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Informatics 1 Cognitive Science Home Page 2013

Please give course feedback using the school form and the special INF1-CG form

Time and place

Lectures, tutorials and labs are now over for 2013. There will be a review session for this course on Tuesday 14 May at 1400 in G.07 (Meadows Lecture theatre), William Robertson Wing, (old) Medical School, Teviot Place

Details

• Course Descriptor
• Lecture Timetable, Readings
• Recommended reading: Steven Pinker, Words and Rules (1999). NOTE: It is strongly suggested that you buy this book, it is paperback and widely available.
  E. Bruce Goldstein, Sensation & Perception, Seventh Edition (2007)(or 2010) NOTE: There are quite a few copies of this book in the short loan/reserve section of the library.
  Alan Baddeley, Michael W. Eysenck and Michael C. Anderson Memory (2009). NOTE: There are very few copies of this book in the library, you may wish to consider buying it.
• Tutorials:
  All in Appleton Tower: Room 3.05, Tue 1510-1600; Room 5.01, Tue 1510-1600; Room 3.05, Tue 1610-1700; Room 5.01, Tue 1610-1700; Room 3.05, Tue 1710-1800; Room 5.01, Thu 1510-1600; Room 5.01, Thu 1610-1700. See Tutorial group details
• Lab: Wednesday 1300--1500, West lab, Level 5, Appleton Tower
• General first-year course guide
• Assessment:
  Assessment will be by:
  • An end of term exam (60%)
    • Format: 30% short answer questions, 2 x 35% extended questions
    • Past papers for use in revision are available via the library online and the Informatics exam archive (and here, since the official sites seem to be missing this one).
    • Location: St. Leonard's Land Gym 3
      Date/Time: Monday 20-May-13, 0930–1130
  • Coursework (40%) (1 x 10%, 2 x 15%)
    • All coursework must be submitted online using submit inf1-cg on DICE— do man submit for detailed documentation.
  • Late assignments/extensions
    Read this first: School policy on late coursework and extensions, discuss with your DoS, then if you think you qualify use this form.
• People:
  • Richard Shillcock (lecturer)
  • Diego Frassinelli (assistant)
  • Marzena Bihun (assistant)
  • Henry S. Thompson (lecturer)
  • Kate Weston (secretary)
  • Paul Anderson (course organiser)

This course is suitable for any first-year student. We'll cover a number of aspects of the human mind and how it works, both from the perspective of one or more of the contributing disciplines such as psychology, linguistics or philosophy, and from the perspective of computational modelling. We'll also look a bit at what we know and don't know about the brain and its relation to the mind.

The course will cover two main areas of cognition: language and perception. For language, we'll focus on the way we learn about the structure of words, using Steven Pinker's Words and Rules. For perception, we'll look at connected aspects of vision, memory, and attention, using parts of the Goldstein and Baddeley et al. textbooks.

The lectures on each topic will be accompanied by tutorials and labs which explore the material in complementary ways. Details on the contents of lectures, tutorials and labs are linked from this page.