Cognitive Psychology In and Out of the Laboratory
Instructor Resources
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Chapter 1. Cognitive Psychology: History, Methods, and Paradigms
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Video
The Quest to Understand Consciousness
Summary: TED Talk. Every morning we wake up and regain consciousness—that is a marvelous fact—but what exactly is it that we regain? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses this simple question to give us a glimpse into how our brains create our sense of self.
A Neural Portrait of the Human Mind
Summary: Brain imaging pioneer Nancy Kanwisher, who uses fMRI scans to see activity in brain regions
Website
Summary: Psychology Articles for Students designed by Saul McLeod, University of Manchester.
Summary: ScienceDaily is one of the Internet’s most popular science news websites. Since starting in 1995, the award-winning site has earned the loyalty of students, researchers, health-care professionals, government agencies, educators and the general public around the world.
Summary: Cognitive Psychology looks at the ways in which we can explain disorders and behavior through cognitive processes. Learn about the Cognitive Approach and the studies, experiments and treatments relating to it.
Chapter 2. The Brain: An Overview of Structure and Function
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Video
This Is Your Brain on Communication
Summary: Why do great thoughts and stories resonate so strongly with so many people, and how do we communicate them? Using fMRI experiments, Uri Hasson is looking for the answers.
A Look Inside the Brain in Real Time
Summary: Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity.
Website
University of California San Francisco
Summary: The leading university exclusively focused on health, UC San Francisco is driven by the idea that when the best research, the best education, and the best patient care converge, great breakthroughs are achieved.
Summary: “Neuroscience for Kids” has some good exercises and illustrations for “kids” of all ages, and is the source for the “sidedness” activity in this chapter.
Summary: This website from Nobelprize.org introduces you to “Mr. Split Brainy” and his unusual condition.
Summary: This website by John H. Krantz of Hanover College includes quizzes and tutorials on the structure of the neuron and of the brain.
Chapter 3. Perception: Recognizing Patterns and Objects
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Video
Summary: This video gives us some insight into the differences between sensing and perceiving.
Website
Summary: The mission of The Science Network (TSN) is to build an online science and society agora, or public square, dedicated to the discussion of issues at the intersection of science and social policy.
Summary: Gestalt approaches to perception bottom-up processes template matching featural analysis and prototype matching
Chapter 4. Attention: Deploying Cognitive Resources
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Video
Summary: The iPhone app for dichotic listening is called iDichotic and was launched on the App Store in 2011, where it can be downloaded for free. Some 1 year later, more than 1,000 people have downloaded the app, and roughly half have sent their test results to the researchers’ database.
Juggling Inattention Blindness - Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - BBC Four
Summary: In front of a live audience, a gorilla passes through a juggling act unnoticed.
Website
Simply Psychology: Selective Attention
Summary: Broadbent’s, Treisman’s, and Deutsch and Deutsch Models of Attention are all bottleneck models because they predict we cannot consciously attend to all of our sensory input at the same time.
Psy Blog: The Attentional Spotlight
Summary: Although there are problems with the attentional spotlight and zoom-lens as metaphors, they still provide a useful insight into how our attention can move independently of the eyes.
VeryWell: What Is the Stroop Effect?
Summary: This site contains articles are not only written by experienced doctors, therapists, nurses, and other experts, but vetted for accuracy by board-certified physicians. They explain how the Stroop effect is a phenomenon in which you must say the color of a word but not the name of the word.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Summary: PNAS is one of the world’s most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals, publishing more than 3,100 research papers annually. They explain how event-related brain potentials (ERPs) provide high-resolution measures of the time course of neuronal activity patterns associated with perceptual and cognitive processes.
Chapter 5. Working Memory: Forming and Using New Memory Traces
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Website
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS
Summary: PNAS is one of the world’s most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals, publishing more than 3,100 research papers annually.
Summary: When information comes into our memory system (from sensory input), it needs to be changed into a form that the system can cope with, so that it can be stored.
