This course provides an introduction to psychological perspectives on criminal and antisocial
behavior. It will also incorporate knowledge from interdisciplinary areas to examine the interplay
between psychological,social, and biological factors in predisposing to crime and violence. Different developmental trajectories and forms of crime and criminals will be discussed.
Throughout the course, we will also attempt to bridge the basic science of criminal behavior with the real world through case studies and discussion of the implications of psychological and criminological research for the criminal justice system. The content of this course deals with the
developmental, neuroscience, clinical, social, and cognitive subdivisions of psychology.
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Year Taken: AY18/19, Sem 2
Lecturer: Charles Or
Assessments: Class part (10%), quiz (15%), group report (15%), final exam (60%)
Workload/difficulty: Just rightIn my opinion, cognitive psychology was just right. There is just enough content in every lecture to challenge you, whilst not overpowering. The specifics of cogpsych are far from easy (honestly, what is this) but Prof Charles keeps it accessible. He sprinkles all sorts of interactive activities in his lectures, which break the monotony of theory and keep our attention. Many are iterations of famous experiments in the field. Included also are real-life examples to illustrate how susceptible we are to our cognitive tendencies. Understanding how your brain operates to make sense of the world around you is both enlightening and exciting.
The tutorials generate thought-provoking questions and provide hands-on engagement through activities e.g. online visual search tasks. My tutor was Mr Aaron (Ang). He did a good job with elaborating on key concepts from lectures, rather than merely rehashing them. Discussions encouraged us to search for recent findings and primary research papers, only to realise that the answers are not clean-cut. They never are in academia.
The group report was interesting – we were given a set of results and expected to build a report around it. This is counterintuitive since the literature review traditionally comes before the results, but it’s nothing that can’t be resolved with some reading. To make a strong case, you will need to familiarise yourself with the phenomenon and the rationales behind specific experimental designs. Furthermore, you will need to be able to explain the results convincingly. That means Google Scholar and many references. For the quiz and final exam, ensure you have a good grasp of the major theories/models covered in the slides relating to each topic (similar to HP2300). Each set of slides covers a broad range of information so drawing up mind (cognitive, geddit?) maps may help.
This review was reposted with the kind permission of Gwyneth. Originally published at https://gwynethtyt.com/2021/06/01/ntu-psych-mods/
June 11, 2021
