PSYC20007: Cognitive Psychology

1500-2000 word Lab report (40%) due mid-semester. You do the experiment, go over the results and stats, and make the graphs in the tute.
2 hour exam (50%), multiple choice. No tricks if you've studied the material.
Group presentation (5%) and individual 500w paper (5%) on a topic of interest such as Artificial Intelligence or Language and Cognition.
Online quizzes as hurdle requirement.

This is an interesting subject, especially for those with a more mechanical way of thinking. There is an emphasis on language in cognition. The lecturers and tutors are really, really lovely (go with Geoff if you can), and will definitely engage with any questions you might have. It's not a terribly hard subject, but I don't think it would grab everybody's interest.

Yes, with slides.

Good. Pretty interesting and the lecturers are nice and clear. Even the stats was less dry than other psych subjects.

No. The lectures and the tute notes are what you need to study.

5/5

The book prescribed is online for background reading. It's not on the exam and I wouldn't recommend it.

1h tute + 2x1h lectures per week

2013

H1

30% lab report, 10% online MCQ tests (1 for each week), 10% presentation and 50% exam

Probably the best (and most interesting) of all the subjects I've done so far. I'm gonna major in psych so I have had the chance to try out MBB1, MBB2, Dev Psych, Bio Psych, P&S Psych and this thus far and it's definitely the most cohesive of the lot and very well-executed.

Meredith does the very first lecture and the final three. Her lectures pertain to language use and the grounding of symbols in simpler iconic/indexical representations and how they all relate to cognition. I found her lectures challenging yet rewarding/interesting since some of the concepts were almost esoteric at times. She did an excellent job maintaining audience interest while still being very informative and this shows in her lecture slides (not too dense and ~30, with 'personalized commentary' accompanying each ppt). You will learn a lot from her lectures.

Phillip does the next 4 weeks. He covers the attention part. Initially, I found his lectures pretty dull/dry but they became much more interesting once I understood the gist of the experiments covered. His lectures are very well-structured and you feel like you're undertaking a chronological journey towards what's known of attention these days. The bits on peripheral/central attention and selective attention operating on objects instead of space are particularly enjoyable.

Dan continues for the next 3 weeks. His lectures were pretty hands-on and always started out with a mystery of sorts, unravelled at the end of the lecture, making it all the more tempting to be there for the lectures. His lectures were not as difficult to grasp initially as Meredith's or Phillip's but they were extremely content-heavy (be prepared for ~100 slides!). He also does the online statistics module and attempting the associated questions is a hurdle requirement.

Geoff does one lecture on the biases in reasoning and judgement. I can't comment on his style since I missed that lecture but judging by the slides and Echo it was really fun!

The lab report was quite difficult since we were the first batch to cover a novel condition in criminal lineups (no previous studies!). This led to much confusion about finding appropriate references and conceptualising and defining it in relation to the other lineups. If you do this subject and get a similar lab report I'd suggest doing lots of research into this!

The presentation is graded (10%), with two dates to choose from (somewhere mid-semester or towards the end). The grading is pretty lenient, so expect it to give your grades a boost (I should know, since I'm horrible at powerpoint presentations yet did quite well).

The online MCQs each week (all to be submitted at end of semester) were quite tricky. They were also timed and graded. Those questions were the sort to be expected during the exam.

The exam consisted of 108 MCQs, with each week given equal weightage in terms of number of questions asked (some are also set aside for the online statistics module). I didn't find it too challenging but that could be because I'm very interested in psychology and 'get' the stuff in lectures without too much effort. I found Meredith's section quite nerve-wracking (to make matters worse our exam started with her section!) as there were always 2 answers that competed in terms of accuracy/relevance to the question. Make sure you know her stuff well and understand it from every angle! Dan's section was very content-heavy but should not be a problem if you're thorough with your revision. Phillip's section should be pretty straightforward. Also, the stats section was noticeably easier than the ungraded questions online (hurdle requirement) so don't fret.
Overall, even as someone who enjoys psych subjects, I can say this is one of the standouts (at least for those up to the second year). It's very cohesive and well-executed due to the very competent lecturers and should be interesting regardless of your background. If you're doing it as a breadth I strongly recommend getting acquainted with the nature of such subjects by picking either MBB1 or MBB2 or both beforehand.

Yes, with screen capture.

Meredith McKague, Daniel Little, Phillip Smith & Geoff Saw.

Nope, but graded MCQs give you a good idea of what the exam's gonna be like.

5 of 5

Not necessary. I got it and barely used it. The lecturers did an excellent job.

