Psychology as an Evolving,Interdisciplinary Science: Integrating Science in Sensation and Perception from Fourier to Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

This article outlines the theoretical rationale and process for an integrated-science approach to teaching sensation and perception (S&P) to undergraduate psychology students that may also serve as an integrated-science curriculum. The course aimed to introduce the interdisciplinary evolution of this psychological field irrespective of any presumed distinctions between hard and soft science. The class began with perceptual science’s foundations in Fourier decomposition and culminated in more recent developments with the perceptual science’s interest in pattern-formation phenomena from fluid dynamics, and class illustrated this transition with various applications in music, art, and materials science. Post-course responses to the Research on Integrated Science Curriculum survey demonstrated that our students made significantly large gains in course elements, specifically making the most of the students pre-existing experiences. We find that students are ready and willing to engage in the study of S&P by setting aside neuroscience’s sometimes constraining assumptions.

Introduction

This article presents an integrated-science approach to teaching sensation and perception (S&P) to undergraduate students. Integrating science provides students with science education permitting specialization but omitting the blinders of disciplinary boundaries. It requires three components: culture; recombination; and emergence. Regarding culture, integrated-science curricula seek to erase unhelpful subcultural divides as have grown between mathematics and biology (Bialek & Botstein, 2004), that is, a science of symbols and operators choreographed neatly by logical formalism, and a science of living, breathing agglomerations of cells that pursue goals (e.g., Brooks, 2005). Regarding recombination, integrated science is most plainly an attempt to draw on themes, concepts, and findings commonly associated with one scientific field and to combine them with those from another scientific field (Harrell, 2010; Padilla, 1990). Regarding emergence, integrated science proceeds on the hope that this blending of previously siloed information will lead scientists to arrive at innovative methods and models allowing them to discover what older methods and models might have been too constrictive to suggest (Gentile et al., 2012). In sum, against older habits of science training to compartmentalize our students’ knowledge and skills, integrated-science curricula ask students to bring into the science classroom a full-bodied range of skills and sensitivities. Indeed, integrated science seeks to draw on the strength of experience, making the most of what students know how to do no matter which domain they learned individual items in.

An Integrated-Science Approach to Teaching Sensation and Perception in Three Term Papers

Paper 1 (Culture): Biosketch of a perceptual scientist or of a brainless perceiver. The first term paper followed upon the opening theme of class that neurons alone might not define what would be perceived. Representing these themes were the first week’s two readings: Gibson’s (1960) article “The concept of the stimulus” and Reid, Garnier, Beekman, and Latty.’s (2013) “Information integration and multiattribute decision making in non-neuronal organisms.” Gibson’s point was that there are a broad field of events that organisms can register and interpret and many within this set that individual neurons either cannot or need not. Reid et al. introduce a number of situations in which organisms without neurons exhibit striking abilities for responding strategically and context-sensitively in a way reminiscent – at least to those four authors – of perception. The assignment for students involved selecting one of the scientists cited in Gibson’s article or one of the microbes in Reid et al.’s article and to write a biosketch. Focusing on an individual scientist was meant to anchor the empirical or theoretical contributions cited by Gibson in a personal background, growing in a cultural matrix and pursuing multiple professional goals. Focusing on an individual microbe would give students interested in psychology a perhaps rare motivation to learn more about microbiology and chemistry and to see, in this unfamiliar scientific culture with ostensibly different terminology and measurements, how insights and concerns about goal-directed behavior still resonate with scientific sensibilities across disciplinary divides.

Paper 2 (Recombination): Mash-ups of popular songs. The second term paper required the students to produce mash-ups or remixes of popular songs of their choice. Class lecture and readings had introduced Fourier and his sinusoidal decompositions early on, particularly regarding how the decomposition of stimulus energy into independent oscillations was a guiding theme in nineteenth-century investigations of visual and auditory perception. The second term-paper assignment followed a lecture on music production since the Beatles’ last concert at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966, after which time they retreated to the studio to explore the range of tape loops and distortion using the revolving speaker in the Hammond organ. Each student had to produce two mash-ups, one that they thought was enjoyable to listen to and another that was unpleasant to listen to. Students used either Audacity or any other digital audio workstation of their choice (e.g., Reaper) and documented their approach to manipulation of the component sound files in terms of Fourier parameters of amplitude and frequency. To increase the stakes of this project and to discourage half-hearted attempts, a portion of the grade on this term paper was determined by peer ratings of the good mashup.

