Cosand's Lab Class

Today, I audited Prof. Louise Cosand's neuropsych class. The assignment was to have three students perform a task. Two of them were to just go downstairs and wait. The third was to go to the professor's class, find her phone, and change her status to something completely offensive.

The point of this is for the remainder of the class (not knowing who the real criminal is) to use a lie detector test to find the culprit. To accomplish this, they strapped each of the three suspects up to the machine and asked them a series of questions. Two of the three groups asked an additional question that would be used as a control. For example, the question was, "Do you think Prof. Cosand's father would like you?" By asking this question, the person would have no idea how to answer. Thus, when asked a question about the actual crime, they would give the same detection as the 'no idea question' if they were innocent. It was simple comparing.

The third group asked a series of questions on the same matter. For example, "Did you go through a green purse? Did you go through a pink purse? Did you go through a white purse?" The point of this was that the professor's purse if white. By asking this series, the group reasoned that if this was culprit, the last question would peak the heartbeat because they're not sure of how to answer.

Reflection:
I'm not sure if this class will be beneficial enough to me for my specific project. Though the content is very interesting, I'm going to go with an online class with www.saylor.org