The faculty of the psychology department strongly believes it is their responsibility to insure that all graduates of the major are well prepared to enter the world beyond college with the requisite knowledge to facilitate continued professional and personal growth. In a discipline such as ours, which is both diverse and rapidly evolving as new information concerning behavior is continually produced, such professional growth demands that the scholars be capable of intelligent critiques of new information disseminated through professional journals and society in general. Intelligent use of this information is made possible by an individual’s reasonably thorough understanding of the various basic topic areas of psychology. We believe that learning about a topic area for the expressed goal of successfully completing a course is not a sufficient indicator of a student’s future ability to retain such knowledge, integrate it with knowledge from other basic topic areas, and to continue to learn and grow intellectually in an ever-changing field. Toward this end, the department has re-instituted the comprehensive examination.

Why aren’t course grades considered by the faculty to be sufficient evidence of basic competencies? Why is a separate exam required?

Exams administered as part of specific course work can be thought of as “progress reports” concerning a student’s mastery of the course material. Each exam is typically used to evaluate the proportion of material presented for which the student can demonstrate some level of understanding. Depending on the number of exams given in a particular course, the student is responsible on each exam for a relatively small portion of the complete course content, since exams given (including the “final exams”) are very rarely “comprehensive” in nature. While this method of testing produces a series of useful progress reports of each student’s level of understanding for the course content covered since the previous exam, it does little to assess the student’s likelihood of continued understanding and/or their ability to integrate such content with material presented in other courses or fields. An exam that evaluates the student’s ability to synthesize information and apply it in fields not necessarily covered in a students’ curriculum comes somewhat closer to such an assessment.

What are the Departmental expectations regarding students’ performance on the comprehensive examination?

The following criteria will be used in evaluating a student’s answer on the comprehensive exam:

• The response is directed to the question as stated.
• The response to the question is a complete discussion.
• The response is accurate in all respects.
• The response is logically organized.
• The response reflects depth of understanding consistent with undergraduate work.
• The documentation (i.e., citations and references) is accurate and from pertinent sources.
• The response reflects the field as a whole and not fragmented reporting of isolated facts and names.
• The response is well written and includes the use of good grammar.

To fulfill these criteria the department advises that students follow the recommendations below:

• All essay responses to comprehensive examination questions must be complete, well-written essays that demonstrate a) the student has had the questions for a month and thought about them in depth, and b) the student has used four hours to write his/her responses.
• An essay response to a content-oriented comprehensive examination question will be more substantial than a regurgitation of a single textbook entry. Do not depend exclusively on textbooks as supporting references. Include "original" source materials such as journal articles or other scholarly publications.
• An essay response to a content-oriented comprehensive examination question will need to be actively researched, supported with empirical data, accurate, and documented with citations and references.
• In an essay response to an argument/contrast-oriented comprehensive examination question (e.g., nature vs. nurture), both sides of the debate should be addressed in order to refute or substantiate different arguments.
• All essay responses to comprehensive examination questions must answer the specific question posed, and must not merely be a forum for the student’s unfounded opinion or an opportunity to display how many studies s/he can recall and write down.

The following are helpful hints:

• Use the researching skills you have cultivated in your psychology courses.
• Outline your responses for yourself and examine the logic of your responses. Did you answer the question fully?
• Outlining no less than four of the five potential questions guards against a "bad luck of the draw." Students may provide answers to only two of the three questions received during the Exam. However, one should be very confident in these two answers because two "Acceptable" answers are required to pass.
• Although you will not be asked to include exact citations and references at the test administration, you must maintain copies of your source materials so that you can insert accurate citation and reference information at transcription.
• Feel free to study with other students. We do not consider studying with other students taking the Comps as a violation of the Honor Code. We do advise you to be careful in taking the work of others without checking the information for yourself. Others could be wrong!

Exam Proctor. The Proctor for the Comprehensive Examination is the Psychology Department Technical Director Kevin L. Ford, Ph.D. Please feel free to contact Kevin with any queries or requests regarding the Comprehensive Exam (kford@ColoradoCollege.edu.; Tutt 318A; ext. 6191)

Qualifications. The comprehensive is an essay exam on which a student must receive a grade of “Acceptable” or above on two out of three questions to pass. Any major who has achieved Senior Status, or completed PY 201 Research Design and three out of the four core (Biobehavioral, Sociobehavioral) courses, is eligible to take the exam.The current Comprehensive Examination deadlines are posted on the Events and Announcements page and on the detailed schedule of the Comp. process below.

