Syllabus (under construction)
Q560 Experimental Methods in Cognitive Science
Prof. John K. Kruschke
Goals and Means:
- Literacy in experimental methods. The student should be able to
read/hear a rigorous experiment report with good comprehension.
- Critical ability. The student should be able to generate
alternative designs to address theoretical issues, and be able to
detect potential flaws, infelicities, limitations, and shortcomings of
particular experiments.
- Productive potential. Although there will be no opportunity to
exercise this in the limited duration of the course, the student
should have the potential to generate experiment designs and analyses.
These goals will be achieved through reading, discussion and quizzing
of the textbook and numerous actual examples from the research
literature. The examples will be made broad and relevant by
students selecting cases of interest to them.
Grading:
- For every topic, there will be questions posted on Oncourse
(http://oncourse.iu.edu/). There will be approximately
four (sets of) questions per week. Students must answer the questions
via Oncourse within a limited time (typically two weeks) after they
are posted. Some questions might be multiple choice, others might
require short essay answers. Grading of essay questions will typically
be on a 4 point scale, with 0 for failure to answer, 1 for an answer
lacking in depth, 2 for a good solid answer, and 3 for an
exceptionally strong answer. Most answers will get 2 points, with 3
points being awarded only rarely.
- For student presentations during the latter part of the course,
the instructor will generate questions on Oncourse that must be
answered by all students, including the presenter.
- Of the approximately 50-60 total (sets of) questions, each
individual student's worst four (sets) will be dropped from the
grading.
- The individual presentation of a case study will count 6
points. See the case study outline below.
- Final letter grades will be assigned according to performance
relative to the other students in the class. As this is a graduate
course, most grades are expected to be A or A-, with lower grades for
students with (lower) outlying scores.
- There will be no final exam or final paper.
Case study outline:
Choose an article of interest to you. See Chapter 3 regarding literature searches.
- Title slide: Your name and date. Article title and author and
complete citation of source.
- What is the theoretical issue or motivation? (Ch. 1-3)
- Who/what are the subjects? Why? Were ethical standards obeyed? (Ch. 6)
- What is the design of the experiment? Why? (Ch. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11)
What are the independent and dependent variables? Why? What is the
procedure and task for the subject?
- What are the results and statistical inferences? (Ch. 12, 13, 14)
- What are the theoretical conclusions and limitations? (Ch. 1-3,
etc.)
Presentations of case studies must be a maximum of 35 minutes long,
including time for questions and discussion in class!
Schedule.