Cognitive Psychology
Psy333

Autumn 2012

Office Hours:  
MF 10:00 AM
W 3:00 PM
R 9:00 AM
Others by appointment

Announcements

Sep 3
Welcome to the Cognition.  I hope you had an enjoyable summer and are well rested.   All changes to the course will be posted here as well as announced in class.  In addition, if new resources become available, you will be able to find them here.

Definition of Cognitive Psychology

What is this course that you are embarking upon? What is cognition?  In the most basic terms cognition is the action of the brain or mind to understand the world around us and to determine an appropriate action.  To unpack that barebones definition, there are many activities that are required.  For example, you need to perceive the world around you, remember past events to compare present events to, select the important parts of the world to attend to, store what has been learned from the current experience for later use, understand and transmit language, etc.

Objectives

Course Objectives: My primary goal for this course is to develop your ability to think soundly and well using the material of cognitive psychology.  As part of this goal you will need to comprehend the substance and methods of cognitive psychology.

Major Objectives: In the context of this major, this course is an upper level lab based course.  As such the department has specified some goals for you.  First, the department wants to develop a more independent level of thinking as you progress through the major.  Thus, there will be less structure to the course and you will be given some responsibility for assignments.  As part of this goal, you will also be asked to develop your own cognitive theory.  Second, the department wants to have you prepared more for an independent research project which forms the senior capstone experience.  Thus, you will be asked to design and implement a small research project to present at the end of the semester.

Attitude Toward Text

I want you to consider the text book not so much as a document as to the current nature of cognitive psychology, which is its attempt, but as a theory of cognitive psychology, which is what it is.  The author tries to present several theories about cognitive psychology  but definitely has an overall sense of how cognition works that guides his presentation.  It would be dishonest to do otherwise, to present a theory or idea that he believes is demonstrably false just for the sake of balance.  So as you read, read with your critical mind awake critiquing the ideas and using the evidence you have at hand to determine what you think is correct.  A truism in science is that most major discoveries are made by those new in the field that have unjaundiced eyes. Thus your inexperience may be a great benefit is seeing what those more experienced may miss or misunderstand.  In addition, wherever possible you will be given as set of studies to do (the data are due by 3:00 pm on the Friday before they are discussed).  We will used the data from our class as a jumping off point for discussion.

Expectations

• Attend Class.
• Hand assignments in on time.
  • All data for the class are due on the Class Email thee Friday at 3:00 pm before they will be discussed in class.
• Participate in laboratories.
• Participate in class
• Leave opinions in your rooms and bring evidence to bear on all of your in-class statements.  Sound reasoning requires that our ideas are based upon evidence that others can examine.  For this course that evidence will come from our book, library articles, laboratories and other exercises.
• Seek help when you need it.

Class Behavior Rules

• No electronic devices will be allowed in class.  That means no laptops, no phones, no handheld devices, no iPads, etc.

Schedule 
(Dates in red are dates where I am scheduled to be out or town or might be out of town.  That day's activities will be announced later)

Laboratory Schedule

The laboratory web site.

Assignments

In Class Data Collection

Most weeks you will be required to collect some data from cognition related experiments. That data will be due the friday of the week before we use that data by 3:00 pm. So the experiments listed under Week 2 are due Friday of Week 1 by 3:00 pm. Most of the experments are in the CogLab CD and are listed as just. A few are experiments I have written. In all cases, the summary data is due sent to me in an Excel spreadsheet. From CogLab you can cut and paste from the summary tables into Excel directly. In addition to the data, I need 2-3 sentences trying to interpret your data. Your interpretation needs to be based on the data you have. As you will only have your own data, it might look different from expecations and/or the class average. Focus on what you found. Grades fro the writing will be on a Check Plus/Check/Check Minus system (Check Plus = 95, Check = 90, Check Minus = 80). Late data and interpretation loses 10 points, no data is a 0. Data is worth a total of 50 points.

Exams  

Over the course of the semester there will be two take home exams.  These exams will be in an essay format.  You will get the questions about 1 week ahead of time.  These exams will either be in class or take home.  We will discuss these options in class.  If the exams are take home, they will due, emailed as a Word file, at the end of the day indicated above.  Each exam is cumulative and therefore each exam is worth more points.  The points are awarded as follows:

Test 1	100 points
Test 2	150 points

Laboratories and Their Reports

For each laboratory you write of a brief paper describing the lab and the results from the lab. The format of the reports will be APA.  You have had APA format before so you are expected to be familiar with writing papers in this format.  The labs are to be emailed to me in a Word format on the due date indicated.

Final Laboratory Project

In teams of two or three, you will design and conduct an experiment in the realm of cognitive psychology.  To prepare you for this project, you need to develop teams and develop an idea for the project by the lab period set aside to discuss the projects.  During this lab the class will act a research group.  Each team will present their project idea and the whole class will discuss the project, anticipate projects and suggest solutions and improvements.  At the end of the term you will present the project in written, and oral formats.  The paper is due on Thursday of dead week.  The paper will be emailed to me in a Word format by 5:00 pm that day.  For your assistance, here is a link to past PowerPoints, and in some cases papers, from past projects.

The points for the various parts of this project are:

Initial Presentation of Idea	25 points
Oral Presentation	75 points
Written Version	75 points

• Additional Forms
  • Human Subject Application - required at the time initial presentation
  • Sign-up Sheet - as an example that might be helpful

 

Grading and Policies

Class Participation:

To help ensure that students actively participate there is a participation grade of 100 points. Attendance alone cannot but provide for half of these points.  As stated above, sharing of your views and critiquing the ideas of others is a necessary part of this class.  These behaviors are necessary for the remainder of the class participation grade.  

Late Policy:

An assignment is late 1 minute after the beginning of class. One letter grade will be subtracted for the first day late and another letter grade for each additional day.  No assignment will be accepted more than three days late.  The one exception to this rule is for homework.  No late homework will be accepted at all.

Grades will be converted to percentiles and letter grades will be assigned as follows: