PSYC10006 Mind, Brain and Behaviour A

How PSYC10006 is assessed

The four weighted pieces sum to exactly 100 per cent. The two hurdle rows are shown with an empty weight because the subject's own assessment table gives them no weighting: they are requirements to be satisfied rather than marks to be earned. One point to confirm on the subject page: the attendance requirement is stated in one place as 80 per cent of tutorial classes and in another as at least five of the six classes, and both readings appear in the subject's own materials. Dates here are the pattern the subject states; confirm the calendar dates for your own offering, because an intensive subject's dates shift more than a semester subject's do.

What PSYC10006 covers

The whole subject in one map, in the order it is taught: three topic areas across six weeks, with the research methods stream gathered into its own two chapters so it can be revised as a whole. Each chapter links to its free guide.

It runs wholly online, compressed into the opening six weeks of the second semester, and the subject's own home page records it as equivalent to PSYC10003.

The subject is built from three topic areas in a fixed order — Learning and cognition, Sensation and perception, and Behavioural neuroscience — delivered as twelve topic modules at two per week.

Running underneath them is a second stream of twelve research methods modules, also two per week, covering how psychological research is designed, how data are described, and how to judge an argument.

Each week also carries a two-hour practical class and an optional live question hour, and closes with a graded quiz that is set on all four of that week's modules.

Two things about the assessment shape this subject more than its content does.

There is no examination: half the mark is spread across six weekly quizzes, so the work cannot be deferred to a revision period, and nothing can be rescued at the end.

And most of the remaining mark sits in a single 1500-word essay due in the final week, which rewards starting in week 2 far more than working hard in week 6. Two hurdle requirements carry no marks at all and can still prevent a pass.

Worked example · free

Label a conditioning scenario, then defend the labels

Key terms

Conditioned stimulus

A cue that produced no reflex before conditioning and now triggers one, because it reliably preceded something biologically significant. It is the same physical event as the neutral stimulus; only its predictive relationship has changed, which is why the label flips without the cue doing so.

Negative reinforcement

A consequence that removes something aversive and thereby makes a behaviour more likely. Negative refers to subtraction, not to unpleasantness, so this is not punishment: the defining feature is that the behaviour increases.

Partial reinforcement effect

The finding that a behaviour maintained by reinforcement on only some occasions survives far longer once reinforcement stops than one that was reinforced every time. It explains both why partial schedules build persistence and why inconsistent punishment entrenches a behaviour.

Serial position curve

The U-shaped relationship between an item's position in a studied list and the chance of recalling it. The rise at each end has a different cause, and each can be removed without disturbing the other, which is the evidence for more than one memory store.

Working memory

A multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in the service of a current goal, comprising a central executive that allocates attention plus stores for sound-based material, visual and spatial material, and integrated episodes.

Temporal gradient

The pattern in retrograde amnesia where memories from shortly before the causing event are lost while older ones survive. It is the observation that implies consolidation is a process taking years rather than an event at encoding.

Binding problem

The question of how attributes of an object that are computed separately, such as its colour and its motion, come to be experienced as belonging to one thing. Attending to a single location is the solution the subject teaches.

Size constancy

Perceiving an object as a stable size although the image it casts shrinks with distance. It is achieved by scaling the retinal image by perceived distance, which is why misjudging distance produces a matching error in judged size.

Opponent process

The account in which cone signals are recombined into channels that each carry a pair of colours in opposition. It predicts which colour experiences are impossible as well as explaining why an afterimage takes the opposite hue.

Rate law

The principle that because every action potential is the same size, the intensity of a signal is carried by how frequently a neuron fires rather than by how large each firing is. It follows from the all-or-none property rather than being a separate finding.

Synaptic plasticity

The adjustment of connection strength between neurons with use, implemented as a change in the number of receptors on the receiving cell. Strengthening follows repeated coincident activity and weakening follows disuse.

Operational definition

A statement of the specific observable procedure by which a concept will be measured in a particular study. It is always narrower than the concept it stands for, which is why every conclusion has to be checked back against the original idea.

PSYC10006 FAQ

Questions students ask in each PSYC10006 chapter

How do I stop mixing up the unconditioned and conditioned response?

Do not ask what the behaviour is; ask what produced it in that sentence. If the trigger is the innately significant event the response is unconditioned, and if the trigger is the cue that merely predicts it the response is conditioned. The behaviour itself is often identical in both cases, so it never settles the answer. Chapter 01 · Classical Conditioning: Pavlov, Watson and Preparedness

Why is negative reinforcement not a kind of punishment?

Because reinforcement is defined by the behaviour becoming more likely, and punishment by it becoming less likely. Negative refers only to something being taken away. A behaviour that switches off something unpleasant becomes more frequent, so it is being reinforced even though the stimulus involved is aversive. Chapter 02 · Operant Conditioning and Social Cognitive Learning

Is short-term memory capacity seven items or four?

Both, for different material, and quoting either without naming what was being held is the error. A spoken digit span averages around seven digits; a visual change-detection task is accurate up to about four coloured squares. They measure different systems, which is the separation the working memory chapter is built on. Chapter 03 · Memory Components, Capacity and Transfer

Is working memory just a new name for short-term memory?

