- Department: Psychology
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: C
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
- See module specification for other years: 2023-24
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
This module discusses the processes through which our primary senses (vision and hearing) gain and interpret information about our world and how this information is organised, stored in, and retrieved from memory.
The first set of lectures in this module will provide a broad introduction to the field of experimental cognitive psychology and give a brief historical overview of the development of the discipline. Those lectures will also consider the nature of perception from a cognitive point of view and provide insights into some basic facts about visual cognition. They will introduce various key things that cognitive psychologists have discovered about effective learning and memory. The second set of lectures in the module will examine the processes through which one of our primary senses (hearing) gains and interprets information about our world. Those lectures will cover the fundamental properties of the sense of hearing: How our ears decode sounds; how we perceive the pitch of sounds; how we work out where sounds are coming from; and what goes wrong when someone loses their hearing and what we can do about it.
The third set of lectures on this module introduces different models of memory, sensory memory, the distinction between short-term and long-term memory, serial order effects, and forgetting in short-term memory. They will also cover the theory behind different types of memory training, the methodology used and several key studies. The fourth and final set of lectures will introduce students to the visual system. They will concentrate on the early stages of visual processing including how the eye works, how you see colour, motion and depth and how your visual system adapts itself continuously to work under a wide range of environments.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled) | 50 |
Essay/coursework | 20 |
Essay/coursework | 30 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled) | 50 |
Essay/coursework | 20 |
Essay/coursework | 30 |
The marks on all assessed work will be provided on e-vision.
Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., Anderson, M.C. (2015) Memory, Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis Group
Basic Vision: an introduction to visual perception. Snowden, R. Thompson, P. & Troscianko T. (2012) Oxford University Press
Cognitive Psychology. Quinlan, P. & Dyson, B. (2008) Pearson