Question availability. The five comprehensive examination questions are made available at least one month prior to the Exam. This one month period is considered ample time to research and contemplate the questions and to construct integrative and thoughtful answers. Because the preparation period in the Spring is interrupted by Spring Break, an extra week was added to both the Fall and Spring "availability periods." Whether one chooses to use the "extra week" beyond the one-month period is up to the individual.

Registration. Examinees should register for the exam at least one month before the exam is given. (Examinees may sign up after the first week of the semester in which they wish to take the exam.) Once you have registered, we do expect you to take the exam. If for some reason you decide not to take the exam, please notify the Exam Proctor using the contact information above. There is no penalty for withdrawing from the exam once you have registered, as long as you notify the Proctor by the end of the block before the exam is to be given.

Citations and References. An acceptable answer must include relevant research to support the student's position. The expected method of indicating work by another author, of course, is the use of citations. During the exam, a student will not be required to provide exact citations or reference lists. However, at a minimum, the student must provide a "citation placeholder" - an empty set of parentheses, ( ). The student may include as much, or as little, of the citation as they can remember at the time of the test administration. At transcription, the student is required to insert or complete the citation information, using APA format. Any inserted or corrected citation should be typed in boldface. Additionally, the student is required to type a complete reference for each citation included in an answer. The references for each answer should be typed in APA format and placed at the end of each answer. Do not combine the references for all three answers into a single reference list following the last answer. Failure to type complete and accurate citations and references will be counted against the answer. Students are not required to submit copies of their reference materials.

Exam Administration. The comprehensive will be administered twice a year on the first Monday of Blocks 3 and 7 at 1 PM. . Examinees should meet at the psychology department office and proceed to the posted exam location. Any examinee who cannot sit for the exam at the designated time and date should notify the Exam Proctor as soon as possible. An alternative time may be arranged. There is a somewhat complicated exam procedure designed to insure anonymity and fairness. Students will draw numbers to choose an exam packet that will contain three questions drawn randomly from the list of five potential questions. Only the Exam Proctor, who does not grade any exam questions, will have access to the list of students' names by packet number. Students will take the exam by computer or "by pencil" in a designated classroom where they may not take anything other than the exam packet and a writing instrument with them. They may leave the room but, if they do, they must leave the exam with the Exam Proctor (the Department Secretary or Paraprof). They will have until 5:00 PM to complete the exam. The exam falls under all the rules of the CC Honor Code.

Transcription. Once the exam is completed, written answers or soft copy answers (in Word file) will be submitted to the Exam Proctor. Written answers will be copied and the originals will be available for students to pick up no later than Noon on Tuesday. Soft copy answers will be transfered to disk.

"By pencil" examinees will type their answers into a suitable word processing format (i.e., Word or WordPerfect) on disk provided in thier packets. The transcription of the answer will be a "verbatim" copy of the answer written during the exam. "By computer" examinees will already have "word-processed" answers on disk. Corrections to spelling, grammar, and citations may be made; but any change must be indicated in bold type. The inserted reference list following each question should be in bold type. The Exam Proctor will re-format all transcribed answers to a standard format for evaluation by the Faculty. Therefore, do not worry about margins, fonts, font sizes, etc. However, please clearly label each answer.

All materials and the transcribed answers on disk must be returned to the Exam Proctor using the envelope provided by "the first Friday" at 5:00 pm. No other member of the Psychology Department is allowed to accept your answers or the transcription. You must submit your answers, in person, to Kevin Ford to allow a quick check (disk integrity, virus detection, file integrity) of your computer disk to confirm your answer file.

Exam Grading. Each faculty member will receive a packet of answers to a single question. The Faculty will evaluate the anonymous answers and submit these evaluations to the Exam Proctor. During this process, the Faculty will not know whose exam they're reading or how the student has performed on other exam questions. Passing the comprehensive exam is defined as a grade of "Acceptable" or better on two of the three completed questions. Students will be notified of Exam results by the end of the block. Result letters will be available from the Exam Proctor between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm in Tutt 318A. At 1:01 pm, unretrieved letters will be delivered to Worner boxes for distribution.

