Course Syllabus
Area di apprendimento
Applied Experimental Psychological Sciences
Sustainable Development Goals
Learning area
Applied Experimental Psychological Sciences
Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding
• Students will develop a deep understanding of cognitive concepts and theories by reviewing major research findings.
• Knowledge of experimental methods: what happens in experiments and how results are explained with theories
• Knowledge of main real-world applications of research findings and how they are relevant to everyday life.
• The laboratory will teach students basic programming abilities in Matlab.
Applying knowledge and understanding
• Students will be able to apply their understanding of main cognitive theories and concepts in order to design experiments related to everyday issues.
• They will be able to design a simple experiment and implement it in Matlab.
Contents
We will analyze the flow of information processing in the mind. In particular, the course aims at explaining how people perceive and attend to the environment, how people learn and remember, and how they reason and make decisions. Applications to everyday situations will be presented. The ultimate goal will be to explain, manipulate, and replicate behavior in everyday contexts.
Detailed program
Student will be exposed to basic principles, problems, findings and research methodologies in the following topics:
• Perception
• Attention
• Memory
• Knowledge representation
• Problem-solving
• Reasoning and decisions
Prerequisites
Course attendance requires fluent spoken and written English as a necessary pre-requisite: all lectures, laboratory tutorials, and all study material and exams will be in English.
It is assumed that students have knowledge and understanding of the basic methodology and theories in General Psychology. Students lacking such basic knowledge are encouraged to ask for a list of basic references.
Teaching methods
The course will consist of lectures followed by moments of in-class discussion where specific research articles will be critically analyzed and discussed.
During lab hours students will learn to implement a simple experiment using Matlab.
Assessment methods
The exam will verify the level of mastery of the course contents with special attention to:
• Theoretical references
• The use of technical language
• Methods and experimental procedures
• Ability to elaborate course contents
To better verify the achievements of the learning objectives the exam will be both written and oral. The written exam will consist of multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions on the course topics. The oral exam will consist in questions on the course topics and in the presentation and discussion an up-to-date research articles on the course topics indicated at the beginning of classes.
For students attending the course, the examination could be partially or totally replaced by activities to be held during term time (e.g a presentation of or a short essays on recent research articles).
Textbooks and Reading Materials
The bibliography (reference textbook, lecture slides, and additional material) will be provided at the beginning of the course and made available on the course website.
