Learning & Memory (PSYC 3304-401) SSII 2019

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course familiarizes the student with the general principles of learning and memory by examining various learning theories, memory research, perception, information processing and problem solving.

Course Objectives: After completing this course, the student should:

1. demonstrate basic level knowledge in the experimental and scientific study of the psychologyof learning and memory.
2. demonstrate basic understanding of the different types of memory systems(Semantic, Episodic, & Procedural) of the human mind.
3. demonstrate basic understanding of theinformation processing approach as it relates to memory encoding, storage, and retrieval.
4. demonstrate the ability to identify the appropriate research resources to write an APA research report in learning and memory.
5. further develop the student's experimental and analytical skills.

PREREQUISITES:
Previous successful completion of Introduction to Psychology (Psyc 1301 or 2301) or permission of instructor.

REQUIRED TEXT:

• Radvansky, G. A. (2017). Human Memory (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge (ISBN: 9781138665415; Companion Website).
• Experimental/ Research Materials (EyeTrack, Pupil, DMX, OpenSesame, PsyScope, E-Prime Scripts, PsyScope Scripts, TestMyBrain, WebExp) can be downloaded by visiting Experimental Materials for Cognitive Scientists! for all computer platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows), and Classic Memory Demos.

COURSE PHILOSOPHY:
The assumption underlying this class is that we are responsible students and that we want to learn about the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The goal of lecture(s) will be to present topics from each chapter to give you a flavor for the various domains of human memory and learning. Lecture will also be used to help reinforce important or difficult topics by providing examples, video clips, and demonstrations that illustrate psychological principles. To increase your understanding of the scientific process, we will also discuss experiments that test predictions made by psychological theories. At times, I may introduce material in lecture that goes beyond your text, so it is important to attend lecture and take good notes.

As rightly pointed out by Linden (2007), I will Imagine that [my] audience has [some] knowledge [in Human Memory] but infinite intelligence (Prologue: The accidental mind: How brain evolution has given us love, memory, dreams, and god).

ABOUT EXAMS:

1. Each of the two exams will cover only the material since the last exam (except to the extent that the previous material is necessary for understanding the new material).
2. Exams will be multiple choice and short answeressays requiring conceptual understanding of theories, research findings, and methodological issues covered in class and discussions.
3. The final Examination will be comprehensive and will contain a written component (see Policies of the College of Arts & Sciences).
4. No Exam make-ups will be allowed. Please assure that you always check your Blackboard messages for important messages.

IMPORTANT ISSUES RELATED TO CLASS REQUIREMENTS:

