Cognitive Psychology (PSY 120) Syllabus, Spring, 2008

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 (critical-interdisciplinary 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/pages/departments/psychology/pages/portals/studentportal.html

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 decision-making; 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

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 NAME1.doc or NAME1.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

Points

Per Item

Total Points

Possible

Lab Work

Attendance

5

~80

SPSS Assignment

10

10

Excel Assignment

10

10

APA style Lists of Articles

~10

~10

Your Own Study

~50

~50

Lab Reports (5 max.)

~25

125

Tests over 3 sections

100

~300

Total:

~585

For now, the following grading scale will be used to calculate grades. This may change later in the semester, however.

Grade Percent

A

95+

C+

77-79

A-

90-94

C

73-76

B+

87-89

C-

70-72

B

83-86

D+

67-69

B-

80-82

D

63-66

D-

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.

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

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 to C) than it otherwise would have earned. The maximum grade on the second rewritten assignment is two letter grades lower (e.g., B to 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.