Assignment 1 –  I Get Better Grades With a Little Help From My Friends 

You  have two friends who have been struggling with exams in their classes.  They can’t figure out what they are doing wrong, so they approach you  for advice. In talking with your friends, you learn:  Both of them are studying in one big cram session the evening before the exam.  They’re just not motivated to put in more time.
They primarily study by just reread­ing notes and the chapters.  One of your friends is only 17 and she checks her phone about every 2 minutes for text messages or social media updates.  Your  other friend is returning to college after some time away and is 65  years old.  She finds it easy to recognize some information when asked a  fill-in-the-blank question, but it is much harder if she has to define a  vocabulary word or answer an essay.   

The  good news is that you are enrolled in a psychology class that can help  both your friends improve their study habits and results on the exam.  

As you prepare to help your friends, here are some specific topics to address.   From  Chapter 1, what part of the brain is responsible for remembering the  important information that will be on the exam?  Describe that part of  the brain and its purpose.   As covered in Chapter 4, psychologists have determined that age can effect cognitive development and memory. For  your friend who is 17, how could you use what you have learned about  moral development to explain why she may be checking her phone every 2  minutes for text messages and social media updates.   How could she  expand her attention?   For  your friend is age 65, and having a hard time with vocabulary, explain  what may be happening that prevents her from doing well on this type of  activity.  How could she improve?  In  chapter 6, we learn about operant conditioning.  Describe operant  conditioning in your own words.  Thinking of operant conditioning, how  could you help your friend use rewards as motivation to study more  often?    Using  what we have learned in chapter 7, explain why your memory may not  retain all the information learned in the cram session the night before  the big exam.  How would cramming effect encoding?   How would cramming effect retrieval?   What is one technique that each friend could use to help improve memory and prepare for the exam?  It’s  the night before the big exam.  You check on your friends and your  younger friend is not doing well.  It turns out that things have turned  out even worse.  Her boyfriend broke up with her, stole money from her  bank account, and her grandmother passed away the week before.  You  notice on her Facebook page that she posed, “Where can I find some  rope?!?”   In  chapter 5, you learn about suicide and what to do.  Based on that, what  steps can you take to help your friend?  Be sure to include any  resources that you could call to get advice