PSY 200: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Fall 2011
MWF 10:30 am-11:20 am
Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, Room 1105

Breaking news:

• December 20, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to include the final exam scores. It also lists the final grade for the class.
• December 12, 2011: Dr. Francis is shifting his office hours on Wednesday to 10-11:00 am. Office hours on Monday and Friday are 2-3:00 pm.
• December 12, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to include a correction for the last CogLab, which used a deadline that was too early. The sheet also includes all other corrections. The only remaining grade for the class is the final exam. As always, if you see any errors, please contact Dr. Francis or a TA immediately.
• December 9, 2011: Boiler cast recordings of some of the lectures are available as a podcast and videocast. From the Boilercast page in iTunes follow the link for Health and Human Sciences and then scroll down to Psychological Sciences and then follow the link for PSY 200 - Francis. Not every lecture is there, but some additional audio recordings of the lectures can be found in the schedule below.
• December 9, 2011: Dr. Francis will hold his regularly scheduled office hours during finals week: MWF 2:00-3:00 pm.
• December 9, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to include the last CogLab, which was mistakenly left off. The sheet also includes all other corrections. The only remaining grade for the class is the final exam. As always, if you see any errors, please contact Dr. Francis or a TA immediately.
• December 7, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to reflect scores on the fourth exam. The only remaining grade for the class is the final exam. As always, if you see in errors, please contact Dr. Francis or a TA immediately.
• December 2, 2011: The study guide for the final exam is available for download.
• November 15, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to reflect scores on the third exam. CogLab and class participation grades are also up to date. If you see any mistakes, please let me know.
• November 7, 2011: I am putting the audio recordings of lectures on the class website as they become available. Lecture 26 is now listed in the syllabus below. See the "Optional readings" section for a link to the MP3 file.
• November 7, 2011: The study guide for the fourth exam is available for download.
• October 24, 2011: The study guide for the third exam is available for download.
• October 24, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to reflect changes to class participation checks. If you see any mistakes, please let me know.
• October 20, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to reflect scores on the second exam. CogLab and class participation grades are also up to date. If you see any mistakes, please let me know. Scores on the exam were not as good as I had hoped.
• October 7, 2011: To accommodate students with last minute questions for Exam 2, Dr. Francis will hold office hours on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 9:00 am.
• October 7, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to reflect all the CogLab assignments to date.
• October 2, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to correct some mistakes for the class participation check on September 28.
• September 30, 2011: The grade sheet has been updated to include CogLab assignments up through Sept. 30. One additional class participation check has also been updated. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Dr. Francis or the TA.
• September 26, 2011: The grades for the first exam are in. Each row lists a CogLab ID and the associated grades. You can pick up your exams from the TA, Terry. His office hours are Tuesday, Thursday, 1:00 - 2:30 pm, but you can also set up an appointment if those times will not work for you. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Dr. Francis or the TA.
• September 21, 2011: The study guide for the second exam can be downloaded from the class schedule below.
• September 7, 2011: The study guide for the first exam can be downloaded from the class schedule below.
• September 7, 2011: Dr. Francis needs to move his office hours for today to 1:30 - 2:30 pm.

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 2:00-3:00 pm. 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. 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).

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. 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 9:00 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
Terry Kwon	PEIRCE 190	kwont@purdue.edu	Tuesday, Thursday, 1:00 - 2:30 pm
Cosmo Zhang	PEIRCE 377	unavailable	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.