Summary: AllPsych Online is one of the largest and most comprehensive psychology websites on the Internet. Inside the site you’ll find over 920 individual, cross referenced, web pages and an estimated 3000 pages of printed material.
Chapter 6. Retrieving Memories From Long-Term Storage
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Video
Summary: Procedural memory is one of two types of long-term memory.
Website
Summary: Live Science offers a fascinating window into the natural and technological world, delivering comprehensive and compelling news and analysis.
Summary: Verywell is your source for reliable, understandable information on hundreds of health and wellness topics.
Summary: This site is written, designed and coded by Saul McLeod, a Psychology Tutor at The University of Manchester.
Association for Psychological Science
Summary: Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology.
Chapter 7. The Reconstructive Nature of Memory
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Video
Summary: Scott Fraser studies how humans remember crimes—and bear witness to them.
Website
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS
Summary: PNAS is one of the world’s most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals, publishing more than 3,100 research papers annually.
Summary: Oxford Bibliographies provides faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics.
Summary: Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. It refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed.
Summary: Memory and Forgetting. AllPsych Online is one of the largest and most comprehensive psychology websites on the Internet. Inside the site you’ll find over 920 individual, cross referenced, web pages and an estimated 3000 pages of printed material.
Chapter 8. Knowledge Representation: Storing and Organizing Information in Long-Term Memory
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Video
Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past: Vision and Memory
Summary: Yale professor discusses specific topics covered include the different memory types, memory limitations, strategies that improve memory, and memory disorders.
Summary: Dr. Steven Howard from Early Start Research Institute (ESRI) School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences University of Wollongong talks about Memory Schemas.
Summary: In this video, as you observe your surroundings at an art museum, you’ll come to understand how your brain categorizes memory so you can remember your experiences.
Website
Summary: The main theories of forgetting developed by psychologists. The first answer is more likely to be applied to forgetting in short term memory, the second to forgetting in long-term memory.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Summary: Understanding the boundary conditions of memory reconsolidation.
Chapter 9. Visual Imagery and Spatial Cognition
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Video
Visual Memory: Definition & Skills
Summary: Learn the definition of visual memory, long-term versus short-term, skills, and activities to improve visual memory in this video.
Summary: Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics—and raises some important ethical questions.
How Your Brain Tells You Where You Are
Summary: Neuroscientist Neil Burgess studies the neural mechanisms that map the space around us, and how they link to memory and imagination.
Summary: There are people who can quickly memorize lists of thousands of numbers, the order of all the cards in a deck (or ten!), and much more.
Website
Summary: Oxford Bibliographies provides faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics.
Summary: A group of renowned psychologists, academics, psychiatrists, and writers to contribute their thoughts and ideas on what makes us tick.
Summary: A lot of information reaches the eye, but much is lost by the time it reaches the brain (Gregory estimates about 90% is lost).
Chapter 10. Language
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Video
Summary: Noam Chomsky argued that linguistics should be a branch of cognitive psychology or the study of mental processes like critical thinking, problem solving, and, of course, language.
Summary: In this video on language acquisition, we’ll take a look at some distinctions between languages and learn how babies come to understand and speak a language.
Animal Cognition and Its Similarities to Human Cognition
Summary: In this video, you will learn about the relationship between animal cognition and human cognition.
How Do We Communicate? Language in the Brain, Mouth and the Hands
Summary: One of the most uniquely human abilities is the capacity for creating and understanding language. This lecture introduces students to the major topics within the study of language: phonology, morphology, syntax, and recursion. This lecture also describes theories of language acquisition.
How My Mind Came Back to Life—And No One Knew
Summary: After contracting a brain infection at the age of 12, Pistorius lost his ability to control his movements and to speak, and eventually he failed every test for mental awareness.
Website
Association for Psychological Science
Summary: Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology.
Summary: This site is written, designed, and coded by Saul McLeod, a Psychology Tutor at The University of Manchester.
Summary: VeryWell is your source for reliable, understandable information on hundreds of health and wellness topics.
Summary: Live Science offers a fascinating window into the natural and technological world, delivering comprehensive and compelling news and analysis.
