Psychology 3912G-001
Psychology and the Arts
If there is a discrepancy between the outline posted below and the outline posted on the OWL course website, the latter shall prevail.
1.0 CALENDAR DESCRIPTION
This course will consider a range of questions relating to art that are of interest to psychologists, organized into broad sections: art and mental illness; philosophical issues; and applied topics. Readings will be drawn from a range of sources, including empirical articles, case studies, reviews and books by eminent thinkers.Antirequisites: Psychology 3990G if taken in 2013/14 or 2014/15
Antirequisites are courses that overlap sufficiently in content that only one can be taken for credit. So if you take a course that is an antirequisite to a course previously taken, you will lose credit for the earlier course, regardless of the grade achieved in the most recent course.
Prerequisites: Psychology 2820E or both Psychology 2800E and 2810
3 seminar hours, 0.5 course
Unless you have either the requisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enroll in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
2.0 COURSE INFORMATION
Instructor: Dr. Patrick Brown
Office and Phone Number: SSC 7328 / Ext 84680
Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:30 – 2:30
Email: brown5@uwo.ca
Teaching Assistant: Emily Nielsen
Office:
Office Hours: TBA
Email: enielse6@uwo.ca
Time and Location of Classes:
If you or someone you know is experiencing distress, there are several resources here at Western to assist you. Please visit: http://www.uwo.ca/uwocom/mentalhealth/ for more information on these resources and on mental health.
Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you. You may also wish to contact Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 519-661-2111 ext 82147 for any specific question regarding an accommodation.
3.0 TEXTBOOK
There is no textbook for this course. Instead, there will be readings from various literatures (see below)4.0 COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course will consider a range of questions relating to art that are of interest to psychologists, organized into three broad sections: art and brain; philosophical issues; and applied topics. Readings will be drawn from a variety of sources – recent empirical studies; case studies; reviews; and books by eminent thinkers.5.0 EVALUATION
Final grades in this course will be based on four components:Component Weight in final course grade
Term paper 30%
Oral presentation 25%
Oral presentation review 5%
Final exam 40%
Term papers will be due on Thursday, March 31. For the term paper, students may select any of the topics offered for oral presentations other than the topic they choose for their own presentation. These topics will be posted on the course Sakai website. Term papers must be uploaded to Turnitin.com through the course Sakai site no later than the day of the submission deadline. Note, however, that if you want the opportunity to revise your paper in response to the Turnitin.com report, you should upload it sooner than the deadline date.
Oral presentations will be done in pairs, with two 1.5 hour presentations per day in the later part of the course (that is, two teams of students will present each day). Each student will also be required to review and evaluate one presentation. Each presentation will be reviewed by two students and presentation grades will be based on the averaged evaluation (though the instructor reserves the right to alter an averaged grade that he considers unfair and to adjudicate between two reviewed grades for a given presentation when those grades are very discrepant).
The final exam will be a take-home exam. The exam will present a set of questions, which will be posted on OWL. Students will select one question to respond to. Further information about the exam and the style of response will be given closer to the date the questions are posted.
Although the Psychology Department does not require instructors to adjust their course grades to conform to specific targets, the expectation is that course marks will be distributed around the following averages:
70% 1000-level and 2000-level courses
72% 2190-2990 level courses
75% 3000-level courses
80% 4000-level courses
The Psychology Department follows the University of Western Ontario grading guidelines, which are as follows (see http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/general/grades_undergrad.pdf ):
A+ 90-100 One could scarcely expect better from a student at this level
A 80-89 Superior work that is clearly above average
B 70-79 Good work, meeting all requirements, and eminently satisfactory
C 60-69 Competent work, meeting requirements
D 50-59 Fair work, minimally acceptable
F below 50 Fail
6.0 TEST AND EXAMINATION SCHEDULE
7.0 CLASS SCHEDULE
The first part of the term will be devoted to lectures and readings that will acquaint students with an understanding of a particular approach to art based on embodied cognition. The second part of the term will be devoted to student presentations.
January 7 Introduction to the course
January 14 What is art?
Dutton, D. (2005). Aesthetic universals. In B. Gaut and D. Lopes (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. London: Routledge, pp. 279 – 291.
Irwin, W. & Johnson, D.K. (2014). What would Dutton say about the paradox of fiction? Philosophy and Literature, 38, 1A, A144-A147
Polanyi, M. (1970). What is a painting? The American Scholar, 39 (4), 655-669.
