This week's resource of the week is this very interesting video clip showing how the decisions of rats can be controlled by directly manipulating the reinforcements they receive through stimulation of the pleasure centres in their brains. In essence, this produces a remote controlled rat. As well as being an interesting example of operant conditioning, it also raises issues regarding free will and determinism.

Here are some ideas for investigations or research projects that A level Psychology students could conduct for their psychology coursework:

This section introduces 3 types of experimental design: Independent Groups, Repeated Measures and Matched Pairs.

Resource of the week: VassarStats Statistical Computation This week's resource of the week is an online method of checking you have calculated your statistics correctly for your coursework.

Psychology Resource of the Week: All in the Mind Podcast This week's psychology resource is the All in the Mind podcast from ABC Radio National. This is a very interesting and informative podcast that often addresses topics that are directly relevant to A Level Psychology. In the last few weeks they have discussed smart drugs that can improve memory and concentration; interviewed Michael Gazzaniga, who worked with Roger Sperry on split brains; discussed out of body experiences - they even tell you a simple way that you can have one; and have discussed whether chimpanzees should be given human rights - this includes the very sad story of Nim Chimpsky who was taught to use American Sign Language, but when the research was over was sent to a medical research facility...

This Psychology resource is a series of xkcd comic strips that are related to topics in psychology. The comic strips are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. This means you're free to use them in handouts etc., as long as you do not sell them. You should also attribute them to xkcd.com

Resource of the Week: Psychology Press Podcast This week's resource is the Psychology Press podcast.

Resource of the week: Psychlab This week's resource will be useful for students looking for ideas for their psychology coursework. Psychlab contains 10 cognitve psychology experiments that can be run on Windows computers.........

I hope you like this week's resource of the week as much as I do.

Animations for Teaching Psychology This weeks resource is a series of flash animations from South Western State University Georgia. Some of them are useful for A Level Psychology. I particularly enjoyed the comparison of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.