Course Syllabus

Introduction to Cognitive Science

COGS 001, CIS 140, PSYC 207, LING 105, PPE 140,
PHIL 044
Welcome to Introduction to Cognitive Science, Fall 2014!
This canvas site is your home for many things related to the course. Readings
for each lecture as well as lecture slides are available under the "Modules"
menu item. Note that prior to each lecture, slides from last year's lecture are
available. We will update these for each lecture as the course
progresses. There are a few lectures late in the course for which we have not
yet posted readings. These will be updated in due course.
We are still scheduling office hours.
Note that the one thing we don't use Canvas for is its messaging system. We
do not read messages sent via the Canvas system. Please use Piazza (you
should sign up for the course on Piazza) for all course communications (see
more detailed information below.)
The course is currently full and there is a waiting list. Please email Jessica
Marcus (jmarcus@seas.upenn.edu) to be placed on the waiting list.

About the course

This course is about how minds work. We survey a wide range of answers to
this question, focusing especially on ideas embodied in computational (aka
mathematical) models on the one hand and neural models on the other.
Topics include perception, action, thought, learning, memory and social
interaction. For details, see the course schedule. Note that because of the
nature of the course, we will cover a broad range of topics but not delve into
great depth on any one topic.
This course (under any of its cross-registered names) may be counted towards
the General Requirement in Formal Reasoning & Analysis (Gen Req IV).
Below is much useful information about the mechanics of the course. You
should read this.

Required Readings
Download links for required readings are on a page for each lecture in
"Modules:Lectures/Readings', or you can purchase a class bulkpack (at the
SEAS copy center, ground floor of Levine Hall) if you would like a hard copy
of most of the readings. The reader should be available the week of
September 2; we will make an announcement about this in class. The
readings for the first lecture may be downloaded in the meantime.
Required readings are required, and are fair game for homework and exam
questions.
Although the bulkpack will contain most of the readings, we sometimes
modify the posted readings or add additional readings as the course goes on,

so please check each lecture in the "Modules:Lectures/Readings" section as

each lecture happens. We will post an announcement (on Piazza) if we
change required readings after the course begins.

Lecture Slides
We will post our slides for each lecture in the page for that lecture. The
lectures are also recorded. Once the semester starts, we will figure out where
the recordings show up. Although the lectures are recorded, we recommend
that you come to each class. First, sometimes the recording fails. Second,
there are interactive aspects to the lectures that you will miss out on if you
rely only on the recordings.

Recitations
Every student in the course is enrolled in a recitation. You should go to the
recitation in which you are enrolled. Recitations are intended to reinforce
material covered in lecture and will also introduce new material from time to
time. You are responsible for material covered in recitations (that is, it will be
covered on the homeworks and/or the exams). Recitations are not recorded.
Recitations are held on Thursdays and Fridays and will begin the week of
September 2.
If you would like to switch recitations, do not try to do it via the registrars
system -- the most likely outcome of trying that is that you will no longer be
enrolled in the course (sorry, not our fault). Instead, email Jessica Marcus
(jmarcus@seas.upenn.edu) and indicate which section you are currently in and

which section(s) you would like to switch to. We cannot guarantee that we
can switch you.

Supplemental Material
We sometimes post supplemental material (readings, videos, etc.), in case you
are interested in learning more about a topic. You do not need to read these
for the course, but are welcome to if you are interested. These will also be on
the "Modules:Lectures/Readings" pages.
Exam questions will be drawn only from the material covered in lecture,
recitations, and in the required readings. We cannot rule out the possibility
that the supplemental readings will enrich your understanding of such
material and help you do better, but in writing the exams we do not expect
you to have read them.

TA Information and Office Hours

Office hours are available if you need extra help and should not be used as a
substitute for attending recitations. You can go to the office hours of any of
the TAs who hold office hours or the instructors, and you can go to as many
office hours per week as you would like. (Not all TAs hold office hours). You
do not have to go to the same office hours each week.
Office hours will begin the week of September 2 at the times and places to
be posted below.
Note that although we provide email addresses below, for almost any course

related communication you should be using Piazza. See Piazza menu item as
well as the relevant section below.
Instructors
Dr. David Brainard
Office Location: Room 315 C-Wing, 3401 Walnut Street
Phone Number: 215-573-7579
Email: brainard@psych.upenn.edu
Office Hours: TBD
Dr. Lyle Ungar
Office Location: 504 Levine
Phone Number: 215-898-7449
Email: ungar@cis.upenn.edu
Office Hours: TBD
TAs
Alon Hafri
Office Hours Location: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
Linda Yu
Office Hours Location: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
Philip Williams
Office Hours Location: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
Elsie Piao
Office Hours Location: TBD

 Office Hours: TBD

Maneka Mirchandaney
Office Hours Location: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
Akriti Bahal
Office Hours Location: TBD
Office Hours: Tuesdays TBD
Prithvi Karapa
Office Hours Location: No office hours
Office Hours: No office hours
Joseph Hong
Office Hours Location: No office hours
Office Hours: No office hours

Grading
Homeworks: 25% of final grade. There will be 8 or 9 homeworks. Each
homework grade will be converted to a percentage correct (rounded up or
down to the nearest integer percent). The lowest homework score (in percent)
will be dropped and the remaining percentage scores will be averaged to
yield the overall homework percentage, which will also be rounded to the
nearest integer percent). There will also be a preliminary HW 0. You must
complete HW0 at the start of the semester to pass the course, but there are
no explicit points associated with it. You must do all homeworks by yourself,
no group efforts allowed. Suspected violations will be reported to the
Office of Student Conduct for investigation and possible disciplinary
action. We will not contact you before reporting, but we will let you know
that we have done so. Each homework will be posted at least a week before its
due date. Late homeworks will not be accepted except under exceptional
circumstances.