January 21 Two Systems theory
Darlow, A. & Sloman, S. (2010). Two systems of reasoning: architecture and relation to emotion. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1 (3), 382–392.
January 28 Art and the body
Esrock, E.J. (2003). Touching Art: Intimacy, Embodiment, and the Somatosensory System. Circulated paper for The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. (A longer exposition of Esrock’s ideas is available in Esrock, E.J. (2010). Embodying art: The spectator and the inner body. Poetics Today, 31 (2). doi 10.1215/03335372-2009-019.)
Niedenthal, P. (2007). Embodying emotion. Science, 316, 1002 – 1005.
Freedberg, D. & Gallese, V. (2007). Motion, emotion and empathy in esthetic experience. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11 (5), 197 – 203.
Montero, B. (2006). Proprioception as an aesthetic sense. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (2), 231 – 242
February 4 Art and brain
Brattico, E. & Pearce, M. (2013). The neuroaesthetics of music. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7 (1), 48–61.
Chatterjee, A. & Vartanian, O. (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18 (7), 370 – 375.
Chatterjee, A., Bromberger, B., Smith II, W.B., Sternschein, R. and Widick, P. (2011). Artistic production following brain damage: A study of three artists. LEONARDO, 44 (5), 405–410.
Trevarthen, C. (1999). Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse. Musicae Scientiae Special Issue, 2000, 3, 155-215.
Zaidel, D.W. (2010). Art and brain: insights from neuropsychology, biology and evolution. Journal of Anatomy, 216, 177–183.
February 11 Art and empathy
Bowes, A. & Katz, A. (2015). Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind. Memory & Cognition, 43, 953 – 963. DOI 10.3758/s13421-015-0508-4.
Clarke, E., DeNora, T. & Vuoskoski, J. (2015). Music, empathy and cultural understanding. Physics of Life Reviews, 15, 61 – 88.
Kidd, D., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342, 377–380.Overy, K. & Molnar-Szakacs, I. (2009). Being together in time: Musical experience and the mirror neuron system. Music Perception, 26 (5), 489–504.
Kokal I, Engel A, Kirschner S, Keysers C (2011) Synchronized drumming enhances activity in the caudate and facilitates prosocial commitment - if the rhythm comes easily. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27272. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027272
Classes in subsequent weeks will be devoted to student presentations.
8.0 STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC OFFENCES
Students are responsible for understanding the nature and avoiding the occurrence of plagiarism and other scholastic offenses. Plagiarism and cheating are considered very serious offenses because they undermine the integrity of research and education. Actions constituting a scholastic offense are described at the following link: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/scholastic_discipline_undergrad.pdf
As of Sept. 1, 2009, the Department of Psychology will take the following steps to detect scholastic offenses. All multiple-choice tests and exams will be checked for similarities in the pattern of responses using reliable software, and records will be made of student seating locations in all tests and exams. All written assignments will be submitted to TurnItIn, a service designed to detect and deter plagiarism by comparing written material to over 5 billion pages of content located on the Internet or in TurnItIn’s databases. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between Western and Turnitin.com http://www.turnitin.com
Possible penalties for a scholastic offense include failure of the assignment, failure of the course, suspension from the University, and expulsion from the University.
9.0 POLICY ON ACCOMMODATION FOR MEDICAL ILLNESS
The University of Western Ontario’s policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness can be found at:
http://www.westerncalendar.uwo.ca/2015/pg117.html
Students must see the Academic Counsellor and submit all required documentation in order to be approved for certain accommodation:
http://counselling.ssc.uwo.ca/procedures/medical_accommodation.html
10.0 OTHER INFORMATION
Office of the Registrar web site: http://registrar.uwo.ca
Student Development Services web site: http://www.sdc.uwo.ca
Please see the Psychology Undergraduate web site for information on the following:
http://psychology.uwo.ca/undergraduate/student_responsibilities/index.html
- Policy on Cheating and Academic Misconduct
- Procedures for Appealing Academic Evaluations
- Policy on Attendance
- Policy Regarding Makeup Exams and Extensions of Deadlines
- Policy for Assignments
- Short Absences
- Extended Absences
- Documentation
- Academic Concerns
- 2015 Calendar References
No electronic devices, including cell phones, will be allowed during exams.
