Instructor: Dr. Stellan Ohlsson (Email: stellan@uic.edu. Office: 1050C in BSB. Phone: (312) 413-4122.)

TA: Mark Orr (Email: morr@uic.edu. Office: 1079 in BSB.)

The purpose of the course is to introduce you to modern cognitive psychology. The topics covered include decision making, problem solving, reasoning, language, memory, attention, perception, cognitive development, individual differences, and practical applications of cognitive psychology.

Daniel Reisberg (1997). Cognition: Exploring the science of the mind. New York: W. W. Norton.

Please notice that the lectures will go beyond the textbook. The exam questions will refer both to the textbook and to the material covered in class. You cannot do well in this course without attending the lectures, taking notes and studying your notes.

Your grade is determined by the number of points you collect on the exams, plus the number of points you collect by engaging in other activities. There are four activities that can earn you points. Neither the exams nor the activities are obligatory, but the best way to take the course is to do everything.

The grading scale is as follows:

Score interval Width of interval Grade

91 - 100 10 points A

81 - 90 10 points B

71 - 80 10 points C

51 - 70 20 points D

0 - 50 50 points E (= failure)

The course as a whole is worth 100 points. The exams can earn you a total of 90 points; notice that this is one point short of an "A" grade. Hence, you have to engage in at least one of other activity to get an
A. Each of the four extra activities (see below) can earn you an additional 10 points. If you do all four of them, you can earn up to 40 points, a good insurance against missed questions on the exams.

You can earn points by asking questions in class. You can earn one (1) point per lecture on any 10 lectures. To earn that point, you must come to class and think of a question to ask about that day's lecture. Write your question, your name, your SSN and the date on an index card and hand it to the instructor during the break in the middle of the lecture. You cannot turn up later and claim that you forgot to hand in your card. The point only counts if your card is handed in during the lecture. The question has to be relevant for the content of the lecture. It does not matter on which 10 lectures you turn in questions. You can earn a maximum of 10 points this way. Some of the questions will be answered during the second half of the lecture. If you handed in a question, you get a point whether your question was answered or not. Please feel free to hand in more than ten questions, but only ten of them will count towards your grade.

You can earn points by participating in a group study event in which 5-9 students get together and discuss some topic covered in the course for at least 2 hs. There can be no fewer than 5 participants and no more than 9. Each participant earns 10 points. A student can only earn points from one (1) such group discussion.

One participant in each group is to be the secretary for the discussion and he or she has to turn in a brief report. The report should (a) give the date, time and place of the discussion, (b) the full names and SSNs of the participants, (c) the phone number of the person acting as secretary, and (d) a summary of the discussion, what topics were discussed, what different positions were taken, questions that came up and so forth. The content of the report is judged with respect to relevance rather than correctness, i. e., you can say anything as long as the discussion concerns human cognition and relates to the topics covered in the course.

The report has to be handed in to the TA on or before Friday on the last week of classes, at the latest. Make sure your name is on the report the secretary turns in; you cannot claim your participation afterwards. The points only count if your name is on the report. If there are more than 9 names on the report, only the first 9 get credited with the 10 points. The person acting as secretary does not get extra points.

It is in your interest to hand in the report as soon as possible, because you'll want to have it graded by the time you decide whether to take the final exam or not.

You can earn points by submitting a book review no longer than 6 pages (81/2 by 11 inches; one-and-a-half-spaced; 1 inch margins all around; 12 point font). The paper will be graded on a three-point scale: 0 points (incoherent or irrelevant), 5 points (relevant but not well done), or 10 points (well done). You can only turn in one (1) review.

The review has to be about a book that’s on the acceptable books list; see last page of this memo. The books there have been selected because they are good, relevant for the course, written by leading cognitive psychologists, fun to read, and informative; a couple of them are bestsellers.

Read one of the books from the list and write a review of it. The review has to answer the following questions: (1) What is the main topic or thesis of the book? (2) How is that topic developed throughout the book? What kind of evidence or argument is advanced to support the message? (3) Discuss how the book relates to the course; what topics are shared and which are not? Does the book take a different point of view than the course in some respect? (4) What is your own reaction to the book’s message? Do you agree or disagree, and, if so, why? (5) If one accepts the book’s message, what are the implications and consequences? For society as a whole? For you personally?

The review has to be handed in on or before Friday of the last week of classes, at the latest. (It is in your interest to hand in the review as soon as possible, because you'll want to have it graded by the time you decide whether to take the final exam or not.)

Write down in a notebook memory failures that happen to yourself during the semester. For example, you might forget to mail a letter. Describe in your diary the circumstances: where were you, what were you doing, what was intention, and what do you do instead? Or you might forget a person’s name. Describe in your diary the circumstances, how familiar was this person, why were you trying to recall his/her name, and so on.

In general, write down the following in your diary for each memory failure: Where were you? What were you doing there? Who else was there? What was your goal or purpose at the time? What were you trying to remember? What happened? Did you remember the forgotten item eventually?

Keep a diary and when you have 10 such events, write a short report. The report should describe the events and also relate them to the course: which cognitive concept or principle each event exemplifies or illustrates, and why. Include copies of your diary entries in your report.

The report will be judged on a three-step scale: 0 (incoherent or irrelevant), 5 (relevant but not very well done), 10 (well done). You can only earn points from one such report. The report is due on Friday the last week of classes.

There will be two "midterm" exams (which obviously won’t fall exactly at the middle of the term) and one final exam. The final exam covers the same material as the "midterms", plus what is covered in the last third of the course.

All three exams consist of multiple choice questions. There will be 15 questions on each of the two "midterms". Each question is worth 2 points. The final exam will have three parts, each with 15 questions, for a total of 45 questions. The first part of the final covers the same material as the first "midterm" and so serves as a make-up opportunity for that exam; the second part of the final likewise consist of 15 questions covering the same material as the second "midterm". The third part covers the material discussed between the second "midterm" and the final.

Because each exam question is worth 2 points, you can collect 2 * 45 = 90 points on the exam(s). This is not quite enough for an A grade; you have to do something else as well if you want an A. However, notice that if you do all four activities and collect 40 points, you only need 91-40 = 51 points on the exam(s) to get an A; that’s equivalent to getting a mere 26 out of 45 questions right.

The relation between the "midterms" and the final exam are handled as follows: Your score on the first part of the course is either your score on the first "midterm" or your score on the first part of the final, whichever is highest. Likewise for the second part of the final.

Neither the "midterms" nor the final exam are mandatory. You can choose which section(s) of the final you want to take. If you do well on one of the "midterms", you can pass over the corresponding part of the final.

In fact, if you score a perfect score on the two "midterms" and turn in all four activities early in the semester, you could earn 100 points, and hence be ensured of an A grade, without even taking the final. The two midterms are worth 2*15 + 2*15 = 60 points, and the four activities are worth 4 * 10 = 40 points, so together they are worth 100 points, nine points more than you need for an A.

A stupid strategy for taking this course is to ignore the four activities, pass over the two midterms and invest your energies in getting everything right on the final. In the highly unlikely case that you do get every question right, you’d still end up with a B grade; in the more likely case that you get, say, five or more questions wrong, you end up with a C.

The winning strategy is to come to every class, hand in at least 10 questions, take both "midterms", engage in all of the extra credit activities, and to turn them in well before the last week of classes. Then check you total score and decide whether you need to take any part of the final exam. Follow this strategy and you are virtually ensured of an "A" grade.

Here is the list of books you can choose among if you want to write a book review:

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