Prof. B. Smith
Cognitive Psychology
PSY-120-1, PNL 103, MWF 11:30 - 12:35 p.m.
PSY-120-L, PNL 103, T 3:15 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Office: “Bauder” Hall, Room 102
Spring, 2009
Phone: 565-6113
Email: bsmith@westmont.edu
Web site: http://homepage.westmont.edu/bsmith
(then click on PSY 120 link)
Office hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
or by appointment--Check office hours for a given week and make an appointment at
http://www.westmont.edu/_academics/pages/advising/
Goals of the Course:
Overlapping with the particular goals of cognitive psychology, the College has identified several standards of excellence and
their corresponding learning outcomes as important to the education of all students. These standards are Christian orientation,
diversity, critical-interdisciplinary thinking, written & oral communication, active societal & intellectual engagement, and
research & technology. The particular goals of this course, along with the institutional standards are listed below.
At the completion of this course, students should be able to:
1. understand the metatheoretical assumptions and major theoretical perspectives in cognitive psychology (criticalinterdisciplinary thinking),
2. identify the various subareas of this discipline,
3. evaluate theoretical conclusions analytically (critical-interdisciplinary thinking),
4. apply cognitive principles in his or her everyday life (active societal & intellectual engagement),
5. select a data analysis procedure based on the experimental design used (research & technology),
6. run and interpret a number of data analyses (t-test, ANOVA) using Excel and SPSS (research & technology),
7. find and select appropriate articles, using electronic data bases, that will serve as the foundation for a lab report
introduction (research & technology),
8. use the text, class discussion, and reflection to continue in his or her integration of psychological, scientific, and scriptural
truths (Christian orientation; active societal & intellectual engagement),
9. demonstrate improvement in writing scientific reports using APA formatting and editorial styles, without plagiarizing
(written & oral communication; research & technology; Christian orientation), and
10. design and complete a cognitive research project applying cognitive concepts and using appropriate methods (research &
technology)
GE Requirements Satisfied: This course meets the requirements for: Writing Intensively within the Major.
Required Texts:
Galotti, K. M. (2008). Cognitive psychology: In and out of the laboratory (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson
Learning.
American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.).
Washington, DC: Author.
Recommended Texts:
Perrin, R. (2004). Pocket guide to APA style. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Recommended Resources:
Your statistics textbook and your experimental psychology textbook
Resources for Current Students in Psychology:
http://www.westmont.edu/_academics/departments/psychology/ and click on the Current Students link
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On E-Reserve:
Bem, Daryl J. (1995). Writing a review article for Psychological Bulletin. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 172-177.
Benson, M. J., Sporakowski, M. J., & Stremmel, A. J. (1992). Writing reviews of family literature: Guiding students
using Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive objectives. Family Relations, 41, 65-69.
Granello, D. H. (2001). Promoting cognitive complexity in graduate written work: Using Bloom's Taxonomy as a
pedagogical tool to improve literature reviews. Counselor Education & Supervision, 40, 292-307.
Course Requirements:
Readings. Read the appropriate sections of your chapters before you come to class, so that you are prepared to write and
think about the material. Read the information for what you don't know; write down questions about information you
don't understand and ask those questions in class.
Lab Work.
Participation & Attendance is required for two reasons. First, the lab serves as a way to illustrate classic, and often
counterintuitive, studies in cognitive psychology as well as a means to acquaint you with the methodologies of
cognitive psychology. It also provides additional practice in thinking cognitively. Second, we have a relatively small
number of people in the class. Ideally, I want to use your data from each lab to illustrate results. If you miss, less
data are available, so your participation is important for your classmates' learning as well as your own.
Lab begins promptly at 3:15 p.m. In order to participate in the day's lab exercise and earn attendance points, you must
be present by that time--no later.
Excel Workshop Assignment. This assignment is designed to review and extend your knowledge of data entry,
calculation, and graphing in Excel. A print-out of your line graph and table should be turned in for credit.
SPSS Assignment. This assignment is designed to review and extend your knowledge of data entry, analysis, and
interpretation in SPSS. A print-out of your work showing the data spreadsheet and variable information that you
created, and data analyses that you performed should be turned in for credit.
APA Style Article List. This assignment is designed to provide a deadline for your article search for the lab report
introductions, another opportunity to practice APA style formatting in reference lists, and a way for me to review the
articles you've selected and offer feedback on how well they might fit together. This list should include 10-15
articles, formatted APA style, and emailed to me as a MSWord attachment.