Paper 3 (Emergence): Setting the cornstarch monster free of the speaker cup. The third term paper took a marked departure from the first two. The students heard about the third term paper on the first day of class, but it was not formally assigned until two weeks before the semester’s end. A main thesis of the class was that easing the requirement that S&P must have a strictly neural foundation brought into focus the central importance of embodied relationships between energy and matter, about the nonlinearities of certain media subjected to relatively simple flows (Kugler, Kelso, & Turvey, 1982). The class required students to consider the work covered in lectures on fluid dynamics, robotics, and materials science as evidence of a farther extension of these ideas. Lectures and readings on this topic helped to inspire discussion about diffusion and morphology, and a demonstration of resonance using vibrating Chladni plates offered a concrete comparison to the selective response of specific neurons (e.g., photoreceptors) to vibrations at specific frequencies.

Cornstarch-and-water suspensions provide an intriguing model system. They are non-Newtonian fluids, bearing nonlinear relationships between shear rate and shear stress: cornstarch-and-water suspensions become more viscous as they absorb greater forces. One celebrated demonstration is to pour cornstarch suspensions into the cup of a bass speaker, and to play various frequencies of a sinusoidal tone. Depending on the cornstarch-to-water ratio and on waveform amplitude, there is a critical frequency below which the sinusoidal tone will simply generate periodic waves through the cornstarch suspension, spaced according to tone frequency. Above this frequency, the suspension exhibits a nonlinear response in which the cornstarch seems, by many anecdotal accounts, to move like an animate object. The suspension grows pointilistic extensions that strike the casual observer like arms, tentacles, or “finger-like protrusions” (Merkt, Deegan, Goldman, Rericha, & Swinney, 2004, p. 184501-1). Once the suspension has escaped the cup, the monster collapses and dissolves in the absence of the acoustic stimulus below it to keep it afoot. This nonlinear response seemed as variable and diverse as any perceptual response to stimulus energy – the only constraint was that the students knew better than to endow powers of interpretation to the cornstarch suspension. So, this model system illustrated how unpredictable, creative, and persistent seemingly simple material systems can be.

The term-paper project prompted the students to engineer or enhance this phenomenon so that the cornstarch monster might be able to continue walking outside of the cup. Work on the third-term paper occurred solely in class. The students then had all of the remainder of class for the last two weeks of the semester to work on building a context that would permit the cornstarch monster to survive and walk beyond the speaker cup. Their end product for the term paper had two parts. The first part was an accounting of their exploratory experimentation. The second part was a discussion of how this exercise changed their view of S&P, addressing a number of big-picture questions for their hands-on exploration to inform. For instance, how did the context present a distributed and nested array of stimulation to elicit latent capacities for response in the cornstarch monster?

