Talk:Motivation and emotion/Textbook/Motivation and emotion/Animals

Feedback

This textbook chapter is shaping up nicely - well done on putting your plan/outline up, wikifying it and experimenting with images and links. I've tweaked the image captions so that they display with the images and I've adjusted the heading levels to be consistent with the style for the textbook. Let me know if I can do anything else as you go along. BTW - Did you see this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL1-rFk2KDg Sincerely, James. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps consider swapping the order of the emotion and motivation sections? (I mainly suggest this because the structure for the book will be motivation then emotion. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:51, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Just popped in to see your page and wow it has really advanced over the past month - great effort. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I've had a closer look over the draft so far - which is very well advanced, although I think it could now mainly benefit from a significant trimming with some =restructuring and redrafting to integrate and focus on theory and research about motivation and emotion in animals. Hope this helps. Some more specific suggestions are below:

1. The current draft is very long (over 12,000 words - thesis length!) - whilst there is no upper limit, the original suggestion was to aim for more like 2,500 for 4,500 - so where possible, in redrafting, look to abbreviate and concentrate the chapter on some key underlying focus questions and the main topic. Content that is less directly relevant (e.g. supplementary) could be put into subpages, allowing you to trim down the main chapter with links off to sub-pages with more detailed information.
2. The heading structure should ideally use = for the title, then == (Level 2) for the chapter's next level of headings, then === for their sub-headings etc.
3. The layout in general is very good, with excellent use of images.
4. Introduction
   1. Maybe change "Theories of motivation and emotion in animals: An overview." to "Motivation and emotion in animals: An overview" or just "Introduction".
   2. Check grammar of sentence two.
   3. man's -> human's?
   4. scientists and pet lovers -> and psychology students?
   5. The image could have a more meaningful caption.
   6. I think this Introduction is promising and is currently reasonably good. I think that it would benefit from specifying either some focus questions and/or providing a more indepth outline of what topics will be covered in the chapter and why.
   7. I love the questions asked at the end of this section - perhaps these could go up front in the section to stimulate initial interest. But I don't think these are focus questions; focus questions should be more generic.
   8. What's the link for at the end: http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/08/e08expand.html? (explain)
5. Theories
   1. Excellent use of links to Wikipedia
   2. "There is plenty of literature available" - e.g., references?
   3. Darwin vs Lamarckian - lacks direct connection/application to motivation/emotion in animals (i.e., too general, broad) - how does it help to address the focus questions?
   4. Pavlov - this is a simpler, clearer section - but again, it could be made more obvious what the connection is to motivation/emotion in animals - yes, this is about animal behaviour, but what about motivation/emotion?
   5. Watson - ditto; this says nothing about motivatin/emotion in animals - it does perhaps say something about the use of animals in psychological research, but that is not the topic
   6. Rest of the theory sections - similar comments to above. This is a good summary of animal behaviour research, but some work needs to be done to tailor this section more closely to the motivation/emotion in animals. Perhaps it would make more sense to organise this not so much in terms of individual reseachers but more in terms of theoretical perspectives e.g., evolutionary, biological, and learning/behavioural paradigms. Alternatively keep this section very short of eliminate it and then incorporate relavant theory into subsequent sections.
   7. Seligman and learned helplessness could be added?
   8. Lorenz' work could be added?
6. Emotion in animals
   1. It would be helpful to know how/why you are conceptualising emotion and motivation as separate constructs in animals - i.e., explain these concepts first before the specific focus here on emotion (also note that earlier I've suggested considering putting motivation first)
   2. Maybe incorporate both theory and research into this section e.g., something like "This section discusses current theory and research on emotions in animals and consider implications for animal welfare." For example, the discussion about Harlow is split across two sections; it would be good to integrate these. Similarly, discussion about Skinner's work is split across sections.
   3. The last paragraph is somewhat confusing - better to set up and connect to the immediately following section.
7. "Do animals experience emotions such as love, fear, anger, rage, despair, frustration, boredom and contentment?" - why not just "Do animals experience emotions?"
   1. This section appears to be a response to a focus question (but it's not obvious). Perhaps a better question could be "What emotions do animals experience?" and "How do animal emotions differ between species?"
   2. This section is 1400 words and could definitely be abbreviated. There are lots of interesting ideas and information but the paragraphs seem to be quite disjointed. What's the overall of this section - provide an introduction, body and summary, then lead into the next section.
8. Motivation in animals
   1. Where links to videos are added, it could be helpful to include in brackets how long the video is e.g., (2 mins)
   2. Maybe integrate the video placement with specific, relevant sections in the text.
   3. Again, some focus questions and/or stated aims could be helpful.
   4. I skimmed the rest of this section - it was quite long and definitely could be abbreviated - my main perception is that many similar topics (such as learning) were raised again, so there was much overlap. It could be better in this case to integrate discussion of emotion and motivation (it's not clear to me that there is sufficient justification for treating them as separate topics when discussing animals - they are different, but are also very related), focusing on the main theories and relevant research about each theory.
   5. Bringing man and animals together - interspecies communication
      1. I think having an applied section on training is an excellent idea. But it represents almost 4000 words and I suspect could perhaps even sit as a separate article/chapter, with the chapter itself containing just some highlights. Interspecies communication is interesting... but it is relevant to this chapter only to the extent that it bears direct relation to understanding theory and research about motivation and emotion in animals. So, I would suggest being quite selective about the examples to focus on and to explictly point out the connections with motivation/emotion and particularly previous theory and research.
9. Recommended reading - not sure about this, seems to be a lot about horses as opposed to the chapter topic per se - maybe put into a separate page
10. External links - as for Recommended reading. I would be quite selective and in general try to place the links in relevant places in the body text. Only put some very particularly relevant recommended links here at the end, or include all links on a separate sub-page.