Laboratory "Reports" will be written in APA style with a title page, one or two complete sections of a lab report as
noted in the assignment schedule, a graph or table of the results (as assigned in lab), a list of references cited, an
author note, and a comprehensible outline of the remaining sections of the lab report. Your grasp of the material and
ability to communicate your understanding clearly and concisely, with the appropriate voice, will comprise about
75% of the grade, and your knowledge of APA format will make up 25% of the grade. All graphs and tables must be
computer-generated and formatted in APA style.
Your Own Study. Throughout the semester, you will design and run your own study. Your results will be presented in
a PowerPoint presentation at the end of the semester. You may work together with a partner. Your grade will be
based on all aspects of your behavior as it indicates creativity and originality; planning, organizing, and decisionmaking; problem-solving, persistence, and reliability; and ability to complete the tasks well.
You will need to find, read, and cite sources for the introductions that are assigned. Seven or more empirical,
research articles are required for these introductions. Search the last 5-50 years of the Psychological Abstracts to
find these sources, and make copies, download, or order them through interlibrary loan. You may not be able to
find appropriate research reports in our library, so do your research early and order your articles through
interlibrary loan immediately.
Most cognitive studies are reported in one of the following journals:
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society
Cognition
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Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Science
Discourse Processes
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning, & Memory (now L, M, & C, see next journal)
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Performance and Perception
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior (now Journal of Memory & Language; see 2 journals down)
Memory and Cognition
Journal of Memory and Language
Psychological Review
The lab reports that contain full introductions must be submitted electronically in MSWord or rtf format as well as in
print. Use the naming convention of LASTNAME1.doc or LASTNAME1.rtf.
DO NOT send your assignments through inside mail. Bring them to class or drop them off at Bauder Hall during
regular business hours (8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.).
Tests. There will be 3 multiple choice/short answer tests. The third exam will be given during exam week, but will not be
comprehensive. There will be no make-ups, and the final test must be taken at the scheduled time (see syllabus). Plan
to travel after exams are over!
Point Breakdown and Grading Scale:
Grades will be based on the following distribution of points:
Task
Lab Work
Attendance
SPSS Assignment
Excel Assignment
APA style Lists of Articles
Your Own Study
Lab Reports (5 max.)
Tests over 3 sections
Points
Per Item
Total Points
Possible
5
10
10
~10
~50
~25
~80
10
10
~10
~50
125
100
Total:
~300
~585
For now, the following grading scale will be used to calculate grades. This may change later in the semester, however.
Grade
A
AB+
B
B-
Percent
95+
90-94
87-89
83-86
80-82
Grade
C+
C
CD+
D
D-
Percent
77-79
73-76
70-72
67-69
63-66
60-62
Note Bene: All computer and written assignments must be done independently--no collaborating; that is, no "working
together." You may discuss what should be included in a particular section of a lab report before any writing, data entry or
analysis is done, but the final product must obviously and clearly be the work of one person. Each person must create his or
her own computer data files, charts (graphs) and tables, word processing files, and print out and turn in his or her own
creations.
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Students who are involved in "working together," who receive "help" from other sources when it is not appropriate, or who
plagiarize, will earn penalties that range from an F on the assignment to an F in the course, at the instructor's discretion.
Additional penalties may include suspension or expulsion from the college.
Plagiarism: To plagiarize is to present someone else's work—his or her words, line of thought, or organizational structure—
as your own. This occurs when sources are not cited properly, or when permission is not obtained from the original author to
use his or her work. Another person's "work" can take many forms: printed or electronic copies of computer programs,
musical compositions, drawings, paintings, oral presentations, papers, essays, articles or chapters, statistical data, tables or
figures, etc. In short, if any information that can be considered the intellectual property of another is used without
acknowledging the original source properly, this is plagiarism.
Please review the entire Westmont College Plagiarism Policy which is available at:
http://www.westmont.edu/_academics/pages/provost/curriculum/plagiarism/
This document defines different levels of plagiarism and the penalties for each. It also contains very helpful information on
strategies for avoiding plagiarism. It cannot be overemphasized that plagiarism is an insidious and disruptive form of
academic dishonesty. It violates relationships with known classmates and professors, and it violates the legal rights of people
you may never meet.