The RISC Survey

To evaluate the students’ integrated-science experience, we administered the Research on Integrated Science Curriculum (RISC; Lopatto, 2010) survey. The survey does not test student motivation or memory for domain-specific scientific material. Rather, it tests how much students feel they have grown as scientists who might, with the interdisciplinary view from an integrated-science class, better appreciate the general scientific culture that pertains to all fields; how well students are able to see connections and parallels between fields and concepts that they once thought were separate; and how well students can wield this new expertise in the service of inquiry-driven research problems without any simple, straightforward homologue in the older literature of this or that traditional discipline (Lopatto et al., 2008; Reed & Richardson, 2013). A pre-course RISC survey asks students “For each [of 48] Course Element, [to] give an estimate of [their] current level of ability before the course begins” (RISC Survey, n.d.; see selection of total 48 in Table 1 ). These Course Elements appear in list form as verb phrases (e.g., “collecting data” or “analyzing data”) and have to do with understanding the cultural values of science at large, with blending concepts from more than one field together, and with engaging in science creatively with hands-on projects based on inquiry and problems without clear solutions. The pre-course RISC survey asks students to rate their level of ability in each item on a scale from 1 (“No experience or feel inexperienced”) to 5 (“Extensive experience or mastered this element”). The post-course RISC survey asks students “Please rate how much learning [they] gained from each element [they] experienced in this course” (RISC Survey, n.d.) for the exact same list of 48 verb phrases as in the pre-course survey and asking for ratings from 1 (“No gain or very small gain”) to 5 (“Very large gain”). The post-course RISC survey also includes a portion asking students to evaluate their Learning Gains on a number of skills normally developed in summer research experiences (Table 2). Specifically, the RISC survey asks students to “consider a variety of possible benefits you may have gained from your course experience” and to rate each of a list of skills (e.g., “ability to integrate theory and practice”) on a scale from 1 (“No gain or very small gain”) to 5 (“Very large gain”).

Table 1.

A Selection of the 48 Research on Integrated Science Curriculum Course Elements for Fall 2014

Pre-Course Experience (Mean)	Post-Course Gain (Mean)	Course Elements
3.67	4.50	Problems where no one knows the outcome
4.11	4.50	Approach problems in different and conflicting ways
4.22	4.33	Find similarities and differences between disciplines
3.89	4.17	At least one problem assigned and structured by instructor
4.00	4.00	A problem where students have input into process or topic
3.78	4.00	A project or problem entirely of student design
4.33	4.00	Coursework from multiple disciplines or areas of study
4.44	3.83	Work individually
4.11	3.83	Disciplinary knowledge needs to be accurate and fair
3.44	3.83	Use instruments/materials from other field of study
4.22	3.50	Connect personal experience to the course problem(s)
4.22	3.50	Read primary scientific literature within one field of literature
4.67	3.50	Listen to lectures
3.78	3.33	Present intellectual work in written papers or reports
4.00	3.17	Work in small groups or teams
4.33	3.17	Work with peers from other disciplines or fields of study
3.44	3.00	Critique work of other students
4.22	2.83	Take tests in class
3.22	2.60	Laboratory or problem where only instructor knows outcome
3.33	2.60	Work on problem sets
3.89	2.40	Collect data
2.78	2.40	Present intellectual work in posters
3.56	2.25	Scripted laboratory or problem where students know the outcome
3.67	2.20	Analyze data

Table 2.

Learning Gains

Sensation and Perception (S&P) (Mean (M)) Fall 2014	All (Standard Deviation (SD)) Fall 2014	S&P (M) Fall 2015	All (SD) Fall 2015
N = 6	N = 1620	N = 6	N = 2202	Learning Gains
3.67	3.53 (1.10)	4.00	3.54 (1.10)	Understanding of how scientists work on real problems
2.50	3.52 (1.12)	3.80	3.58 (1.11)	Ability to analyze data and other information
3.83	3.45 (1.16)	4.17	3.48 (1.15)	Understanding that scientific assertions require supporting evidence
3.67	3.42 (1.20)	4.00	3.45 (1.19)	Becoming part of a learning community
3.33	3.42 (1.12)	4.00	3.44 (1.10)	Tolerance for obstacles faced in the research process
4.00	3.42 (1.09)	3.83	3.45 (1.10)	Understanding science
3.20	3.40 (1.15)	4.33	3.41 (1.14)	Understanding the research process in your field
2.33	3.40 (1.10)	3.40	3.42 (1.09)	Skill in the interpretation of results
3.50	3.40 (1.10)	4.00	3.42 (1.08)	Ability to integrate theory and practice
3.33	3.34 (1.13)	3.83	3.36 (1.12)	Readiness for more demanding research
3.67	3.32 (1.11)	3.83	3.36 (1.10)	Understanding how knowledge is constructed
2.50	3.27 (1.33)	3.80	3.32 (1.31)	Learning laboratory techniques
3.33	3.26 (1.13)	4.00	3.27 (1.13)	Understanding how scientists think
3.67	3.25 (1.27)	4.00	3.23 (1.26)	Ability to read and understand primary literature
2.67	3.20 (1.26)	4.00	3.23 (1.25)	Learning ethical conduct in your field
3.33	3.16 (1.22)	3.67	3.21 (1.21)	Learning to work independently
3.00	3.14 (1.27)	3.33	3.15 (1.27)	Skill in science writing
2.83	3.03 (1.28)	3.40	3.07 (1.27)	Self-confidence
3.00	3.00 (1.28)	3.50	3.02 (1.28)	Skill in how to give an effective oral presentation
1.67	2.92 (1.29)	2.80	2.94 (1.29)	Clarification of a career path
2.50	2.74 (1.35)	3.83	2.78 (1.35)	Confidence in my potential as a teacher of science

