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Unit of study_
PSYC4123: Advanced Psychology Seminar A
2025 unit information
The skills needed to understand the state of contemporary research on a topic are important for psychology graduates to acquire. These skills involve engaging critically and deeply with the primary research literature - that is, the journal articles that report on advances in knowledge. In this unit of study, for a particular topic in Applied and Interpersonal areas of psychology, you will analyse multiple articles, evaluating their credibility and gaining insights into their specific implications. By then synthesizing multiple pieces of research for a particular topic, you will arrive at a picture of what we know, and what our best theories are. This process will be facilitated via class discussion of research articles, including in the context of a presentation you will make regarding one or more articles. Writing an essay on some aspect of the issues discussed will further develop your analysis and synthesis skills. The topic of these assessments will be different from that of your empirical honours thesis, but the analysis and synthesis skills development will be useful for thesis writing as well as for inquiry in other domains.
Unit details and rules
Managing faculty or University school:
Science
| Study level | Undergraduate |
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| Academic unit | Psychology Academic Operations |
| Credit points | 6 |
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Prerequisites:
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None |
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Corequisites:
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PSYC4124 |
| Prohibitions:
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None |
| Assumed knowledge:
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Have sound knowledge of the main areas of psychological science as well as training in empirical research methods and statistics, and should be able to apply this knowledge to critically evaluate psychological research |
At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- LO1. Critically analyse individual journal articles and psychological studies for logical coherence, appropriate methodology, statistics, reliability and limitations
- LO2. Identify additional scientific information that relates to a particular topic in psychology
- LO3. Synthesise multiple research articles into a coherent understanding of the topic
- LO4. Explain scientific theories and findings in a clear and appropriate fashion, both orally and through written work
- LO5. Compose a well-organised essay synthesising and critically evaluating primary research sources
Unit availability
This section lists the session, attendance modes and locations the unit is available in. There is a unit outline for each of the unit availabilities, which gives you information about the unit including assessment details and a schedule of weekly activities.
The outline is published 2 weeks before the first day of teaching. You can look at previous outlines for a guide to the details of a unit.
| Session | MoA ? | Location | Outline ? |
|---|---|---|---|
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Semester 1 2025
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Normal day | Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney |
Outline unavailable
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Modes of attendance (MoA)
This refers to the Mode of attendance (MoA) for the unit as it appears when you’re selecting your units in Sydney Student. Find more information about modes of attendance on our website.
Important enrolment information
Additional advice
This unit and PSYC4124 must be taken by all Psychology Honours students, in their first semester, except those who take Advanced Theoretical Psychology (PSYC4107 and PSYC4108) instead.
