Syllabus
Psychology 325: Cognitive Psychology
University of Arizona
Department of Psychology
Summer 2011
Instructor: Trevor Kvaran
Email: tkvaran@email.arizona.edu
Course Twitter Feed: CognitiveKvaran
Course Description & Structure
This course will provide an overview of some of the major topics in the field of cognitive
psychology. Cognitive Psychology is a particularly broad discipline, dealing with a
remarkably wide variety of questions about how the mind and brain work. My goals for
this course are to help you develop a rich understanding of the concepts and theories
proposed and studied by cognitive psychologists and to help you become familiar with
the experimental methods used in the field.
The areas we will cover in this class are:
Attention
Perception
Memory
Language
Concepts and Categorization
Problem-Solving
Decision-Making
Textbook and Additional Resources
The text we will be using for this class is Bruce Goldsteins’s Cognitive Psychology (3rd
Edition). It is a classic introduction to philosophy that contains an excellent assortment
of readings from many of the major areas of philosophy.
In addition to the primary text, you will also need a license for the online CogLab 2.0
software. This is a great program, which will allow you participate in a number of classic
experiments from cognitive psychology. If you purchased a new copy of the textbook,
your CogLab license is included with the book. If you purchased a used copy of the
textbook, you will need to purchase a license seperately. CogLab licenses can be
purchased at the following webpage: http://coglab.wadsworth.com/support/order.html
Occasionally, recent journal articles will be assigned to supplement your textbook
readings. These articles will always be posted in the ‘Supplemental Readings’ section of
the ‘Content’ page on the class D2L site.
Course Requirements
There are four bases for your grade in this course.
1. Quizzes: There will be weekly quizzes during the semester. These quizzes
will consist of multiple choice and true/false questions and will be
administered on the course website. Quizzes will be available under the
‘Quizzes’ page on the course website. These quizzes will be available from
noon on Friday until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday of whatever week the quiz is
given. Quizzes will be worth 20 points each.
2. CogLab Experiments: Cognitive psychology is an experimental science. As
such, I believe that it is necessary to experience the sorts of experiments that
are used to help us understand human cognition. The CogLab software that is
bundled with your textbook is an excellent way to participate in a wide range
of experiments. Each week you will participate in two experiments.
Participation in both experiments must be completed by Thursday at 11:59
p.m. each week.
3. Discussion: A crucial aspect of psychology is sharing and discussing your
thoughts, ideas, and research with other people. In order to introduce you to
this aspect of psychology, you will be required to post discussion
commentaries on the course message board.
Commentaries should be approximately 1-2 paragraphs in length and
can be written on anything in the assigned readings or the CogLab
experiments. These commentaries can take the form of a question you have
about something from the readings or experiments, your thoughts on how a
topic or experiment we learn about can be applied to the real world, a point in
the reading that you agreed with or found particularly interesting, or a general
thought that was brought about by one of the readings.
In addition to your commentary, you will be required to reply to at
least two of your fellow students’ commentaries. These replies can be
relatively short, but should address and expand on the point(s) made in the
original commentary. Although you are only required to reply twice during
each discussion, you are encouraged to post as often as you would like in the
message boards.
Discussions will be required each week (see the schedule below or the
calendar on the course website for specific dates). Each discussion will be
worth a total of 20 points. 15 points will come from your commentary and 5
points will come from your responses to other students.
4. Midterm and Final Exams: You will have two exams in this course. Exams
will consist of two sections. The first section will consist of several short
answer questions. These questions should take approximately 1-3 sentences
to answer. The second section of the midterm will consist of 2 short essays.
You will be provided with several essay questions dealing with the topics that
we have read about and discussed in class and you will pick any two to
answer. These essays should be answerable in approximately 250 words, or 1
page double-spaced. The midterm will be worth 100 points, with each of the
two sections worth 50 points.
Assignments & Grading
Assignment
Quizzes
Points
Due Date
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3
Quiz 4
20 points
20 points
20 points
20 points
Discussion 1
Discussion 2
Discussion 3
Discussion 4
CogLab Participation
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
20 points
20 points
20 points
20 points
Discussion
10 points
10 points
10 points
10 points
Midterm Exam
Final Exam
100 points
100 points
Total
400 points
Grading Scale by Percentage
A: 90-100%
B: 80-89%
C: 70-79%
D: 60-69%
F: 59% or less
Grading Scale by Points (out of 400)
A: 360-400
B: 320-359
C: 280-319
D: 240-279
F: 239 or less
Course Schedule
This course will be broken into four modules. Each module will take one week to
complete. Below is a general schedule for the semester, although changes may be made
to this schedule if necessary.
Week 1 (June 6 – June 12)
Module 1: Attention & Perception
Readings
1. Goldstein Chapter 3 (Pages 46-79)
2. Goldstein Chapter 4 (Pages 80-113)
Assignments
1. Quiz 1
2. Discussion 1
3. CogLab Participation 1
Experiment 1: Change Detection
Experiment 2: Muller-Lyer Illusion
Week 2 (June 13 – June 19)
Module 2: Long-Term & Short-Term Memory
Readings
1. Goldstein Chapter 5 (Pages 114-145)
2. Goldstein Chapter 6 (Pages 146-169)
3. Goldstein Chapter 7 (Pages 170-201)
Assignments
1. Quiz 2
2. Discussion 2
3. CogLab Participation 2
Experiment 1: Memory Span
Experiment 2: Serial Position
Week 3 (June 20 – June 26)
Module 3: Knowledge & Language
Readings
1. Goldstein Chapter 9 (Pages 238-267)
2. Goldstein Chapter 11 (Pages 292-323)
Assignments
1. Quiz 3
2. Discussion 3
3. CogLab Participation 3
Experiment 1: Prototypes
Experiment 2: Lexical Decision
4. Midterm Exam
Week 4 (June 27 – July 3 )
Module 4: Problem-Solving & Decision-Making
Readings
1. Goldstein Chapter 12 (Pages 324-357)
2. Goldstein Chapter 13 (Pages 358-390)
Assignments
1. Quiz 1
2. Discussion 4
3. CogLab Participation 4
Experiment 1: Monty Hall
Experiment 2: Risky Decisions
Week 5 (July 4 - July 7)
**Final Exam**
Due by 11:59 p.m. on July 7th.