Midterms: 75% of final grade (25% each). Each midterm will be converted
to a percentage score (rounded up or down to the nearest percent). The
midterms will be closed book, closed notes, and no calculators or other
devices will be allowed. The exams will consist of multiple choice
questions. Each will focus on the material presented in the preceding portion
of the course, but since some key concepts come up multiple times as the
course moves forward, these will in effect be assessed on more than one
exam. We will provide copies of old exams from the course so you have a
sense of the type of exams we write.
Final Exam: There is no final exam for this course.
Letter grades for the course: These will be assigned based on an overall
score obtained as the weighted average of homework and exam percentage
scores (with weights as specified above.) These scores will be rounded up or
down to the nearest percent. Grades will be assigned according to the
following scale:
98 and above: A+
93 up to but not including 98: A
90 up to but not including 93: A 87 up to but not including 90: B+
83 up to but not including 87: B
80 up to but not including 83: B 76 up to but not including 80: C+
73 up to but not including 76: C
69 up to but not including 73: C 60 up to but not including 69: D

 Below 60: F
We do not provide opportunities for extra credit or makeup work, nor do
we adjust grades based on individual circumstances, even exceptional
ones.

Regrade Policy
As hard as we try, sometimes we make an error in gradiing or write an exam
question that is ambiguous. If you feel that you did not receive an
appropriate number of points on a homework question, or that the answer
you chose for an exam item is correct even though we marked it as incorrect,
you may request a regrade. We will review the mechanism when the first
homework is returned, but in essence we require that you post a private
message on Piazza indicating the reason you think you deserve more points.
These regrade requests must be submitted within a one week window of
when the graded homework/exam was returned -- this is because we believe
there is learning value in your reviewing materials while things are still fresh in
your mind. To say it again, you cannot request regrades for an assignment
after the window for that assignment has closed.
We will consider and respond to regrade requests after the window for
submitting them has closed. This allows us to consider all such requests for a
particular assignment together and helps us respond to them in a consistent
manner. Our response will depend both on the substance of the request and
the quality of your written reasoning about why you think you deserve more
points.

Regrade requests are the only mechanism by which your grade on an

assignment will be changed -- if your answer was right but you didn't file a
regrade request we will not give you more points. Again, this policy is
designed to encourage you to review returned assignments and learn from
the posted solutions as much.
Decisions on regrade requests are final -- there are no "regrade request
regrade reqeusts."

Clickers
We will be using "clickers" in this course. Buy a TurningPoint clicker, either at
the Penn Bookstore or elsewhere, and register it to your name on this Canvas
site. You register your clicker at the "Modules:Turning Technologies" page.
Bring your clicker to each class. Any model of TurningPoint clicker should
work for this course.

Piazza: Substantive and Administrative Questions

We use Piazza for all course communication. There is a Canvas-based
messaging system, but we don't read those messages. Course
announcements will appear on Piazza, except perhaps for an initial one from
Canvas pointing you to Piazza.
To sign up for and view Piazza, it is in principle sufficient to click on the
Piazza menu item under Canvas.

You can also get to the page using this

link: https://piazza.com/class/hz3yx89faw02wn. And you should be able to

sign up by starting at this link: https://piazza.com/upenn.

If you have questions about lectures, readings, or homework you may ask
them after class, at recitations, or at office hours. But you may also post
questions to Piazza. We will monitor posts there and provide
responses. Please use the Piazza discussion board rather than emailing your
questions to the instructors or TAs. This way, all can benefit from the posted
questions and answers. (If you email us directly with a substantive question,
we will probably respond by asking you to post it to the discussion board, so
please cut out the extra step and post it to the forum the first time.) You are
also welcome to respond to other students' questions, if you can help. Just
don't provide specific answers to homework questions.
If you have administrative or personal questions, please submit to Piazza as a

private message. The way you do this is to select Instructors in the field where
you indicate who the post should go to. Such messages will be seen by the
instructors and the TAs. Submitting them to Piazza helps us make sure that
everything gets answered by the appropriate person. You may also use
Piazza to request an appointment with one of the instructors or a TA. We
prefer that you communicate about course related matters via Piazza rather
than sending email to individual instructors or TAs.
You should not send emails about course related matters to the instructors or
TAs. If you do, we will respond by asking you to post your question to Piazza
-- skip the extra step and go directly to Piazza.

Policy on Working Together, Plagiarism

We encourage students to discuss ideas from the course and to study
together for exams.

Homeworks, however, are individual. Although you may talk with your
classmates about concepts related to the homework, you should not discuss
the specific problems, share details of how you solved a homework
problem, let another student look at your homework, etc. (You can review
your graded homework after it is returned, and the supplied solutions, with
classmates.)
Also note that when taking phrases or facts from any source (books, articles,
or the web), be sure to acknowledge where the information was taken from.
Any text quoted directly must be enclosed in quotation marks, again with the
source noted. The format of the citation does not matter, as long as it is
sufficiently detailed for us to find the original source.
If you respond to a homework question with a direct quote from a source you
should also expand on, explain, and interpret that quote in your own words.
This is separate from the need to put the quote in quotation marks and cite
the source. Although it is fine for you to research homework questions and
use what you found, we do want to make sure you can explain it yourself.
We plan to run homework through plagiarism detection software, and the
graders will also be alert for cases where highly similar answers are provided
by more than one student. Cases of suspected collaboration on and sharing
of homework, plagiarism, and cheating on exams will be referred directly to
the Office of Student Conduct (http://www.upenn.edu/osc/). We will not
contact you before reporting such cases, although we will let you know that
we have done so.
Additional information about academic integrity may be found
at http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/ai_codeofacademicintegrity.html. We

recommend that you read the material at that site.