First and second instances of minimal plagiarism in a student's career at Westmont, if they occur in this course, will result in
Fs on the assignments until they are redone satisfactorily. The maximum grade on the first rewritten assignment is one letter
grade lower (e.g., B  C) than it otherwise would have earned. The maximum grade on the second rewritten assignment is
two letter grades lower (e.g., B  D) than it otherwise would have been.
The third instance of minimal plagiarism, if it occurs in this course, will be considered substantial plagiarism and the
consequences for substantial plagiarism, as described in the Westmont College Plagiarism Policy, will be applied.
In all cases of plagiarism, a report will be submitted to the Provost's Office documenting the incident.
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Tentative Lecture & Lab, Assignment, and Test Schedules
Assignment Due Dates
Jan 12 M
13 T
14 W
16 F
19 M
20 T
21 W
23 F
26 M
27 T
Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Excel Review
Chapter 1--Cognitive Psychology: History, Methods, and Paradigms
Chapter 1, con't.
Martin Luther King Holiday
Monday Classes
Laboratory Study #1: Scrambled Words
SPSS Review; Analyzing Scrambled Word Data
Analyzing& Interpreting Scrambled Word Data
Chapter 2--The Brain; An Overview of Structure and Function
Chapter 2--con't
Laboratory Study #2: Stroop by Color & Number
28 W
30 F
Feb 2 M
3 T
4W
6 F
9M
10 T
11 W
13 F
16 M
17 T
18 W
20 F
23 M
24 T
Chapter 3--Perceiving Objects & Recognizing Patterns
Chapter 3, con't.
Chapter 4--Paying Attention
Discussion of LS #2: Stroop Effects
Chapter 4, con't.
Chapter 5--Forming and Using New Memory Traces
Chapter 5, con't.
Test #1; Chapters 1 - 5
Chapter 6--Retrieving Memories from Long-Term Storage
Chapter 6, con't.
President's Holiday
President's Holiday
Chapter 7--Memory for General Knowledge
Chapter 7, con't.
Chapter 8--Concepts and Categorization
Laboratory Study #3: Levels of Processing
25 W
27 F
Mar 2 M
3 T
4W
6 F
9M
10 T
11 W
13 F
16 M
17 T
18 W
20 F
Chapter 8, con't.
Chapter 8, con't.
Chapter 9--Visual Imagery & Spatial Cognition
Discussion of LS #3: Levels of Processing
Chapter 9, con't.
Chapter 10--Language
Chapter 10, con't.
Test #2; Chapters 6 -9
Chapter 10, con't.
Chapter 11--Thinking and Problem Solving
SPRING RECESS
SPRING RECESS
SPRING RECESS
SPRING RECESS
APA style Figure (Chart) based on
Excel Review
Scrambled Word SPSS Print Out;
LR #1: Method & Results
APA Style List of Articles for Stroop
LR #2, Stroop Effects: Introduction
& Discussion; submit electronically
in MSWord or rtf format as well as a
printed version
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Tentative Lecture & Lab, Assignment, and Test Schedules
Assignment Due Dates
Mar 23 M
24 T
25 W
27 F
Chapter 11, con't.
Laboratory Study #4: Concept Acquisition
Chapter 12--Reasoning
Chapter 12, con't.
30 M
31 T
April 1 W
3 F
6M
7 T
8W
10 F
13 M
14 T
Design Your Own (Laboratory Study #5): Questions to Ask?
Discussion of LS #4: Strategies for Acquiring Concepts
Design Your Own (Laboratory Study #5): Questions to Ask?
Design Your Own (Laboratory Study #5): How to Answer the Q?
Chapter 13--Making Decisions
Design Your Own (Laboratory Study #5): What Stimuli & Tasks?
Chapter 13, con't.
EASTER RECESS
EASTER RECESS
Create Stimuli & Tasks
15 W
16 F
20 M
21 T
22 W
24 F
27 M
28 T
Chapter 14—Cognitive Development through Adolescence
Chapter 14, con’t.
Create Stimuli & Tasks
Prepare Study
Prepare Study
Run Your own Study
Run Your own Study
Discussion of Results
29 W Discussion of Results
Last day of class
May 1 F Study Day
6 W 8:00 - 10:00 a.m.; TEST #3: CHs 10 - 13
LR #3, Levels of Processing:
Results & Discussion
LR #4, Concept Acquisition:
Introduction & Method
LR #5, Your Own Study:
PowerPoint presentations
LR #5, Your Own Study:
PowerPoint presentations