Universität Wien

200139 SE Advanced Seminar: Mind and Brain (2020W)

Fundamental Topics in Cognitive Science + Colloquium

4.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 20 - Psychologie
Continuous assessment of course work

Dieses Vertiefungsseminar kann für alle Schwerpunkte absolviert werden.

Vertiefungsseminare können nur fürs Pflichtmodul B verwendet werden! Eine Verwendung fürs Modul A4 Freie Fächer ist nicht möglich.
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 20 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

We will meet on the actual weekly appointments Tuesdays 09:45 - 11:15. However, meetings will be online using BigBlueButton with the exception of Week 1, which will use a hybrid format (see below).

*IMPORTANT *

Covid-19-related class format changes/plan: Due to the special circumstances of the current global pandemic we find ourselves in, our particular class size and format logistics, and our own reading of the current trends, we have decided to use a hybrid format.

Why Hybrid?: Our aim for this course is to provide a space whereby we can all meet together and have sweeping, somewhat intimate, and hopefully engaging conversations about our chosen reading materials and course topics. The major component of the course is, in turn, a weekly presentation made by you students (individually or in groups, depending on class sizes). Finally, we typically would ask you to attend a weekly colloquium on various topics in psychology, which we then discuss in class.

Obviously, some aspects, such as the colloquium are not possible currently anyway (currently on hiatus). Whereas, some other aspects—meeting together and discussing could be possible, but problematic. For example, the number of students allowed in a room is capped, and currently our class size of 20 might put us in a position where we cannot all meet together at one time (especially if we allow in other students past our max, as we typically do for this course).

After careful consideration, we also have ethical and other pragmatic reasons for hybrid: Ethically, we cannot in good conscious ask you all to come each week and share the same space and same air with each other. We all have different circles of friends and family. Many might have to ride public transportation to get here. Even if most of us feel OK with joining together, we don’t want to cause and social pressure (welcome to psychology!) if you do feel uncomfortable for your selves or your loved ones. There are also potential issues of bias (ha, psychology!) for students being graded based on in-person versus online formats… Pragmatically, we feel that, even though things might be OK now, with the Fall, we expect trends to get worse before the hopefully get better, and we might find ourselves moving to an online format anyway, which would be even more disruptive mid-class…

Therefore, hybrid? What is the actual plan? We have therefore come up with the following format, which is heavily based on our plan from last semester, and which was positively received by ourselves and students.

1. Week 1: We will meet at the normal class start time in the Sigmund Freud Park (big lawn, sometimes red chairs, across the street from the normal Liebiggasse classroom; we will have a flag…). Typically, class 1 is devoted to discussing the syllabus, beginning to assign topics for presentations, and, most importantly, meeting each other and introducing ourselves. We have learned from past experience that it is much nicer to get to meet and say high, physically, if even only once. Hybrid component: Note, we will bring a laptop computer connected to BigBlueButton so anyone who does not want to meet in person can join in! Rain contingency: If it seems like rain, we will mail 1 hour before class and switch to online for the day.
2. All other weeks: we will meet online using BigBlueButton starting at the stated class time and for the full scheduled class durations for presentations and discussion. We will again ask students to prepare and give presentations (i.e., powerpoint) using the online portal.
3. Colloquium component: As also noted below. Instead of asking students to attend a colloquium, we have a nice list of podcasts on related topics that students will be asked to listen to over each week and then be ready to discuss at normal class time.

  • Tuesday 06.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 13.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 20.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 27.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 03.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 10.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 17.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 24.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 01.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 15.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 12.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 19.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock
  • Tuesday 26.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal F Psychologie, Liebiggasse 5 1. Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Aims: Through discussions, in English, centered on the reading of target research papers, we aim to foster critical thinking in the area of the Psychology and the Cognitive Sciences. After taking this course, attendees should be especially able to reflect on the “bigger picture” underlying academic discussions, to approach scientific communications and ideas critically. We do this by focusing, unlike many other courses which target specific empirical study papers, targeting seminal papers or book chapters in Cognitive Sciences which provide the framework and context for much Psychology and Cognitive Science work itself. Where do our terms, our problems, or solutions in Psychology come from, and why is this so?

Second, we aim to train skills in participating in such discussions in English—a skill that is a growing, ever-present reality for life as a postgraduate—in a “safe space” with minimal pressure.

Contents: The seminar involves reading, presenting, and discussing seminal papers or book chapters in Cognitive Sciences. This includes topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Psychology as a Science, how research findings can be generalized, the replication crisis, Philosophy of Mind, research practice and scientific utopia etc.. Though the topics raise fundamental issues in psychology, the discussions also regularly touch relevant topics of everyday life, such as the future of science, consequences of digitalization, cultural dependence on psychological concepts, development of language, truth, or free will.
Methods: Student presentation of a paper/book chapter, student-guided discussion of the text in the seminar, attendance of colloquium.

