Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Course Description

9.63 teaches principles of experimental methods in human perception and cognition, including design and statistical analysis. The course combines lectures and hands-on experimental exercises and requires an independent experimental project. Some experience in programming is desirable. To foster improved writing and presentation skills in conducting and critiquing research in cognitive science, students are required to provide reports and give oral presentations of three team experiments. A fourth individually conducted experiment includes a proposal with revision, and concluding written and oral reports.

Course Requirements

Class Format

There is no final exam for this course. The "final" is Paper 3.

The mid-term held in Ses #21 is an open book exam.

Readings

Wolfe, J., et al. Sensation and Perception. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 2005. ISBN: 9780878939381.

McBurney, Donald H., and Theresa L. White. Research Methods. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004. ISBN: 9780534524180.

Francis, Greg, et al. CogLab on a CD. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003. ISBN: 9780534640675.

Assignments

Paper 1 is a literature review based on about 10 articles (about 2500 words) and Paper 2 is a research report about an experiment which is a single-factor design with controls (about 2500 words). The final paper (Paper 3) is a research article about an experiment with two-factors, with controls (related to Project 2, about 4500 words).

Problem sets consist of 4 CogLab reports (2-3 pages each) and 1 Science newspaper article on your project. CogLabs are short experiments (5 to 15 min.).

All papers are written individually. All research projects are done in groups of 1-3 students.

Attendance

You have two free late days (24 hour periods each) that you may use between Paper 1 and Paper 2 as needed. Please notify us if you are taking late days. After you have used up your late days, you will lose 5% per day on an assignment. If you turn in anything over 3 days late, we do not guarantee that we will be able to grade it. Please be sure to talk to us as soon as possible in any such case; we don't want to hand out any grades of 0! Paper 3 (final paper) must be turned in on time, no exceptions, so that we can get the grades in on time. CogLab data and reports must be turned in on time, no exceptions. The data is important to your classmates who are presenting and it is vital that you not get behind on turning in these short experiments.

Grading

MIT Literature Statement on Plagiarism

Plagiarism—use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available at the Writing and Communication Center and the MIT Web site on Plagiarism.

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