1. Class starts on time.
2. Class will consist of a mixture of lecture, discussion, and in-class activities. Active participation in class is strongly encouraged and please visit Cognitive Psychology and participate. It is very important that you read the material before coming to class. You will be much more prepared for lively discussion during the classroom time if you have read the assigned material prior to the time in which it will be addressed in class.
3. Students have raised concerns about being distracted by students talking during class, playing with their phones, getting up and leaving class. Students want to have clear expectations and to enforce them. Please turn off your cell phones and put them away.
4. Students are welcomed to bring personal computers (e.g., laptops, tablets) to class for note-taking purposes. Students should not use class time for net surfing or for other non-class-related purposes.
5. To better appreciate and learn the methods of psychology, you are required to participate in two (2) on-going psychological experiment. Students with learning, visual, or hearing disabilities are exempt from this requirement. This exemption also applies to participants that may not meet the specific requirements of the particular experiment or study. As an alternative, if you do not wish to participate in psychological experiments, you can write two 4-5 paged review of a journal article. Please discuss this possibility with your professor.
6. Please keep an AcademicMemory Diary about your memories throughout the day/night. This should be fun! For example, as you wake up, see if you can classify your memories about your dreams and if you notice any patterns (i.e., work or school related, about yourself, your family, and whether the memory is in Spanish/English). If you dream in Spanish or English (or both!), see if you notice any patterns in relation to the two languages (e.g., the smell of onion reminds me of my home town's mercado: original memory in Spanish; how confident am I that it occurred in Spanish, on a 1 = Not Confident to 7 = very confident scale? I would choose 6 that the original memory was in Spanish). The first page of your memory diary should include information about your L1 and L2 languages. At the end of the course, you will be asked to turn in your Academic Memory Diary. Your Memory Diary, of at least 2100 words (excluding title page: Page 1 should include your name, date, and class information), is due AUG 5, 2019 @12:00 p.m.. Please turn it in using BlackBoard's turnitin. Please assure that you write grammatically and semantically felicitous sentences. YourAcademic Diaryprovides another opportunity for you to summarize the main points of the lectures/readings/discussions about memory. The final grade on yourAcademic Memory Diarywill depend on your entries and how those entries correspond (more or less) with the topics covered in class. If you wait until the last minute to to write and complete yourAcademic Memory Diary, your grade will be significantly affected. That is, it is expected that you continue to write until the due data of yourAcademic Memory Diary.
7. It is expected that you will neither give nor receive any unauthorized aid for all tests and assignments in this class. Unauthorized aid is defined as, but not limited to, the use of your notes, textbooks, the internet, or people. All students are required to read and understand Dusty Devil's HONOR CODE, complete the HONOR CODE FORM and turn it in to your professor (Note: You will not have access to exams/quizzes unless you turn in the Honor Code Form signed), and remember, A Dusty Devil does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do!.
8. All assignments and requirements must be completed successfully by the start of the final exam to pass the course. As per COAS Regulations (see below), all electronic communication with students will take place via the TAMIU email system. The instructor will ONLY respond to and send messages to TAMIU email addresses. Students must check their TAMIU email accounts regularly. In general, students can expect responses to email messages within 24/48 hours.
9. As part of your academic and intellectual development, you are required to attend at least two academic presentations (e.g., Academic Conferences: Psychology/Student related) or Psychology Master's Students Theses presentations). Dates will be provided for these presentations. Please check your Angel email account.

COURSE GRADE SUMMARY:

TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS: 900 (Grade distribution in percentages [%s])

A = 100-90, B = 89-80, C = 79-70, D = 69-60 F = 59 and below

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES:

NOTE: The above schedule and procedures in this course are subject to change in the event of extenuating circumstances.

POLICIES OF THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (Last Revised: August 7, 2017)

CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR
The College of Arts and Sciences encourages classroom discussion and academic debate as an essential intellectual activity. It is essential that students learn to express and defend their beliefs, but it is also essential that they learn to listen and respond respectfully to others whose beliefs they may not share. The College will always tolerate diverse, unorthodox, and unpopular points of view, but it will not tolerate condescending or insulting remarks. When students verbally abuse or ridicule and intimidate others whose views they do not agree with, they subvert the free exchange of ideas that should characterize a university classroom. If their actions are deemed by the professor to be disruptive, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action, which may include being involuntarily withdrawn from the class.

STUDENT ABSENCES
Students are expected to attend class and to complete all assignments. It is the student’s responsibility to communicate absences with his/her professor. According to University policy, acceptable reasons for an absence, which cannot affect a student’s grade, include:

• Participation in an authorized University activity.
• Death or major illness in a student’s immediate family.
• Illness of a dependent family member.
• Participation in legal proceedings or administrative procedures that require a student’s presence.
• Religious holy day.
• llness that is too severe or contagious for the student to attend class.
• Required participation in military duties.
• Mandatory admission interviews for professional or graduate school which cannot be rescheduled.

The student is responsible for providing satisfactory evidence (i.e., physician note, medical release, etc.) to the faculty member within seven calendar days of his/her absence and return to class. He/she must substantiate the reason for absence. If the absence is excused, the faculty member must either provide the student with the opportunity to make up the exam or other work missed or provide a satisfactory alternative to complete the exam or other work missed within 30 calendar days from the date of absence.