Assessment and permitted materials

Assessment is based on participation and contributions to the discussion in class. In each unit a specific paper/book chapter will be discussed. In the beginning of the session, students will present the assigned reading in short and should raise important questions pertaining to the topic. These will then be discussed in the remainder of the unit.

The presentation will be assessed in detail on the following criteria: completeness, creativity and critical thinking (see template of the evaluation form). The feedback will be provided on the following week after the presentation was held.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Attendance at class sessions on Tuesdays (max 2 missed sessions) AND the colloquium (listening the podcasts) mandatory
Presentation of the assigned reading is mandatory.

Grading:
a) Active participation --> 40%
b) Presentation of the paper and discussion --> 40%
c) Attendance on colloquium (listening to podcasts) --> 20%

Please note that active participation (40% of the total grade) is a major determinant of the grade. We would like to point out that missing a session results in no participation for this session.

Please also note the Richtlinie zur Sicherung der guten wissenschaftlichen Praxis (https://studienpraeses.univie.ac.at/infos-zum-studienrecht/sicherung-der-guten-wissenschaftlichen-praxis/)

Examination topics

Course Schedule:

06.10. 2020. Introduction, overview of class, syllabus

13.10. 2020. Example Session (Matthew Pelowski): Mindless statistics (Gigerenzer, 2004)

20.10. 2020. Session 1: Summary of Social Science (Meehl, 1990)

27.10. 2020. Session 2: Generalizability of findings, external validity (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010)

03.11. 2020. Session 3: Naming the mind (Danziger, 1997)

10.11. 2020. Session 4: Digital memory, History of memory (Draaisma, 2000)

17.11. 2020. Session 5: AI (Turing, 1950)

24.11. 2020. Session 6: Psychology (James, 1890)

01.12. 2020. Session 7: Threats of statistical procedures (Bennet et al. 2010, Fiedler, 2011).

15.12. 2020. Session 8: QRP (Simmons, 2011; Benjamin, 2017)

---- CHRISTMAS BREAK ------

12.01. 2021. Session 9: Replication (Zwaan et al. 2018)

19.01. 2021. Session 10: Scientific Utopia III. (Uhlmann et al., 2019)

26.01. 2021. Closing session, remarks, feedback

Reading list

Reading List:

Example Session:
Gigerenzer, G. (2004). Mindless statistics. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 33, 587-606. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2004.09.033

Session 1:
Meehl, P. E. (1990). Why summaries of research on psychological theories are often uninterpretable. Psychological reports, 66(1), 195-244. doi: 10.2466/pr0.66.1.195-244

Session 2:

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?. Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. [attached Peer Commentaries are *not* required reading, but may be helpful]

Session 3:

Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind In Naming the mind: How psychology found its language. Sage. doi.org/10.4135/9781446221815.n1

Session 4:
Draaisma, D. (2000). Digital memory In Metaphors of memory: A history of ideas about the mind. (pp.138-164). Cambridge University Press.

Session 5:
Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence In Mind. Mind, 59(236), 433-460. doi: 10.1093/mind/lix.236.433

Session 6:
James, W. (1890). The scope of psychology.
James, W. (1892). Text-book of Psychology.

Session 7:

Bennet, C., Baird, A., Miller, M., & Wolford, G. (2010). Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic salmon: An argument for proper multiple comparisons correction. Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results, 1(1), 1-5.

Fiedler, K. (2011). Voodoo correlations are everywhere—not only in neuroscience. Perspectives on psychological science, 6(2), 163-171.

Session 8:

Benjamin, D. J., Berger, J. O., Johannesson, M., Nosek, B. A., Wagenmakers, E. J., Berk, R., ... & Cesarini, D. (2018). Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 6. doi: 10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological science, 22(11), 1359-1366. doi: 10.1037/e519702015-014

Session 9:

Zwaan, R. A., Etz, A., Lucas, R. E., & Donnellan, M. B. (2018). Making replication mainstream. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41. doi:10.1017/s0140525x17001972 [attached Peer Commentaries are *not* required reading, but may be helpful]

Session 10:

Uhlmann, E. L., Ebersole, C. R., Chartier, C. R., Errington, T. M., Kidwell, M. C., Lai, C. K., ... & Nosek, B. A. (2019). Scientific utopia III: Crowdsourcing science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(5), 711-733. doi:10.1177/1745691619850561

Additional readings for comparison:

Nosek, B. A., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012). Scientific utopia: I. Opening scientific communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 217-243. doi: 10.1080/1047840x.2012.692215

Nisbett, R. (2004). Is the world made up of nouns or verbs? In The geography of thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently… and why. Simon and Schuster.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Fr 11.09.2020 14:09