Chapter 11. Thinking and Problem Solving
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Video
Dimensions of Critical Thinking
Summary: The process of thinking critically can determine coming to the right or the wrong conclusions. This video helps you to learn about five dimensions of critical thinking.
Summary: A brief discussion of the value and evolutionary basis of unconscious processing.
Incubation in Creative Problem Solving
Summary: This video outlines some recent studies of divergent thinking using the Alternative Uses task that we have carried out regarding immediate vs. delayed incubation.
Website
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS
Summary: Unconscious processes. PNAS is one of the world’s most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals, publishing more than 3,100 research papers annually.
Summary: The unconscious mind. Sigmund Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular and this was one of his main contributions to psychology.
Chapter 12. Reasoning and Decision Making
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Video
Are You Using Cognitive Biases?
Summary: In this episode, Joel and Antonia point out the cognitive biases we all tend to use and offer alternatives to them.
How to Make Clinical Decisions in the Multicriteria Framework
Summary: Lecture from Dr. Mark H. Phillips, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Machine Intelligence Makes Human Morals More Important
Summary: Machine intelligence is here, and we're already using it to make subjective decisions. But the complex way AI grows and improves makes it hard to understand and even harder to control.
Are We in Control of Our Own Decisions?
Summary: Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.
Website
Summary: Heuristics and Biases. Studies conducted in this tradition showed that when used in the appropriate environment, heuristics can surpass the predictive accuracy of more sophisticated and information-greedy tools.
Summary: Damon Hill, Tanni Grey-Thompson and former Colonel Lincoln Jopp consider whether the rush of adrenaline makes us think better? It brings us an increase in our strength, heightened senses, a lack of pain and a burst of energy. How is it connected to our expertise in handling crises and what is the aftermath?
Summary: From foundational science to new and novel research, discover our large collection of Physical Sciences and Engineering publications, covering a range of disciplines, from the theoretical to the applied.
Chapter 13. Cognitive Development Through Adolescence
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Video
The Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain
Summary: Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically “teenage” behavior is caused by the growing and developing brain.
Website
Association for Psychological Science
Summary: Older adolescents and adults can learn certain thinking skills, including non-verbal reasoning, more effectively than younger people, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study highlights the fact that non-verbal reasoning skills can be readily trained and do not represent an innate, fixed ability.
Summary: The formal operational stage begins at approximately age 12 and lasts into adulthood. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an abstract manner by manipulate ideas in their head, without any dependence on concrete manipulation.
Summary: Cognitive development is a psychology topic that is truly fascinating. Learn about Jean Piaget’s theory of the different stages of child development.
Summary: Live Science offers a fascinating window into the natural and technological world, delivering comprehensive and compelling news and analysis.
Chapter 14. Individual Differences in Cognition
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Website
Multiple Intelligence (MI) – Howard Gardner
Summary: Howard Gardner is a psychologist and Professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Based on his study of many people from many different walks of life in everyday circumstances and professions, Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences.
GiftedandTalented.com - advanced learning developed by Stanford University
Summary: Guided by ongoing research at Stanford University, GiftedandTalented.com provides innovative personalized programs that help students become advanced learners in Mathematics, English, and Science, including Computer Programming and Physics.
National Association for Gifted Children
Summary: NAGC's mission is to support those who enhance the growth and development of gifted and talented children through education, advocacy, community building, and research.
National Center for Biotechnology Information
Summary: This site describes the use of behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic methods to examine individual differences in cognition and affect, guided by three criteria.
Chapter 15. Cognition in Cross-Cultural Perspective
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Video
Summary: Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia—meaning that his perception of words, numbers, and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.
Website
Summary: Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2,200 scientific websites to provide users with access to more than 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information including research and development results.
Summary: Cultural Intelligence
LINCS Literacy Information and Communication System
Summary: Metacognition, Cognitive Strategy Instruction, and Reading in Adult Literacy
Summary: Cross-cultural psychology looks at how cultural factors influence human behavior. Learn about some of the topics that interest cross-cultural psychologists.