Students who miss class due to a University-sponsored activity are responsible for identifying their absences to their faculty member(s) with as much advance notice as possible. If an off-campus licensed physician provides evidence of a student’s illness, the written excuse, orders or documentation must contain the date and time of the doctor’s appointment, the prognosis of illness, doctor’s opinion and recommendations for the individual student. In addition, the notice should outline whether or not the student is able to attend class. If a physician determines that the student is not ill, he or she will not receive an excused absence. If absence is not an excused absence, the faculty member will decide whether makeup work will be allowed. In some courses, attendance and in-class participation are ongoing requirements and an integral part of the work of the course. In other courses, occasional in-class assessments may occur, sometimes without advance notice. It is the responsibility of the faculty member to inform each class at the beginning of the semester of the in-class participation expected and the effect that absences will have on the student’s evaluation of work in the course.

PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else’s work as your own. It occurs when you:

1. Borrow someone else’s facts, ideas, or opinions and put them entirely in your own words, you must acknowledge that these thoughts are not your own by immediately citing the source in your paper. Failure to do this is plagiarism.
2. Borrow someone else’s words (short phrases, clauses, or sentences), you must enclose the copied words in quotation marks as well as citing the source. Failure to do this is plagiarism.
3. Present someone else’s paper or exam (stolen, borrowed, or bought) as your own, you have committed a clearly intentional form of intellectual theft and have put your academic future in jeopardy. This is the worst form of plagiarism.

Here is another explanation from the 2010, sixth edition of the Manual of The American Psychological Association (APA):
Plagiarism: Researchers do not claim the words and ideas of another as their own; they give credit where credit is due. Quotations marks should be used to indicate the exact words of another. Each time you paraphrase another author (i.e., summarize a passage or rearrange the order of a sentence and change some of the words), you need to credit the source in the text.

The key element of this principle is that authors do not present the work of another as if it were their own words. This can extend to ideas as well as written words. If authors model a study after one done by someone else, the originating author should be given credit. If the rationale for a study was suggested in the Discussion section of someone else's article, the person should be given credit. Given the free exchange of ideas, which is very important for the health of intellectual discourse, authors may not know where an idea for a study originated. If authors do know, however, they should acknowledge the source; this includes personal communications. (pp. 15-16)

Consult the Writing Center or a recommended guide to documentation and research such as the Manual of the APA or the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers for guidance on proper documentation. If you still have doubts concerning proper documentation, seek advice from your instructor prior to submitting a final draft.

• Penalties for Plagiarism: Should a faculty member discover that a student has committed plagiarism, the student should receive a grade of 'F' in that course and the matter will be referred to the Honor Council for possible disciplinary action. The faculty member, however, may elect to give freshmen and sophomore students a “zero” for the assignment and to allow them to revise the assignment up to a grade of “F” (50%) if they believe that the student plagiarized out of ignorance or carelessness and not out of an attempt to deceive in order to earn an unmerited grade. This option should not be available to juniors, seniors, or graduate students, who cannot reasonably claim ignorance of documentation rules as an excuse.
• Caution: Be very careful what you upload to Turnitin or send to your professor for evaluation. Whatever you upload for evaluation will be considered your final, approved draft. If it is plagiarized, you will be held responsible. The excuse that “it was only a draft” will not be accepted.
• Caution: Also, do not share your electronic files with others. If you do, you are responsible for the possible consequences. If another student takes your file of a paper and changes the name to his or her name and submits it and you also submit the paper, we will hold both of you responsible for plagiarism. It is impossible for us to know with certainty who wrote the paper and who stole it. And, of course, we cannot know if there was collusion between you and the other student in the matter.
• Penalties for Cheating: Should a faculty member discover a student cheating on an exam or quiz or other class project, the student should receive a “zero” for the assignment and not be allowed to make the assignment up. The incident should be reported to the chair of the department and to the Honor Council. If the cheating is extensive, however, or if the assignment constitutes a major grade for the course (e.g., a final exam), or if the student has cheated in the past, the student should receive an “F” in the course, and the matter should be referred to the Honor Council. Under no circumstances should a student who deserves an “F” in the course be allowed to withdraw from the course with a “W.”
• Student Right of Appeal: Faculty will notify students immediately via the student’s TAMIU e-mail account that they have submitted plagiarized work. Students have the right to appeal a faculty member’s charge of academic dishonesty by notifying the TAMIU Honor Council of their intent to appeal as long as the notification of appeal comes within 10 business days of the faculty member’s e-mail message to the student. The Student Handbook provides more details.
• USE OF WORK IN TWO ORE MORE COURSES
  You may not submit work completed in one course for a grade in a second course unless you receive explicit permission to do so by the instructor of the second course.

