Main Page
This is the course wiki for PSY243 "Cognitive Psychology: from experiments to interpretations". If you are registered on the course you can log in to edit this wiki. Your username is your university username (e.g. pca10aa) in lower case letters and the password is your date of birth in the form dd/mm/year (e.g. 01/01/1995).
Contents
The Course
Over 12 weeks we will explore cognitive psychology, through critical analysis of scientific papers that report experiments on how the mind works. For each paper you will have a chance to check your understanding of the background cognitive psychology, practice producing a written analysis and see a model answer. The course also provides opportunities for feedback, peer review and questions and answers during the weekly lectures. The course is assessed by coursework, which will be an analysis of one of a selection of papers which will be released a week before the coursework is due.
If you have any questions, please look at the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Although each lecture involves reading a single paper, the papers are arranged so that we will cover the major topics of cognitive psychology and thematically cover the essential practical skills and habits of a cognitive psychologist. See the Overview
You can read some feedback from students who took the course in previous years here: StudentFeedback. You can read about why the course is the way it is, and why it covers what it does, in CourseMotivation
The Lectures
- Lectures: Thursday @ 1pm, Richard Roberts Auditorium.
- Read the paper before the lecture
- Discuss the paper in the google group
- Some resources are in this google drive folder, but anything important will be directly linked from this wiki
The core readings are all on the University Google Drive (if you are logged in with your @sheffield account). The pre-lecture concept checking quizes are available here PreQuizzes
Final Assessment
The course is assessed by coursework. The coursework task is to write, in less than 1000 words, a critical analysis on one of a choice of papers similar to those covered by the course. The selection is released a week before the deadline.
Helpful advice
You have approximately 5 hours study time per week for each 10 credit module. I suggest this, 1 hour of study per day:
Monday: re-read the week's paper, read around the topic, organise your notes, discuss on the forum, email me questions
Tuesday: write an answer using the Answer Guide
Wednesday: compare your answer to the Answer Guide, revise your answer
Thursday: come to the lecture
Friday: read next week's paper
essential documents
- Answer Guide for PSY243
- Download all the core papers for this course (via Google Drive, only accessible within the University)
useful links
Organising
Reading
- Target questions for when reading articles (via Google Drive)
Understanding graphs
- Pew Research: The art and science of the scatterplot
- Wikipedia Anscombe's Quartet
- Open University: Working with charts, graphs and tables
- BBC Skillshare: Graphics and charts
- Effect size visualisation
Critical thinking
- 900 words on: what it means to be critical
- 10 minute video: Robert Sapolsky on how to critically assess a study (from 09:24 to 29:36 of the whole lecture)
- Common errors in interpreting research
- Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreement
Writing
- 6 clear writing tips for exam success
- Help with writing clearly: The Up-Goer Six text editor
- Tim Radford's A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists - useful for everyone who wants to write clearly
- The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas
Getting started with wikis
- Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.
- Back at the dawn of time, I wrote an article on what wikis are and how to use them What Is a Wiki (and How to Use One for Your Projects)
- Configuration settings list
- MediaWiki FAQ
- MediaWiki release mailing list
- Localise MediaWiki for your language