PSY 200: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Spring 2012
MWF 1:30 pm-2:20 pm
Smith Hall, Room 108

Breaking news:

• 6 May 2012: The grade sheet has been updated with a correction to the final exam. I determined that one question on the exam did not have a valid answer. I asked the graders to not score that question, so the reported grade last time was out of 99. I added one point to each score to make up for the missing score. This changed the letter grade for some students.
• 5 May 2012: The grade sheet has been updated with scores from the final exam. It also includes all changes to CogLab and excused class participations. It provides your final class grade percentage, and the letter grade I will be assigning. Note that the cut-offs for the different grade classifications were given in lecture 1, and there is no rounding. There is no extra credit. The only possible way to change your grade at this point would be to argue that there was a grading mistake on your exam. If you can convince me of this, I will fill out a change of grade form. This can be done at the start of the fall semester or over the summer.
• 27 April 2012: The grade sheet posted earlier did not include the last two checks in the class participation grade. It has now been corrected.
• 27 April 2012: The grade sheet has been updated with scores from Exam 4. It also includes all CogLab and class participation grades. If you see any errors (especially check for excused absences), please contact Dr. Francis.
• 26 April 2012: The Boiler Cast lecture recordings appear to be up to date now.
• 26 April 2012: The study guide for the final exam has been updated to reflect the schedule for this semester.
• 04 April 2012: The grade sheet has been updated with scores from Exam 3. It also includes CogLab up through today and class participation checks.
• 13 March 2012: The grade sheet has been updated with a few missing scores and corrections.
• 7 March 2012: The grades for the second exam have been posted. This also includes CogLab and almost all class participation grades through March 7. It does not include some random checks on class participation (an individual check). I will add those tomorrow. The scores were much improved, compared to Exam 1.
• 10 February 2012: The grades for the first exam have been posted. This also includes CogLab grades through February 3, and class participation through Feb. 8.
• 2 February 2012: I added an optional reading (actually a video) for Lecture 6 on receptive fields.
• 27 January 2012: A student in the class has been making audio recordings of the lectures and shared them with me. Boilercast has been inconsistent and missed some of the early lectures. The audio recordings may be useful in their absence. Boilercast seems to be working properly for Lecture 6 on (lecture 5 recorded video but not sound). I put links to audio recordings of Lectures 1, 3, 4 and 5 under the Optional Readings column in the syllabus (lecture 2 is unavailable).
• 9 January 2012: A student reports having trouble printing of page 5 from lecture 11 in the full set of lecture notes. If you have this problem, you might try downloading and printing just the lecture pages for lecture 11 from the schedule below.

Professor: Greg Francis. My office is PSYCH 3174. You can contact me by email at gfrancis@purdue.edu or call 494-6934 to reach my office phone. My office hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10:00 am - 11:00 am. Please contact me if you cannot visit during office hours to schedule an alternative time to meet.

Text: There is no textbook. Material for exams will be taken from the lectures. If you want to use a textbook, you can use any cognition text from other (present and past) sections of this course, or you can purchase a textbook online. Class notes will be available on the web (see below). The notes are reduced in size so that six slides fit on a single page. You can either download individual lectures (below) or you can download the entire set of lectures notes in a single file (43 MB).

Lectures: Boiler cast recordings of some of the lectures will be available as a podcast and videocast. From the Boilercast page in iTunes follow the link for Health and Human Sciences, scroll down to Psychological Sciences, and then follow the link for PSY 200 - Francis. Do not be tricked into believing that you can get the full benefit of the lecture from the Boiler cast recordings.

Class home page: The home page for this course is http://www.psych.purdue.edu/~gfrancis/Classes/PSY200/index.html From this page you can download lecture notes, view the class schedule, view current grades, and connect to the various homework laboratory assignments.

Class format : The class style is mostly lecture. However, there will be frequent in-class demonstrations (see Class participation below). In addition, there will be a number of Internet laboratories where the student will explore aspects of cognition.

Examinations: There will be four section exams and one final exam. The section exams will be in-class and the final exam will be given during the final exam period (do not plan to leave early, this course is sometimes scheduled for the last day of exam week). Each section exam is worth 16% of your grade. The final is also worth 16% of your grade. The final will cover all topics of the course. Exams will include a mix of multiple choice and short answer questions. Extensive study guides will be provided.

Class participation: Fairly often, I will require assistants during the lecture. I will go through the class list and pick names at random. If you are not present when your name is called, you will lose class participation credit. On some days the entire class will participate. Class participation will make up 10% of your final grade. There will be approximately 10 checks for each student in the class. This means that missing a single check can drop your final class grade by close to 1 percentage point.

Take-home labs: We will use the CogLab programs to augment our discussions of some classic experiments in cognitive psychology. You will be given lab assignments throughout the semester. These labs are run through the Internet and can be carried out at any computer lab on campus or at a home computer. Your overall lab grade will make up 10% of your final grade. All the labs are organized on the Cognitive Psychology Online Laboratory (CogLab) web page at http://coglab.wadsworth.com. In the schedule below, individual labs are associated with different dates. You must complete the lab by 10:00 am on the date indicated to get credit. You will receive log-in information in class.

Make-up exams: Make-up exams will not be permitted unless you notify Dr. Francis at least 48 hours prior to the scheduled exam date. Missed exams will receive a grade of 0.

Teaching Assistants:

Name	Office	Email	Office hours
Jihyun Kim	PSYCH 3194	kim510@purdue.edu	Tuesday, Thursday 2:00-3:00 pm
Cosmo Zhang			none

Schedule: In the following table, clicking on a No. link will download a copy of the lecture notes for that class. The class lectures are in the portable document format (pdf). You can view them with a pdf viewer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is probably already installed on university computers and is available for free at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html.

The links in the laboratory column will take you to the CogLab web site.

The links to the optional readings provide some additional background or related information. You do not need to read this material, but if you are interested in the topic, it is a place to start further exploration.