Grade Appeal. Students wishing to question the grading of a particular answer must make a written appeal to the Chair and provide supporting evidence for their appeal. Students will have until the end of the second week of the block following the exam to contest the grading of an exam question (i.e., the second week of Block 4 for the Fall administration or the second week of Block 8 for the Spring administration). Faculty are not allowed to change their grades once they have been forwarded to the Chair; however, if the student can show that either, 1) there is some substantive reason to believe that factual information relevant to the grading of the exam is in question, or 2) a computer transcription error occurred, not related to the student’s responsibilities in typing in the exam, the department may revisit the grading of a particular question.

Questions. Please don't hesitate to contact Exam Proctor Kevin Ford (ex. 6191) with any questions regarding any part of the Comp process. If the person to whom you should submit or receive materials is unavailable, please check with Department Secretary Ann DeStefano (Tutt 304), the Psychology Paraprof (Tutt 306K), or Kevin Ford (Tutt 318A).

1. To the question: Psychology has long debated the relationship (if any) between emotion and cognition. In a detailed manner, address this issue based on what the neurosciences reveal about the relationship between cognition and emotion. Make sure you define your terms.

In attempting to answer the question of whether a strong link between emotion and cognition exists, neuroscience points toward many indicators that do show that indeed, a close relationship does exist between the two. By examining the structures of the limbic system, their inter-relationships, and their relationships with other structures in the brain, a better idea of the nature and strength of this relationship can become clear. Much has been theorized and researched regarding this subject. Some of the theory and research will be discussed here, as well.

The limbic system is the phylogenetically older portion of the brain. Its name comes from the Latin word limbus, which means border; this name describes its shape and position in the brain. Please refer to original handwritten copy for stellar diagram of limbic system The limbic system mainly controls the “older” aspects of behavior in humans. Emotion and motivation are thought of as basic or instinctual processes, and these are the processes with which the limbic system is highly involved, and each structure of the limbic system controls specific aspects of emotion and motivation.

The limbic system is composed of : the Amygdola, Mammillary bodies, Hippocampus, Cingulate gyrus, and the Anterior thalamus. The amygdola is responsible for receiving any new information that contains emotional content; it provides an affective baseline for that incoming information. Much is known about the amygdola from research on cases of separation of the amygdola from the rest of the brain. This separation results in affect blindness, where any component of emotion that would be otherwise important becomes absent. The more highly emotional the information is, the more likely the information is to be encoded into memory by the hippocampus. In this way of passing information from the amygdola to the hippocampus to a cortical storage facility, for example; the limbic system is involved in linking emotion and cognition.

Papez was highly interested in this link between the limbic system and the cerebral cortex. He placed importance on the connections between many of the structures of the limbic system, and the connections have been named the Papez circuit Please refer to original handwritten text for Papez Circuit diagram. Papez proposed that it is through these structures of the limbic system that a pathway by which the cerebral cortex becomes involved and cognitive thought occurs.

LeDoux was interested in similar connections between the limbic system and the cerebral cortex in his research. His theory on “emotional hijacking” is centered around these connections. A perceptual signal from the eye or the ear travels first to the thalamus, then crosses a single synapse to the amygdola, where an emotional context is placed on the perception. A second signal is also sent out from the thalamus to the cortex, such as the prefrontal cortex. This quick connection to the amygdola and slower connection to the cortex is what causes “emotional hijacking”: commonly this can be seen in behavior when someone “acts before thinking”. The emotional component of the original perception was strong enough and received quickly enough by the amygdola that the prefrontal cortex did not have the time to sort out its received branch of the message from the thalamus.

The prefrontal cortex is an essential component of the brain’s connection between emotion and cognition. Its essential role is to act as an efficient moderator of emotional content. It dilutes and sometimes underplays information of high emotion through the weighing of consequences and choosing between options. The prefrontal cortex is highly involved in the ability to receive delayed rather than immediate gratification and weighing the consequences of one’s actions.

Schachter & Singer (1962) conducted an experiment involving the administration of epinephrine to male subjects. The subjects were broken up into groups as follows: 1) they were told to expect agitation as an effect of the drug 2) they were not told to expect any effects from the drug. They were then further divided and sent to waiting rooms where they would encounter either 1) a person acting irritated or 2) a person acting euphoric. Those subjects who were told to expect the effects of the drug did not describe their state as any sort of emotion. Those subjects that were given no expectations of drug effects describe their state in coincidence to the mood of the other person in the room with them, either irritation or euphoria. This could suggest that emotion is not a separate category of thought, but it could actually come as a result of the conjunction of other cognitions. Building on this idea, Schachter developed his two factor theory of emotion. He theorized that emotion is actually the result of two components: 1) physiological arousal and 2) cognitive label. Please refer to original handwritten document for two factor emotion theory diagram. Under this theory, and judging by the Schachter & Singer experiment, it becomes possible to link emotion and cognition. This is exactly what Antonio Demasio describes in Descarte’s Error. He describes the essential nature of the link between cognition and emotion; emotion helps humans make rational decisions. Emotions help rule out choices, and decide between two otherwise (except affected aspects) equal choices.

There is a distinct, concrete relationship between emotion and cognition. Emotions would not have the meaning in our lives that they do if they were not involved in our “rational” cognitions. Neither would rational thought be as easy to decipher.

2. To the question: Social psychologist place a great deal of emphasis on “the power of the situation.” Why? Using social-psychological studies to illustrate your points, discuss how rules, roles, and norms affect and influence social interaction.

Social psychologists use the power of the situation to examine how people react to different situations and circumstances. There have been many studies done to examine the rules, roles, and norms people adhere to in certain situations. This is also important because we often place more emphasis on the personality of the person than the situation that they are in. In looking at three studies we can see how influential and apparent the “Power of the Situation” is.

The first study is Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiment. He took Stanford students who volunteered to be part of the experiment and randomly assigned then as either prisoner or prison guard. They were then placed in a prison and asked to assume their roles, with the prisoner actually being arrested at their homes and brought in. The experiment was going to last for two weeks but had to be cut short (six days) due to the severity of the “power of the situation”.

These students took the roles that they were given very seriously which resulted in some problems. The “guards” became domineering, violent, and truly mean. The “prisoners” became submissive and hostile. These students were asked to assume a role not change their personality but as a result of a title their personality did change. From this experiment we can see just how powerful a title and a role can be.

Simons and Ross (1993) did a study to examine if a persons personality would dominate over the situation they were put in. They used the game “The Prisoners Dilemma” in which you are either cooperative with your partner or competitive against them. They took Stanford students who were labeled either cooperative or competitive by the Resident Advisor of their dorm. They then created four situations by renaming the game either “The Wall-Street Game” or “The Community Game” and then placed half of each group (competitive/cooperative) in each game. Their results showed that the way the students played the game depended more on the name of the game than the personality type of the person.

Here we can see how the rules and norms we are expected to play by, given the name of a game, can influence us severely. This study is a great example of how although we as a society use personality type to decide how a person will act or react it is the situation that holds the power. If just the change in the name can influence people to act opposite of their personality type then we need to look closer at the situation and the circumstances before we judge the character of a person.

The last study is more of a look at society and how the norms that we are expected to follow and the rules we normally abide by can be affected by the number of people that are around. Latene and Darley (1970) looked at something they labeled as the Bystander Effect. They based this on the Kitty Geenovese story. Kitty was raped and Killed in the courtyard/ally of her apartment complex. Many of her neighbors and residents heard her cries for help but none called the police. This is what Latene and Darley identify as the Bystander Effect, so many people heard her that they expected that someone else would call the police.

In this look at society and how we react to emergencies, the Bystander Effect becomes quite frightening. We do not react to an emergency when others are around because we expect someone else will, someone else is more capable of helping, or we fear for our own safety so let someone else help. These attitudes are a frightening thing, to think that the mere fact that more people are around will affect our willingness to help in an emergency makes me wonder about how much power we have over ourselves.

The “power of the situation” is an intriguing thing. We all believe we would react in a certain way in different situations but often we do not examine the power the circumstances of that situation hold over us. From these studies we can see how rules, roles, and norms can effect us in a situation. From the title of a game, a title and role we are asked to assume, to the number of other people around, all of these issues play a part in our reaction. They often hold the power over who we think we are. In these studies we are able to see that we need to begin looking more at the situation and less at the type of personality.

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