UCONNECT, TAMIU E-MAIL, AND DUSTY ALERT
Personal Announcements sent to students through TAMIU’s UConnect Portal and TAMIU E-mail are the official means of communicating course and university business with students and faculty – not the U.S. Mail and no other e-mail addresses. Students and faculty must check UConnect and their TAMIU e-mail accounts regularly, if not daily. Not having seen an important TAMIU e-mail or UConnect message from a faculty member, chair, or dean is not accepted as an excuse for failure to take important action. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to sign-up for Dusty Alert (see www.tamiu.edu). Dusty Alert is an instant cell phone text-messaging system allowing the university to communicate immediately with you if there is an on-campus emergency, something of immediate danger to you, or a campus closing.

COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
The Copyright Act of 1976 grants to copyright owners the exclusive right to reproduce their works and distribute copies of their work. Works that receive copyright protection include published works such as a textbook. Copying a textbook without permission from the owner of the copyright may constitute copyright infringement. Civil and criminal penalties may be assessed for copyright infringement. Civil penalties include damages up to $100,000; criminal penalties include a fine up to $250,000 and imprisonment.

Copyright laws do not allow students and professors to make photocopies of copyrighted materials, but you may copy a limited portion of a work, such an article from a journal or a chapter from a book for your own personal academic use or, in the case of a professor, for personal, limited classroom use. In general, the extent of your copying should not suggest that the purpose or the effect of your copying is to avoid paying for the materials. And, of course, you may not sell these copies for a profit. Thus, students who copy textbooks to avoid buying them or professors who provide photocopies of textbooks to enable students to save money are violating the law.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Texas A&M International University seeks to provide reasonable accommodations for all qualified persons with disabilities. This University will adhere to all applicable federal, state, and local laws, regulations and guidelines with respect to providing reasonable accommodations as required to afford equal education opportunity. It is the student's responsibility to register with the Director of Student Counseling and to contact the faculty member in a timely fashion to arrange for suitable accommodations.

STUDENT ATTENDANCE AND LEAVE OF ABSENCE (LOA) POLICY
As part of our efforts to assist and encourage all students towards graduation, TAMIU provides LOA’s for students, including pregnant/parenting students, in accordance with the Attendance Rule (Section 3.24) and the Student LOA Rule (Section 3.25), which includes the “Leave of Absence Request” form. Both rules can be found in the TAMIU Student Handbook (https://www.tamiu.edu/scce/studenthandbook.shtml).

PREGNANT AND PARENTING STUDENTS
Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, harassment based on sex, including harassment because of pregnancy or related conditions, is prohibited. A pregnant/parenting student must be granted an absence for as long as the student’s physician deems the absence medically necessary. It is a violation of Title IX to ask for documentation relative to the pregnant/parenting student’s status beyond what would be required for other medical conditions. If a student would like to file a complaint for discrimination due to his or her pregnant or parenting status, please contact the TAMIU Title IX Coordinator (Lauren A. Jones, J.D., 5201 University Boulevard, KL 159B, Laredo, TX 78045, TitleIX@tamiu.edu, 956.326.2857) and/or the Office of Civil Rights (Dallas Office, U.S. Department of Education, 1999 Bryan Street, Suite 1620, Dallas, TX 75201-6810, 214.661.9600).

