That was the module that was…

1. That was the module that was…

2. It was hard

3. The seminars • “I found that the student-led seminars were not that useful as many members did not show up and we were unsure of how to use the time.” • The student- led seminars should be at better times (more during the middle of the day) • Not everyone turns up to the student led seminars and so this is problematic for people who so want to go

4. The seminars

5. What we’ll do • Options • Cancel the seminars • Start in the middle of semester • Start in the middle of the day • Clearer exercises • More closely linked the wiki

6. The wiki • “Wiki site, it already contained a lot of material written at a high standard from the beginning. The consensus with myself and others is that this makes it extremely difficult to contribute anything to it” • It is useful to have the wiki there, although I resent Tom Stafford emphasis on how we should ALL contribute. • Loads of the wiki is wrong. I know it's peer edited but it's hard to know which bits are right and wrong

8. What we’ll do • Clearer exercises • Blank sheet? • Connect to wikipedia

9. Other • This module feels like it throws you in at the deep end, I know that they want you to learn for yourself, and the content is interesting, there just feels like a lack of guidance compared to other modules, especially with it being the first exam we have that counts towards our degree. • “More exam information/support would be helpful”

10. PSY241: Cognitive PsychologyConcluding Lecture Basis of all psychological theorising over the last 40 years Cognitivism underlies: developmental psychology, social psychology,clinical psychology, educational psychology, developmental psychology,cognitive neuroscienceoccupational psychology…

11. representation • But what is cognitivism? • What links: • Perception • Learning • Memory • Attention • Language • Reasoning

12. Stimulus Response Before cognitive revolution: Organism Behaviourism: study S-O-R relationships to infer LAWS governing learning of associations and hence behaviour

13. World Action percept plan memory After cognitive revolution: Cognitivism: assume actions based on mental representations of world, not directly upon stimulus-response associations

14. Mental representations of world • Perception: creation of representations • Learning: storage of representations • Memory: retrieval of representations • Attention: selection of representations • Language: communication of representations • Reasoning: combination of representations Bottom up and Top-down

15. Perception • Learning • Memory • Attention • Language • Reasoning Are these the things the brain does?

16. Summing up Cognitive Psychology • How the mind (not brain) functions • Study of mental processing of information • Many specific phenomena studied somewhat independently • At heart, all based on idea that mental representations mediate perception & action • Memory is fundamental • Hard problem is to find unifying principles • Study brain to test theories of mind

17. How to study for exams

19. How to learn Rate Pleasantness Check Letters 69% 68% 43% 39% Incidental learning Intentional learning Hyde, T. S., & Jenkins, J. J. (1973). Recall for words as a function of semantic, graphic, and syntactic orienting tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12(5), 471–480.

20. How to learn 2 • Spaced vs blocked practice Bad Better Easier Dempster, F. N. (1989). Spacing effects and their implications for theory and practice. Educational Psychology Review, 1, 309-330. doi:10.1007/BF01320097

21. How to learn 3 Practice writing Practice writing exam answers Practice critically reflecting on others’ writing Cho, K., & MacArthur, C. (2011). Learning by Reviewing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 73-84. doi:10.1037/a0021950

22. THE PSY241 EXAMINATION • A 3 hour exam • Three sections, each with two questions • Answer one question from each section • That means three questions in total • Each in a separate booklet • Yes, the sections are ‘thematic’ but you can use material from across the module in all of the questions and gain marks for doing so

23. ADVICE YOU SHOULD HEED • Spend about an hour on EACH question (not 90 mins, 60 mins, 30 mins) • Take 5 or 10 minutes to PLAN before starting to write • Try planning BOTH questions in a section before choosing • THINK of your conclusion before you start - what is the ANSWER! • DON’T just choose the one ‘you know most about’ • DON’T just list relevant points, make a logical argument

24. How to get a 1st class mark • Answer the question by making an argument about psychological theory, backed up by evidence

25. How to get a 2:1 • Answer the question • We cannot give you marks for providing correct information which does not answer the question.

26. Real exam answers • Shorter than you think. About 600-700 words, less than HALF the length of a tutorial essay

27. Last year’s exam • from http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/current/exams

28. Discuss the modifications made to Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) original working memory model in order to accommodate new experimental findings. • “A characteristic of the poorer essays was that students tended to reproduce material from the lecture rather than trying to answer the question. For example, some students wrote at length about the Atkinson and Shiffrin model or about evidence for the original phonological loop (e.g. word length effect, irrelevant speech effect etc.). This was not relevant. • Some students lost marks because they didn't even describe the original model”

29. Evaluate the extent to which models of semantic memory have overcome Bartlett’s criticism that psychological theories (of his day) did not address the use of memory in real situations • This in fact is quite a challenging question…texts such as Eysenck and Keane just looks at models of SM in isolation • I attempted to prime students to the importance of schemas by explicitly mentioning Bartlett in the question. • In general, as feared, the question wasn’t particularly well answered. I suspect that many students had gone for a question spotting approach, and hadn’t actually revised both schemas and the models of SM.

30. Do you think "Humans are basically irrational?" Explain your answer • This question could be answered by agreeing or disagreeing with the statement. Either is acceptable, as long as a principled argument is made. • This question could be answered by agreeing or disagreeing with the statement. Either is acceptable, as long as a principled argument is made. • The best answers brought in material from other parts of the course (e.g. on causation, language and/or semantic memory)

31. Does language fundamentally affect how we think? Discuss • Too many answers to this question adopted a "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach, covering studies mentioned in the lectures but failing to provide a principled framework for answering the question or to really analyse what the question might mean • Better answers focussed ruthlessly on the meaning of the question and picked a small number of studies to illustrate their argument • Weaker answer mentioned evidence for and against a proposition (e.g. Brown & Levinson vs Li & Glietman on whether language affects spatial perception) without trying to reconcil this evidence (e.g. by saying that Brown & Levinson's conclusions were wrong).

32. Describe how neurons tuned to specific line orientations could account for the tilt aftereffect. • Some students gave extended accounts of related but irrelevant effects (eg oblique effect). • Extra marks awarded for fully labelled diagrams showing how firing rates vary between different test-adaptation-test conditions, and how these lead to the TAE. • Many students failed to provide a clear account of the tilt after effect and to explain it in terms of neuronal tuning curves.

33. Discuss experimental evidence relevant to the claim that recognition of biological forms (e.g. humans, birds) depends on spatiotemporal cues • extra marks were given if an accurate, labelled graph of their result was provided. • Some students mistakenly thought that the question required an account of experiments which suggest that vision depends on only spatial cues (egBulthoff and Edelman, 1992). This was not required, and did not usually gain any mark • Some students reported evidence relating to spatiotemporal cues used in experiments non-biological stimuli; again, this is not required, and did not usually gain any marks.

34. Revision plan • Revising should mean (re)organising your notes, not reading your notes • Practice planning writing answers • Read past papers and genetic feedback • Read around the topics • Read, write and edit on the wiki

35. A note about questions • Check the course outline document • Check the wiki • Then email me to let me know you have added your question to the wiki • t.stafford@shef.ac.uk

36. Departmental Seminar @ 1pm • Dr Anna Franklin, University of Sussex, UK •  “Colour Categories in Language and Thought” • Extremely relevant