1 X 2 hours of lecture per week + 1 X 2 hours lab/tutorial per fortnight, hurdle requirement such that you can only miss one tutorial

2014, Semester 2

H1 (93)

50% Lab Report, 50% Exam

This has to be my favourite subject at uni to date! It was bloody brilliant, easily the best Psychology subject you could ever do. It's hard, it requires real understanding of the theories and experiments because the final exam questions really did test your understanding rather than rote recall. I found all of the lecturers to be brilliant, some of the best the Psychology department has to offer! I found Dr. McKague's lectures the most difficult to grasp, not because she was a bad lecturer (she was in fact really great!), but because the concepts she discussed were really advanced and required some careful consideration before you can fully understand them. For the entire first 4 weeks I was really concerned because I found the content really quite difficult, but after reviewing it at the end of the year all together it really did come together so well and I felt I really understood her material from there on. It makes you really appreciate her lecturing and content, because if you spend time on it you'll realise you've learnt some pretty powerful stuff in just a few short weeks.

Daniel Little the coordinator is awesome, one of the best coordinators ever! He's always on the discussion board answering questions, you can tell he's 110% committed to making sure the subject runs really well. He's a really good lecturer as well. He starts off each lecture with an interesting story and eventually links the content of that particular lecture back to the story he began with. You can tell he put a lot of thought into his lectures! He does have a lot of content though. This is where Meredith and Dan differ, learning their stuff is difficult but the difference is that Meredith usually only has about 30-40 slides in a 2-hour lecture whereas Dan usually has double or triple that amount. Meredith's material was more challenging conceptually, but Dan's was more challenging because there was a lot of it.

Phillip Smith covers attention for 4 weeks, that may seem a bit over the top, but he covers so many interesting theories. I thought they might be a tad dry to begin with, but I eventually came to really love this section of the course. Attention is such a critical part of our lives so it was interesting to see how many theories have attempted to accurately describe it and yet there are still limitations. I felt like each lecture was really well constructed by Phillip and I could clearly see why he decided to include certain experiments. This all leads to his final lecture with some neuropsychology on spatial neglect which I found extremely fascinating since it really furthered my knowledge of the very interesting neurological condition.

The lab report is probably the only thing I don't like about this subject. Not because lab report's are ridiculously hard or anything, but you can easily get a mean/harsh tutor marking your paper and automatically you can get a grade lower than you deserve. This is particularly annoying when the lab report is worth half your entire grade and can practically snatch away any chance of a H1 in the blink of an eye. Our lab report was on eyewitness accounts with police lineups, it was a really great topic but also quite challenging. Each year the lecturers (usually the coordinator) set a new lab report topic so if you do the subject next year you'll get a different topic.

The exam is all multiple choice (96 Questions in 2 hours), but don't let that fool you. This subject is difficult and thus the questions are also quite difficult. I have to say though, unlike every other Psychology exam I've ever sat (from VCE to the other Uni Psych subjects I've done), this is the ONLY exam to not feature a single dodgy/ambiguous/unfair question. The only reason why the exam was written so well is because the lecturers were so great and clearly cared a lot about the subject so they made sure the exam questions were well thought out. I think most people found Meredith's section the hardest, simply because she had a lot of questions that had option D as "Both B and C", where option B and C were two very close answers where one could easily be wrong but both seem semi-plausible. So those questions really tested whether you truly knew your stuff, those who didn't wouldn't have done well at all with those questions. I personally found Daniel's questions the hardest though because they really required you to have quite detailed knowledge of the experiments and theories he mentioned, but if you studied well you'd be fine.

For those people thinking of trying this as a breadth subject with no prior psychology experience, you may feel like you've dug yourself a great big hole during the semester because it will be very difficult initially. But be consistent and work hard and you'll probably do well. I wouldn't say you're severely disadvantaged, but having a psychology background is definitely most important for a tough subject like Cog Psych. Maybe try an easier psych subject beforehand, but if you're committed to working hard on it then go ahead!

Yes, with screen capture.

Meredith McKague (Nature of Cognition, Psycholinguistics), Daniel Little (Memory, Stats, Learning, Knowledge, Categorisation), Phillip Smith (Attention - Object & Spaced based models, etc). We had each lecturer for 4 weeks.

No, about 30 practice True/False questions were provided.

5 Out of 5

Do NOT buy the textbook unless you're really desperate during semester, I never used it.

1 X 2 hour Lecture per week, 1 X 2 hour Tutorial per fortnight.

2012, Semester 2.

H1 (88)