To test the efficacy of our class’s integrated-science curriculum, we attended to two different aspects of the RISC responses. First, we hoped to find post-course gains significantly above 1 (“No gains or very small gain”). Additionally, insofar as integrated-science invites students to bring the full range of their experiences to bear on potentially domain-specific scientific questions, we hope to find that our class yielded greater post-course gains where students had greater pre-course skill – that is, more so than other classes with students participating in the RISC survey. Specifically, we predicted that this course would make more of the students existing skills and experience than would other integrated-science classes also participating in the RISC survey. To test this possibility, we weighted post-course gains in the RISC survey with pre-course skill ratings for students. We predicted that these weighted gains would be higher in this class than for all students taking other courses also attempting integrated-science curricula.

Method

Participants

The enrollment for the fall 2014 and fall 2015 offerings of S&P at a small liberal-arts college included nine and 19 upperclass students, respectively, having completed research-methods training in psychology or in an alternate science course. In fall 2014 and in fall 2015, nine and 18 students completed the pre-course survey. In both semesters, six students completed the post-course survey (see below: completion of RISC surveys is completely voluntary and not allowed to be tied to course requirements for grades). For the same semester, there were 1620 and 2252 students across all courses and schools in fall 2014 and fall 2015, respectively, who completed both the pre- and post-course surveys. The RISC survey includes questions about demographics, major field of undergraduate study, amount of science background, and plans for future science training. None of these questions bore on our general interest in the efficacy of an integrated-science curriculum, but we include them in the online supplemental materials (see Results).

Materials

Background and form of RISC survey. The RISC survey has been developed by member schools within the Interdisciplinary Learning Consortium, whose founding members represent Carleton College, Grinnell College, Hope College, St. Olaf College, and Whitman College. RISC surveys have been exempted from Institutional Review Board review. Participation is voluntary and not a requirement for receiving course credit and students may discontinue the survey or leave any questions unanswered. The RISC survey at the end of the semester samples student judgments of their gains with 48 skills (specifically called Course Elements) that integrated and interdisciplinary coursework emphasize. For both Course Elements and Learning Gains, students make ratings on a scale from 1 (least) to 5 (most). The RISC survey output provides means to summarize student responses to each Course-Element and Learning Gain item, precluding a within-participants analysis but allowing an items-based analysis.

Results

Learning Gains

The post-course gains on the Learning Gains ratings were within the 95% confidence interval of those for all students completing the RISC survey. Table 2 lists all Learning Gains, both for students in the S&P class and for all students completing the RISC survey the same semester.

Post-Course Gains

Post-course gains on the Course Elements across sections of the class (mean (M) = 3.42, standard error (SE) = 0.01) were significantly greater than the lowest possible rating of 1, t(47) = 167.14, p < 0.01. Post-course gains for Course Elements weighted with (i.e., multiplied by) pre-course skill ratings were higher for students in the S&P class (M = 12.88, SE = 0.07) than for all students taking the RISC survey (M = 11.28, SE = 0.04), t(47) = 24.53, p < 0.01. All RISC results are available as an online supplementary material at http://sites.google.com/site/foovian/PLAT-16-0043Supp.pdf.

