstration of a person with a split brain being tested for his ability to report stimuli presented in the left and right visual field.
  • The Split-Brain demonstration from John Chay helps the learner understand some basic functions of the two hemispheres.
  • Animations: How drugs work is from PBS. This Moyers on Addiction site provides animated tutorials on the neurological impact of alcohol, cocaine, and opiates.

Sensation and Perception Links

Illusions and Related Visual Processing

  • Sandlot Science presents a large number of illusions with some basic explanation and some interaction.
  • Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s illusions site contains some very cool visual illusions, but very little to no explanation.
  • IllusionWorks – well, actually this may be a pirated copy. The original site was shut down due to too much traffic, etc.
  • 78 Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena by Micheal Bach provides examples of optical illusions and other visual events. The explanation for each is usually good. Many allow the user to adjust settings.
  • Project LITE from Boston University provides interactive examples of several visual phenomena related to color, light, motion, depth, and form. Some of the demonstrations work only if you hit the Full Screen button first. Also, some include a rapid flashing light that may bother some people.
  • See For Yourself is provided by Dale Purvis from Duke. It includes interactive examples of visual phenomena in the areas of lightness/brightness, color, lines and angles, motion, and music.
  • Shapiro Lab is provided by Arthur Shapio (Bucknell). It includes interactive examples of various visual phenomena including lightness, motions, contrast, and others.
  • This is a collection of illusions, but no explanations.
  • Illusions from Wolfram Math World is a link to several illusions. You also can download Mathematica Player, then download several interactive illusions. These allow you to manipulate different variables to see what affects the illusion. While the explanation may be a bit limited in some cases, the interactive demos may be of use.
  • These visual illustrations by Donald Hoffman from the University of California - Irvine presents several illusions. There is very little to no explanation. However, the illusions work well.
  • The How and Why of Optical Illusions was created by David Eustis while a junior at Brown University studying computer science and math. The site contains tutorials with explanation on various illusions.
  • Grand Illusions is another site with several interesting illusions. I recommend you play the dragon video.
  • A very cool motion illusion combining color after images with apparent motion. I also recommend you look at the site for Magni-Phi.
  • MagniPhi is a great site for the demonstration of the Beta and Phi Phenomena (apparent motion and shape and apparent motion only!). Also good for showing that common definitions are often wrong!
  • Mark Newbold Java Stuff site contains several interesting graphics images and links to graphics software, along with demonstrations of the waterfall effect (Counter-Rotating Spirals), an animated Necker cube, the Fechner color illusion, and the Pulfrich illusion. This site may work better using Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.
  • Planet Perplex by Stephan Van den Bergh provides several fun visual illusions, hidden images, etc. Be sure to check out the motion illusions. However, some of the “Fun” illusions are not politically correct.
  • The Illusions Gallery by David Landrigan at the University of Massachusetts Lowell provides several demonstrations of visual illusions and related concepts.
  • The Colour Perception in Everyday Life Tutorial is provided by Rae Kokotailo and Donald Kline from Calgary University.

Change Blindness Sites, Etc.

Motion Perception and Illusions

  • bmlWalker from Bio Motion Labs demonstrates how the biological motion of people walking provides information regarding gender and mood. Nicely interactive.
  • Motion Perception by George Mather from the University of Sussex provides several demonstrations of motion perception and related illusions. Very nice site.
  • The Motion, Form, and Mid-Level Vision tutorial by Josh McDermott and Ted Adelson is a very nice set of tutorials and demonstrations regarding the interaction of form and motion.
  • Motion-Induced Blindness from Yoram Bonneh, Alexander Cooperman, and Dov Sagi.
  • Motion Perception: A web tutorial by Fauzia Mosca and Nicola Bruno (University of Trieste) presents a discussion of how structure affects the perception of motion.

Auditory Perception

Developmental Links

Aging

Learning Links

Classical Conditioning

  • Classically condition a dog to salivate at John Chay’s demonstration of conditioning of a dog’s salivation response to light, sound, or both. No directions, but can be used to demonstrate Kamin’s blocking study.
  • The Pavlov’s Dog game from Nobelprize.org allows the user to try to train a dog to salivate.

Operant Conditioning

Memory and Cognition Links

Experiments

  • Cognition Laboratory Experiments from John Krantz at Hanover College are mixed. The amount of explanation will vary from experiment to experiment. If you want to have students do some of these, I recommend that you explore the experiments first then assign specific experiments to the students.

Demonstrations and Tutorials

  • The Memory and Cognition Demonstrations and Tutorials from Timothy Bender at Missouri State University are designed to be used as classroom demonstrations. Some fit into a 50-minute class more easily than do others. Explanation is fairly good. These are worth exploring as possible classroom demonstrations.
  • Dual Task.Org at the University of California at San Diego provides some attention and sensory memory demonstrations. Some of these work much better than others. There is little to no explanation.
  • The Cognition Lab from NASA contains a few demonstrations related to memory and cognition.
  • Masked Priming is a short demonstration and discussion of (you guessed it) masked priming.
  • Mission - Critical is San Jose State University’s critical thinking site. There is much to explore here.
  • Memory sites from the Exploratorium

Psychological Disorders Links

  • This personality disorders exercise from John Suler provides practice at identifying various personality disorders. You need to print off paper handouts. Shades of Abnormality exercise from John Suler provides students with a chance to estimate the severity of a set of disorders. You need to print off paper handouts

Therapy Links

  • This Shades of Abnormality exercise from John Suler provides students with a chance to estimate the severity of a set of disorders. You need to print off paper handouts
  • This Transference Exercise from John Suler provides students with some practice at identifying transference.

Social Psychology Links

Social Psychology Network

  • The Social Psychology Network home page contains experiments, demonstrations, teaching resources, etc. – all geared towards Social Psychology.
  • These are Online Social Psychology Studies from the Social Psychology Network. Be forewarned, “the Social Psychology Network does not endorse the content or quality of the studies.” Therefore, you should carefully examine any study before you use it.

Project Implicit

  • Project Implicit is the home page for the Implicit Association Test from Harvard.

Stanford Prison Experiment

Prejudice
Various Questionnaires

Industrial/Organizational Psychology Links

Publishers’ Psychology Sites

  • McGraw-Hill - This is McGraw-Hill’s Web Sites Related to Psychology

Open Source Software and Free Software

  • PXLab is a collection of Java classes and applications for running psychological experiments. This is provided by Hans Irtel in Denmark.
  • SurveyBuildR is open source software for creating surveys to run on the Internet.
  • PsychLab allows the user to run classic experiments from cognitive psychology.