-- Jtneill - Talk - c 03:12, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Chapter feedback

This textbook chapter has been marked according to the marking criteria. Marks are available via login to the unit's Moodle site. Written feedback is provided below, plus there is a general feedback page. Please also check the chapter's page history to see what editing changes I have made whilst reading through the chapter. Responses to this feedback can be made by starting a new section below or continuing to improve the chapter if you wish. If you would like further clarification about the marking or feedback, contact the unit convener. If you wish to dispute the marks, see the suggested marking dispute process.

Overall Overall, the effort level on this chapter was very high, but I think it missed the mark in that the chapter was really about learning in animals whereas the target topic (and marking criteria) was theory and research on motivation and emotion in animals. The latter section on emotion in animals was on target, but the sections on cognition, personality, learning etc. were not sufficiently related to the target content for the chapter. In addition, the information on training and the supplementary information seemed to reflect a struggle between what you were motivated to write about (training animals) vs. the target content for the chapter (theory and research on motivation and emotion in animals). Theory Research Written expression The introduction was well set up, however there was an emphasis it seems on training (the chapter objective should be to examine theory and research about motivation and emotion in animals - training is related, but a different area (e.g., more related to learning/behaviour). Use gender neutral language e.g., man -> people Avoid directional referencing e.g., "This section follows from the last," The chapter could have benefited from developing clear focus questions. The placement of the predator-prey videos didn't make a whole lot of sense to me - what was the focus question being addressed? And what are the key points about theory and research on emotion and motivation which are being made? (Basically, I'm not clear how the videos contribute to the marking criteria - make this more obvious.) "Do they really think? Animal cognition explained" - What is the purpose of this section? It seems to be about cognition. But what we want to focus on is theory and research of motivation and emotion in animals. "Do animals have personalities?" - Same as previous comment for this section. Perhaps both of these sections could be significantly abbreviated and focused instead of point out how animal cognition and personality relates to and influences motivation and emotion in animals. An example of relating these topics back to the chapter topic is in the "Classical and operant conditioning, how animals learn" section which beings "How animals learn underpins what motivates them and suggests they possess awareness.". What follows, however, is a long section on learning theory which minimal relation drawn to theory and research on animal motivation and emotion (e.g., I would expect to find this content in a chapter about "How do animals learn?" as opposed to the current chapter which is about "Motivation and emotion in animals") The section on imprinting gets a little closer to the target content for this chapter in the initial part where it relates learning in "Emotion in animals" in the strongest section in terms of meeting the marking criteria because it "discusses current theory and research on emotion" (the previous sections needed to do the same for motivation). This section is more about animal social psychology: "Bringing man and animals together - interspecies communication Use Australian spelling e.g., hypothesize -> hypothesise References were in reasonable APA style - but check capitalisation. Well done on finding so many interesting, illustrative videos - ideally these could have focused more selectively on theory and research about motivation and emotion in animals.

Multimedia presentation feedback

The accompanying multimedia presentation has been marked according to the marking criteria. Marks are available via the unit's UCLearn site. Written feedback is provided below, plus see the general feedback page. Responses to this feedback can be made by starting a new section below. If you would like further clarification about the marking or feedback, contact the unit convener.

Overall 8 Overview Overall, this is a solid CR-level presentation. Your voice was easy to listen to. The first half on learning theory, for me, wasn't clearly enough related to motivation or emotion. More emphasis could be given on focusing on a few key take-away messages. Excellent introduction (clear outline) Effective use of images - what were the sources? Text was quite readable - could be a bit larger - watch out for red - it tends to "bleed" - also remove background shadow from font (that also creates "blurring") I liked the way you paused between sentences. Explain how learning theory relate to animal emotion? Explain how learning theory relate to animal emotion? Emotion in animals was a stronger section - focused on the emotion (whereas I wasn't clear what learning theory was being related to) Conclusion - maybe what are the main take-home messages? Content No comment Conclusion No comment Audio No comment Video No comment Meta-data No comment Licensing No comment

-- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)