Annette Kujawski Taylor

University of San Diego | USD · Department of Psychological Sciences

Students often come to their introductory classes filled with misconceptions. Despite our best efforts, many students leave the class with their misconceptions intact (see Taylor & Kowalski, 2004). Even scholar-teachers dedicated to eliminating misconceptions express dismay at how little impact they have on students’ understanding (misunderstanding...

Teachers are well aware that education is at least partly a matter of informing students that some of what they think they know just isn’t so. Not only are these beliefs pervasive, they can be particularly (and frustratingly) resistant to instruction. This chapter briefly discusses the nature of inaccurate prior knowledge, its likely origins and r...

The challenge of teaching communication skills outlined in Goal 4 of the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major is that it occurs in many contexts and the communicator must adapt the form to match both context and purpose. We created a taxonomy of dimensions and kinds of communication that represents the various contexts in communica...

Sensitive topics are an inherent part of psychology education, but some college students have begun to demand prior notification before the coverage of potentially disturbing content. This call from students for “trigger warnings” has been controversial among faculty, and no research has documented psychology students’ perspectives on the topic. In...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of refutational teaching for reducing student misconceptions produces longer lasting change when compared with standard teaching. Continuing previously reported findings over the short term, we followed students through 2 years of undergraduate education. A sample of primarily first-year st...

Observers indicated whether two vertically presented bars were aligned one above the other (same trials) or were offset by an amount equal to the width of the bars on that trial (different trials). Retinal size was varied by using bars of three different widths (wide, medium, narrow). On different trials, reaction time to make correct responses was...

Although digital texts are growing in popularity, few studies have systematically examined whether students can learn as well when reading a digital text, compared to reading a paperbound textbook. The present study examined several variables related to comprehension of digital versus paper textbooks, including text complexity, engagement with the...

Studies show that misconceptions about psychology are pervasive. This study examined how the strength of prior beliefs and the sources of misinformation relate to conceptual change following an introductory psychology course. Ninety introductory psychology students completed a 36-item "Psychological Information" questionnaire. Testing during the 1...

Students often come into the introductory psychology course with many misconceptions and leave with most of them intact. Borrowing from other disciplines, we set out to determine whether refutational lecture and text are effective in dispelling student misconceptions. These approaches first activate a misconception and then immediately counter it w...

In a series of studies over the past several years, the authors have examined the extent of psychological misconceptions, their strength, sources, and various factors that may contribute to reducing these, including individual differences. Generally, introductory psychology students come into the course with many popular misconceptions. These misco...

Right-handed Ss identified consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense syllables presented tachistoscopically. The CVC on each trial was presented to the left visual field-right hemisphere (LVF-RH), to the right visual field-left hemisphere (RVF-LH), or the same CVC was presented to both visual fields (bilateral presentation). When recognition was inc...

Right-handed subjects (N = 120) participated in four different laterality tasks designed to measure aspects of cerebral hemisphere asymmetry: identification of dichotically presented consonant-vowel syllables (CVs), examination of the effects of concurrent repetition of CVs and concurrent anagram solution on finger-tapping by the right and left han...