PSYC30017: Perception, Memory and Cognition

25% essay, 25% lab report and 50% exam. Three hurdle MCQ quizzes (ungraded) for each of the lecturers' section.

Ah yes, PMC, my favourite subject in uni. No idea why I didn't review it right after semester 1, but here it's anyway. I've mentioned how Trends in Personality & Social Psychology was the second most difficult subject I've done, well, PMC claims the title for being the most difficult! It's a highly rigorous subject, with fast paced lectures and plenty of abstract concepts introduced at times, and also requires an interest in mathematical and theoretical models underpinning the human cognitive processes. Don't get me wrong, I love every bit of this subject (it's also when I discovered Unimelb 'curves' grades for sure), but that's because I'm planning to complete a PhD in this area of psychology. I strongly recommend not to take this subject as either a psych elective or a breadth unless you're highly interested in more in-depth understanding of concepts related to second year cognitive psychology. I've had to help a few people extensively throughout the semester owing to the complex nature of the subject. The SES feedback for PMC year after year is that it's too challenging for a 3rd year subject. Again, know what you're getting into.

"When two aligned contours undergo a discontinuous change in the magnitude of contrast, but preserve contrast polarity, the lower contrast region is decomposed into two layers."
If you don't mind reading statements like these all the time, and also wish to gain renewed insight towards simple everyday human cognitive processes, then this subject's for you!

The first four lectures are taken by Piers Howe. Right from the beginning, the pace is extremely fast, with almost 100/more than 100 slides being quite common. Lecture 1 is on how we perceive lightness as a function of illumination and reflectance, with the anchoring theory of lightness perception and scission theory explored thoroughly in terms of their pros and cons of being an exhaustive explanation for luminance phenomena like transparency, shadows and light-related illusions. Things like the weighting of global/local frameworks and the role of T-junctions can become very confusing very fast, no surprise then that many people leave the first lecture with a puzzled look on their faces. Lecture 2 explores how we track multiple moving objects, with serial, parallel, resource-limited and grouping models being introduced. As you'll soon find out, part of what makes this subject difficult is the necessary capability of holding multiple disjunctive explanations for a single phenomenon, and the flexibility to call to mind what's relevant at the time in point. Lecture 3 introduces the interplay of attention and visual awareness in the visual search for targets among distractors. Stuff like illusory conjuctions, Feature Integration Theory and the serial/parallel mechanisms come up a lot. Finally, Piers concludes with a hefty 125 slides on the three types of visual memory: iconic, short term and long term. You'll learn things like if object memory can be differentiated into select features, memory capacity and how it's estimated, perceptual vs conceptual similarities etc.

Daniel Little takes the middle four lectures. The concepts he introduces are the most complex and will likely take up a lot of your time in understanding them thoroughly. Lecture 5 is on how various theoretical accounts could be used to understand Sternberg's information processing paradigm. Multiple serial/parallel/strength-based models are reviewed in terms of their suitability with respect to graphs and their slopes and the consistency of findings. Lecture 6 covers the multiple forms of memory and if they're simply artefacts of methodological confounds (i.e. single memory system only). It goes back and forth between the two positions like a debate unfolding and becomes quite difficult to follow. Signal detection theory (you'll get a lot more of this later in the semester) is briefly explored as the basis for various experimental conditions (remembering vs knowing, categorization vs recognition) and their dissociative outcomes. Lecture 7 is all about the differences between experts and novices in acquiring knowledge and learning, with explanations like ACT* and Instance Theory of Automatization offered, and also, exploring the composite face effect. Finally, lecture 8 contrasts rule-based and information integration categorization of objects. Again, it takes the form of a 'debate', with functional dissociations provided through experiments in the first half of the lecture revisited in the second half, except they disappear when various methodological confounds are controlled for.

Philip Smith is in charge of the last four lectures, and his slides are anywhere from one-third to half of those of previous lectures. Don't be fooled though, the subject matter he covers is quite mathematical in nature and can be very dry if you're not interested in the more abstract mechanisms underlying the various phenomena. You learn about Fechner's law, speed-accuracy trade-off, the basis of the phi-gamma hypothesis in understanding psychometric functions etc with regard to decision making. Lecture 10 explores the delightful signal detection theory in depth, with yes/no decision tasks providing a suitable platform for the understanding of response criterion, and how false alarms/hits/misses/correct rejections are derived. The receiver operating characteristic curve is introduced as well as an alternative to yes/no decisions, with confidence ratings used instead. Lecture 11 covers diffusion models and random walk models in terms of reaction time in decision making. These are understood in relation to various experimental findings and their graphical outputs. Finally, the semester concludes with a lecture that's more theoretical in nature. Various cognitive biases/heuristics and subjective utility in terms of probability and value are explored with regard to decisions and choices.

The 1500 words essay was on exploring either the Anchoring Theory of Lightness Perception or scission theory in depth and explaining how it provides an advantage over the other. It was quite straightforward and so long as you understood what the authors of the theories were trying to convey, you shouldn't struggle here.

The 1500 words lab report was on a modified Sternberg's paradigm, which used inverted faces instead of numbers. You're then required to cover the three theoretical accounts (serial/parallel/strength-based) and derive hypotheses according to the suitability of the models. This was an extremely difficult assignment that might require a more 'sciencey' background. The word count was insanely limiting, and since the experimental conditions we employed were novel, coupled with a need to also define lag functions as suggested by the linear ballistic accumulator model, it could appear as if you're writing gibberish at times in order to make sense of the assignment.

The exam consisted entirely of short answer questions and can be daunting if you're used to pure MCQ or mixed exams. You do a total of 9 questions, selecting 3 of 5 from each lecturer's pool of questions. You do get rewarded for getting citations right, which only makes it worse, since there's already so much to remember. Fortunately, there were two tutorial sessions dedicated to completing a mini mock exam under timed condition, and these do help you get a sense of what's expected. The actual exam asked fair questions with comprehensive coverage, so technically you could get away with skipping a lecture or two during revision. I'd advise that you understand the broader concepts thoroughly instead of dedicating every last bit of detail to memory, since there will be too much to memorize. Also, I'm not sure how many tutors there were, but mine (Maggie) was really nice and funny and helped me a lot in deciding and preparing for my future studies pathway, so yeah, pick her classes if possible.

In summary, a really difficult but engaging subject for those interested in cognitive psychology, and definitely worth picking if you're up for a challenge.

Yes, with screen capture.

Piers Howe, Daniel Little and Philip Smith

Nope, but practice short answer questions released closer to the exam. Also, there were 2 mock exam sessions held during tutorials (do not miss either!).

5 of 5

None.

1 X 2 hours of lectures each week and 6 X 2 hours of tutorials (as a hurdle requirement, you can only miss one) across the semester.

2015, Semester 1

H1 (99)