No, and an item offering that is testing exactly this. The older account was a single container defined by rehearsal; this one is multi-component and defined by manipulating information in the service of a task. A reversed span task demonstrates the difference on the same material as a forwards one. Chapter 04 · Working Memory, Long Term Memory and the Amnesias

How do I tell inattentional blindness from change blindness?

Ask what the experimenter hid. If a change was concealed behind a cut, a flicker or an occlusion, it is change blindness. If nothing was hidden and you were simply given a demanding task while something else was present, it is inattentional blindness. That test works on unfamiliar demonstrations. Chapter 05 · Attention, Saccades and the Binding Problem

Why are there so many cues for one quantity?

Because each one fails somewhere. Binocular cues run out at distance, familiar size fails on an unfamiliar object, parallax needs you to be moving, atmospheric perspective needs an atmosphere. A system with one cue would be blind to depth whenever that cue was unavailable, so the redundancy is coverage. Chapter 06 · Depth and Size Perception

Are the trichromatic and opponent-process accounts rivals?

The objective asks you to contrast them, and the natural reading is that they describe different stages of one system: three receptor types, recombined into three opponent channels afterwards. That reading is consistent with everything the subject says and the subject never states it, so present it as an inference rather than as taught content. Chapter 07 · Colour Vision: Physics, Theories and Constancy

Why is one patient enough to make the point about motion?

Because of what was spared. Form, colour and position survived while motion did not, and a general visual impairment would have taken them too. That selectivity is evidence that motion is computed by dedicated machinery rather than read off the same representation that supports the rest of vision. Chapter 08 · Motion Perception and Its Breakdowns

Do I need to memorise dates for the history material?

The subject states you will not be asked to recall specific dates, and frames the history as four forces that shaped which ideas about the brain could be entertained. Learn the four forces with one clean example of each, because an item is far more likely to describe a situation and ask which force it illustrates. Chapter 09 · Behavioural Neuroscience: History, Models and Simulation

Is the eye part of the central or peripheral nervous system?

The retinal cells in the eyeball are stated to be part of the central nervous system, even though the eye sits outside the skull. The division is not really about being inside a bony case, which is how it is usually mis-remembered; the retina is central nervous tissue. Chapter 10 · Nervous System Divisions and Brain Anatomy

Which ion moves which way, and how do I stop reversing it?

Sodium moves into the cell during depolarisation and potassium moves out during repolarisation. The check that catches an inversion is the sign: depolarisation has to raise the inside voltage towards the outside, so it must be positive charge entering. Deriving it that way is safer than recalling it. Chapter 11 · Neurons, Synapses and Measuring the Brain

Why is modulating a region better evidence than imaging it?

Because activity accompanying a task is equally consistent with the region doing the work and with it being a by-product of something else. Modulation supplies a causal test, and the subject adds that the older route to a causal claim was analysing damage after death, which modulation replaces in a living participant. Chapter 12 · Modifying the Brain: Plasticity and Integration

Why does the methods stream sit in the same quiz as the topic modules?

Because every claim in the topic modules is a result, and a result is only as strong as the design that produced it. The stream supplies the vocabulary for saying how strong that is, which is also the vocabulary the written assignment is marked in. Two of the four modules each quiz covers come from it. Chapter 13 · Research Design, Sampling and Ethics

When should I report the median rather than the mean?

When the distribution is skewed or contains isolated values. The mean is the balance point and every value contributes its full magnitude to it, so extremes pull it away from what is typical. The median depends on position and barely moves. Say which property of the distribution made you choose. Chapter 14 · Describing Data and Judging Arguments

How to prepare for the assessments

Treat this as six self-contained weeks rather than one subject, because that is how it is assessed: each quiz closes over its own week's four modules and never returns to them. (1) Fix the order within the week. Do the two topic modules first, while the practical class is still ahead of you, then the two research methods modules, then the practice quiz where one is offered, then the graded quiz.

The methods modules are the ones that get postponed into a gap that never appears, and they are half of what the quiz is set on. (2) Prepare for recall, not for recognition. Twenty questions in forty minutes with no aids means you cannot look anything up and cannot reason a concept out from first principles.

Cover each comparison table in this guide and rebuild it from memory; that is the endpoint, not reading until the material feels familiar. (3) Drill the discriminations rather than the definitions.

Almost every item in this subject asks which of two neighbouring terms applies: unconditioned against conditioned, reinforcement against punishment, inattentional blindness against change blindness, anterograde against retrograde, depolarisation against hyperpolarisation. Write each pair with the single feature that separates it and drill that feature. (4) Derive every direction word instead of memorising it.

Sodium in raises the inside voltage; pro means old disturbing new; subtract the illuminant you assume. A derived direction cannot be remembered backwards, and reversed directions are this subject's most common lost mark. (5) Start the essay in week 2 and keep the learning diary while it happens.

It is 40 per cent in one artefact with no second attempt, its title is fixed, and a diary reconstructed afterwards reports your memory of how you studied rather than your behaviour. (6) Diary both hurdle tasks in week 1. They carry no marks, which is exactly why they are easy to leave, and either one can stop you passing a subject you have otherwise done well in.

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