Psychological Science in Practice
Like Duolingo, but for Psychological Science in Practice. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
27 levels across 4 sections, about 54 minutes end to end, roughly 11 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Deciphering Function and Motivation; Cognitive Processing and Affective Regulation; Relational and Developmental Foundations; and Trauma, Assessment, and Clinical Formulation.
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Key ideas in Psychological Science in Practice
- Behaviors labeled irrational or pathological are maintained by standard four-term contingencies (social positive, social negative, automatic positive/negative)
- Topographically similar behaviors can serve diametrically opposed functions across different contexts
- Function must be differentiated from topography to design an efficacious clinical intervention
- Establishing operations alter reinforcer potency independent of stimulus availability
- A discriminative stimulus signals availability, whereas an establishing operation determines current subjective value and evokes behavior even against high response effort
- Abolishing operations render an available reinforcer functionally inoperative without changing the physical environment
- Choice allocation mathematically mirrors the relative rates, latencies, magnitudes, and qualities of reinforcement across concurrent schedules (B1/(B1+B2) = R1/(R1+R2))
- Decreasing the delay to reinforcement for an alternative response overmatches behavior toward that alternative even if baseline reinforcement density was lower
- Introducing asymmetric response effort or delayed feedback alters the relative rate of obtained reinforcement
- Replacement behaviors must match the exact maintaining function (escape vs. attention vs. tangible) with equal or superior schedule parameter matching
- If the response effort of the alternative behavior exceeds the effort of the problem behavior, matching law dictates preference for the problem behavior
- Extinction bursts manifest as immediate spikes in rate, magnitude, and response variation when reinforcement is abruptly withheld
- Extinction-induced variability evokes novel topographies (including aggression or archaic behaviors) before systematic response attenuation occurs
- Spontaneous recovery is a temporary resurgence of the extinguished response after a temporal delay, not an indication that the contingency has broken down
- Controlling external rewards shift the perceived locus of causality from internal to external, undermining intrinsic motivation
- Informational rewards that validate competence without conditioning autonomy or relatedness preserve intrinsic drive
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Psychological Science in Practice the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
A student loudly slams their textbook shut during a tough math quiz, but does the exact same thing during unstructured free time. What does this suggest?
Get it right to open this lesson and 26 more in the app.
Where Psychological Science in Practice takes you
Bridge foundational psychological theory and clinical practice for behaviour support and mental health care. Master executive cognitive processes, affective neuroscience, attachment systems, and functional formulation to navigate complex human behaviour with precision.
- 1
Deciphering Function and Motivation
- Functional Behavioural Analysis and Learning Systems
- Motivation, Agency, and Volition
- 2
Cognitive Processing and Affective Regulation
- Executive Functions and Information Processing
- Affective Neuroscience and Emotional Regulation
- 3
Relational and Developmental Foundations
- Attachment Paradigms and Relational Security
- Lifespan Development and Social Ecology
- 4
Trauma, Assessment, and Clinical Formulation
- Trauma Neurobiology and Systems Care
- Psychological Formulation and Clinical Assessment
4 sections · 8 units · 27 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Psychological Science in Practice is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Psychological Science in Practice today.
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