The University advises a pregnant or parenting student to notify his or her professor once he or she is aware that accommodations for such will be necessary. It is first recommended that the student and professor attempt to work out the reasonable accommodations with each other. The Office of Student Conduct and Community Engagement (Mayra Hernandez, MGHernandez@tamiu.edu) can assist the student and professor in working out the reasonable accommodations. In the event that a student will need a leave of absence for a substantial period of time from the University, the University urges the student to consider a Leave of Absence as outlined in the Student Handbook. As part of our efforts to assist and encourage all students towards graduation, TAMIU provides LOA’s for students, including pregnant/parenting students, in accordance with the Attendance Rule and the Student LOA Rule. Both rules can be found in the TAMIU Student Handbook (http://www.tamiu.edu/scce/studenthandbook.shtml).

INCOMPLETES
Students who are unable to complete a course should withdraw from the course before the final date for withdrawal and receive a “W.” To qualify for an “incomplete” and thus have the opportunity to complete the course at a later date, a student must meet the following criteria:

1. The student must have completed 90% of the course work assigned before the final date for withdrawing from a course with a “W”, and the student must be passing the course;
2. The student cannot complete the course because an accident, an illness, or a traumatic personal or family event occurred after the final date for withdrawal from a course;
3. The student must sign an “Incomplete Grade Contract” and secure signatures of approval from the professor and the college dean.
4. The student must agree to complete the missing course work before the end of the next long semester; failure to meet this deadline will cause the “I” to automatically be converted to an “F”; extensions to this deadline may be granted by the dean of the college.

This is the general policy regarding the circumstances under which an “incomplete” may be granted, but under exceptional circumstances, a student may receive an incomplete who does not meet all of the criteria above if the faculty member, department chair, and dean recommend it.

WIN CONTRACTS
WIN Contracts are offered only under exceptional circumstances and are limited to seniors. Only courses offered by full-time TAMIU faculty or TAMIU instructors are eligible to be contracted for the WIN requirement. However, a WIN contract for a course taught by an adjunct may be approved, with special permission from the department chair and dean. Students must seek approval before beginning any work for the WIN Contract. No student will contract more than one course per semester. Summer WIN Contracts must continue through both summer sessions.

STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY FOR DROPPING A COURSE
It is the responsibility of the STUDENT to drop the course before the final date for withdrawal from a course. Faculty members, in fact, may not drop a student from a course without getting the approval of their department chair and dean.

INDEPENDENT STUDY COURSE
Independent Study (IS) courses are offered only under exceptional circumstances. Required courses intended to build academic skills may not be taken as IS (e.g., clinical supervision and internships). No student will take more than one IS course per semester. Moreover, IS courses are limited to seniors and graduate students. Summer IS course must continue through both summer sessions.

GRADE CHANGES AND APPEALS
Faculty are authorized to change final grades only when they have committed a computational error or an error in recording a grade, and they must receive the approval of their department chairs and the dean to change the grade. As part of that approval, they must attach a detailed explanation of the reason for the mistake. Only in rare cases would another reason be entertained as legitimate for a grade change. A student who is unhappy with his or her grade on an assignment must discuss the situation with the faculty member teaching the course. If students believe that they have been graded unfairly, they have the right to appeal the grade using a grade appeal process in the Student Handbook and the Faculty Handbook.

FINAL EXAMINATION
Final Examination must be comprehensive and must contain a written component. The written component should comprise at least 20% of the final exam grade. Exceptions to this policy must receive the approval of the department chair and the dean at the beginning of the semester.