Student Reactions

Students were very receptive to this integrated-science format for S&P. For instance, one student noted in end-of-course evaluations that “The open-ended projects were a breath of fresh air.” The projects helped the students reflect on elements of their own daily life that they had taken for granted. In the mash-up paper, one student commented “I never knew how difficult it could be to be a DJ. I have a lot more respect for producers now.” The collaborative conversations were full of impassioned observations. During the opening day of the cornstarch-monster project, students excitedly personified the cornstarch monster without any prompting from the instructor, for example, “Oh no, it wants to escape!” or “It doesn’t like that frequency.” The instructor transcribed these comments on the whiteboard as they were uttered, and students found it illuminating to see and puzzle over their own reactions. Overall, students found this approach to S&P to open their views of how science works, for example, “I liked how instead of just giving us facts to memorize, you showed us how there are progressively more complex questions and lots of different perspectives on how to answer them.”

Discussion

We hypothesized that this integrated-science framework for teaching S&P would provide a beneficial learning experience. We expected specifically to find greater-than-zero post-course gains on the RISC survey as well as to find that, compared to all courses using the RISC survey, our course was significantly better at translating pre-course skills into greater post-course gains.

These positive results suggest that the three term papers served well to carry the integrated-science values of culture, recombination, and emergence across to students in the S&P classroom. The biosketch paper helped to highlight domain-general values about the heritage of long-standing theoretical questions and the individual ways that scientists or their model systems can leave their own impressions on these questions. The mash-up paper helped to highlight how Fourier-based decompositions of acoustics can underpin the organization and re-organization of a subjective perceptual experience. The cornstarch-monster paper helped to give students the hands-on experience of engineering a perceptual system as a sometimes messy, surprising phenomenon extending into its context, producing new structures and potentially new stimuli. Overall, this S&P curriculum asked students to think twice about whether psychology-specific phenomena need psychology-specific explanations and encouraged them instead to start imagining how psychological questions embody scientific insights and principles from a wide range of domains and skills.

The present findings suggest that this format for teaching S&P may help to provide psychology students with new perspectives on psychology but also on integrating science through their own creative efforts. The results from the RISC survey speak not to divisions between hard and soft sciences but to the broader movement in science pedagogy to integrate science. Hard–soft distinctions may simply dissolve as psychology students learn to situate their domain-specific knowledge into the larger discourse of undergraduate science education. This hands-on approach inviting psychology students to learn more about engineering and materials sciences to better understand S&P further appears to cultivate student abilities in confidently developing hypotheses, searching for relevant information, and deploying proposed solutions for problems that may have no clear resolution.

Future Directions

The present work suggests that an undergraduate psychology course is well poised to provide students with integrated-science education. A longstanding focus on teaching critical thinking in undergraduate psychology teaching complements the newer vogue of integrated-science curricula (Ruscio, 2006; Solon, 2007). Further work might investigate how well this integrated-science approach fits better into other intermediate-level undergraduate courses like Cognitive Psychology, whose material boasts as much if not more diversity in its disciplinary roots as S&P. For instance, cognitive research in artificial intelligence has suggested equally the importance of pondering ancient philosophical questions and the importance of building robustly context-sensitive robots (e.g., Newell & Simon, 1976). Neither philosophy nor robotics necessarily touch upon strictly psychological research, but the blending of perspectives that worked well for S&P might help students see cognitive research in a novel and exciting light.

More generally, we expect that much of the work integrating science in psychological classrooms would benefit from a general focus on embodiment and action as an important part of psychology (Barsalou, Brezeal, & Smith, 2007; Goldstein, 2013) and on an action’s inevitable complement, namely, ecology (Gibson, 1979). What is it, we might ask when setting to work on a new curriculum, that the mind we study must do in the real world? Insofar as it attempts to zoom out and take a broader view of what scientists do when a single discipline or view alone fails, integrated science is all about recalling the kinds of behaviors that embody the articulation of any given scientific fact.