Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Experimental Psychology Practical Syllabus - Mumbai University 2026

Module 1: Introduction to Experimental Psychology and Statistics in Psychological Research

• 1 Variables: Types (IV, DV, Control variables; categorical and continuous), Operational definition
• 2 Designs: Types (one IV and two IV): Independent Groups Design, Repeated Measures Designs, Complex Designs, and Quasi-Experimental Designs; Sampling; Randomization and Counterbalancing.
• 3 Hypotheses: Theory and hypothesis. Statistical hypothesis– Null and Alternative
• 4 Statistical Analysis –Inferential statistics - t test, F Test (one post hoc), chi-square, statistical significance.
• 5 Scales of Measurement: Introduction to Scales of Measurement.
• 6 Report writing – APA format.
• 7 Ethics in experimental psychology. *Please refer to the detailed manual.

Module 2: Practice Exercises – Two Exercises *

• 1 Literature review and identifying a problem.
• 2 Exercise One: An Experimental Situation given to the students. They have to Discuss design, write hypothesis, IV, DV, Control Variables, Statistical Analysis, Ethical Issues.
• 3 Exercise Two: Variables are given to the students. They have to Design experiment, write hypothesis, discuss Statistical Analysis, and Ethical Issues. (Note: Students will write a report of these exercises in the journal. They are not part of the external examination conduction.) *Please refer to the detailed manual.

Module 3: Practice Experiment – One Experiments *

• 1 Experiment 1: Moral Reasoning: Trolley experiment
• 2 Conduct the experiment.
• 3 Review Original Article
• 4 Write result and discussion of group data using APA format. (Note: Students will write a report of these exercises in the journal. They are not part of the external examination conduction.) *Please refer to the detailed manual.

Module 4: Experiments in Psychology to be conducted in the Department Laboratory – Two Experiments * (Conduct any two experiments out of three)

• 1 Experiment 1: Reasoning in Social Situations: A Study Using the Wason Selection Task
• 2 Experiment 2: Prospects Theory: Effect of gain / loss on risky choices.
• 3 Experiment 3: Feature Binding and Recall: Testing the Passive Storage Function of the Episodic Buffer
• 4 Conduct the experiments
• 5 Pool group data
• 6 Use appropriate statistics: Manually. Use Excel /Spreadsheet tools/ R /SARE/ JASP/JAMOVI for analysis of data.
• 7 Write report – abstract, introduction, method, result (Individual and group), discussion, conclusion
• 8 Use of Computerised Experiment: Use Opensesame/ Psychopy / CogLab to conduct the experiment to teach computerization of the experiments. *Please refer to the detailed manual.

Text Books

• Amato, M. R. (1979). Experimental psychology: Methodology, psychophysics and learning. Tata McGraw Hill.
• Belhekar, VM. (2016) Statistics for Psychology using R. Sage.
• Broota, K. D. (1989). Experimental design in behavioural research. Wiley Eastern.
• Goldstein, B. E. (2002). Sensation and perception. Wadsworth.
• King, B. M., Rosopa, P. J., Minium, E. W., Kapur, P., & Dubey, S. (2023). Statistical reasoning in the behavioral sciences (7th ed., An Indian Adaptation)
• Kling, J. W., & Riggs, L. A. (1984). Woodworth and Schlosberg experimental psychology. Khosla Publishing House.
• Shaughnessy, J. J., Zechmeister, E. B., & Zechmeister, J. S. (2015). Research methods in psychology (10th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education
• Snodgrass, J. G., Levy-Berger, G., & Haydon, M. (1985). Human experimental psychology. Oxford University Press.
• Moral Reasoning (Trolley Problem):
• Foot, P. (1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Oxford Review, 5, 5–15.
• Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293(5537), 2105–2108).
• Reasoning in Social Situations (Wason Selection Task):
• Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31(3), 187–276.
• Prospect Theory (Gain/Loss Framing Effect):
• Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458.
• Feature Binding and Recall (Episodic Buffer Testing):
• Baddeley, A. D., Allen, R. J., & Hitch, G. J. (2011). Binding in visual working memory: The role of the episodic buffer. Neuropsychologia, 49(6), 1393–1400

Reference Books

• McGuigan, F. J. (1969). Experimental psychology. Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd.
• Osgood, C. E. (1953). Method and theory in experimental psychology. Oxford University Press
• Solso, R. L. (2001). Cognitive psychology. Pearson Education.
• Shergill, H. K. (2012). Experimental psychology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
• Mathôt, S., et al. (2012). OpenSesame: A graphical experiment builder. Behavior Research Methods, 44(2), 314–324.
• Mueller, S. T., & Piper, B. J. (2014). The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL). Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 222, 250–259.
• Peirce, J. W., et al. (2019). PsychoPy2: Behavior experiments made easy. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 195–203.
• R Core Team. (2026). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation
• Rajamanickam, M. (2006). Experimental psychology with advanced experiments (2 vols.). Concept Publishing Company.
• JASP Team. (2024). JASP (Version 0.19.2) [Computer software]. jasp-stats.org
• The jamovi project. (2024). jamovi (Version 2.5) [Computer software]. jamovi.org