Course:COGS303/2010-2011-1

From UBC Wiki

Welcome to the Cognitive Systems 303 wiki for 2010-2011 winter term 1!

Using the Wiki

The Cogs 303 wiki is hosted on UBC Wiki, which runs the same software used for Wikipedia. Anyone with a CWL may create or edit wikis on UBC Wiki. If you are unfamiliar with using wiki software, the following articles provide a good basic overview of how to use/edit the wiki:

Target Articles

Target Article Registration

Instructions

To register your target article, please do the following:

  1. Login with your CWL using the CWL button at top right of this page. Unfortunately, this will redirect you to the main UBC Wiki page, so you'll have to press the back button twice to get back to this page and then hit refresh so that it knows you are logged in.
  2. Copy the following text:
    * IDENTIFIER: [LINK "TITLE"] ~~~~~
  3. Click the "edit" link next to the title of the target article you want to register for.
  4. Paste the text you copied in step 2 to the bottom of the entry form that opens and replace "IDENTIFIER", "LINK" and "TITLE" with your information. For target articles 1A and 1B, replace IDENTIFIER with your code name. For the rest of them, replace it with your first name and last initial. Be careful not to overwrite someone else's submission.

This will add a timestamped entry that looks something like this:

Target Article 1B (due Sept. 21)

Registration closed.

Target Article 1A (due Sept. 28)

Registration closed.

Target Article 2A (due Oct. 19)

Registration closed.

Target Article 2B (due Oct. 26)

Registration closed.

  • Benj W-K: "Heliocentric System" [1] 23:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Elaine C: 'The Controversy of the Eiffel Tower' [2] 12:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Izabela L: 'Alfred Wegner and the concept of continental drift ' [3] 1:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Lizzy Blunden: ["Contribution of Neuroplasticity to Pathological Pain"] 02:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY"] 05:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Target Article 3B (due Nov. 2)

Registration open.

epidemiological study"] 20:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Target Article 3A (due Nov. 23)

Registration open.

Target Article Bank

The following are articles used by previous Cogs 303 students for their target articles. They are provided to facilitate (and expedite) your target article search. You are, however, both allowed and encouraged to find your own articles.

Keep in mind the following points:

  • Some of these articles are better than others (that is some provide more clear demonstrations of the particular writing blunder under discussion than others) and you may be able to find even better examples on your own.
  • The articles are provided in random order categorized roughly by subject. It is up to you to match the article to the given writing error for each submission.
  • Some of the articles are rather lengthy. Typically, what people do is crop out a section 400 words or less for their submission.
  • Even if you are using one of the below articles you must still register it above (and only one person can register each article and this is done on a first-come, first-served basis).
  • Some articles may not display correctly unless accessed from campus or through UBC's VPN.

Biology, Health Sciences

Business, Economics

Chemistry, Physics

Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Earth & Ocean Sciences, Astronomy

Education

History, Biography

Politics, Current Events, Opinion

Psychology

Critiques

Instructions

To register your 2 critique articles, please do the following:

  1. Login with your CWL using the CWL button at top right of this page. Unfortunately, this will redirect you to the main UBC Wiki page, so you'll have to press the back button twice to get back to this page and then hit refresh so that it knows you are logged in.
  2. Copy the following text:
    * IDENTIFIER ~~~~~:
    #[LINK1 "TITLE1"]
    #[LINK2 "TITLE2"]
  3. Click the "edit" link next to the critique registration section (below).
  4. Paste the text you copied in step 2 to the bottom of the entry form that opens and replace "IDENTIFIER", "LINK1", "LINK2", "TITLE1" and "TITLE2" with your information. Replace "IDENTIFIER" with your first name and last initial. Be careful not to overwrite someone else's submission.

This will create an entry that looks like the following:

  • BRETT S. 22:18, 21 October 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Apple"
  2. "Microsoft"

Critique Registration

Registration open.

  • SUSAN K. 02:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Vertegaal, R., Slagter, R., van der Veer, G., & Nijholt, A. Eye Gaze Patterns in Conversations: There is More to Conversational Agents Than Meets the Eyes. (2001). Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 301-308."
  2. "Barash, D.P. (1974). Human ethology: exchanging cheetahs for Chevrolets? Environment and Behavior 9: 487-490."
  • ILIA P. 17:53, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  1. "Jeffrey Heer, danah boyd (2005) Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks"
  2. "Yuya Nomata, Junichi Hoshino (2006) Social Landscapes: Visual Interface to Improve Awareness in Human Relationships on Social Networking Sites. ICEC 2006, LNCS 4161, pp. 350-353"
  • IZABELA L. 19:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Crosby, J. R., Monin, B., & Richardson, D. (2008). Where do we look during potentially offensive behavior? Psychological Science, 19, 226-228."
  2. "Proffitt, D.R., Stefanucci, J., Banton, T., & Epstein, W. (2003). The role of effort in perceiving distance. Psychological Science, 14, 106–112."
  • Elaine C. 21:45, 23 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Boroditsky, L., Frank, M.C. & Ramscar, M. (2002). The Roles of Body and Mind in Abstract Thought. Psychological Science, 13, 185-189."
  2. "Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conception of Time. Cognitive Psychology 43: 1-22."
  • Benjamin S. 12:44, 24 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Chellapilla, K. & Fogel, D.B. (2001). Evolving an expert checkers playing program without using human expertise. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 5(4), 422 - 428."
  2. " Yau, Y.J. & Teo, J. (2006). An empirical comparison of non-adaptive, adaptive and self-adaptive co-evolution for evolving artificial neural network game players. 2006 IEEE Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems, 1 - 6."
  • Bessie C. 03:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Artificial Immune System based Cooperative Strategies for Robot Soccer Competition"
  2. "Self-nonself discrimination in a computer"
  • Diana L. 06:46, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
  1. "Johnson, A., Barnacz, A., Yokkaichi, T., Rubio, J., Racioppi, C., Shackelford, T., Fisher, M., & Keenan, J. P. (2005). Me, myself, and lie: The role of self-awareness in deception. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1847-1853."
  2. "Ekman. P., & O’Sullivan. M. (1991). Who can catch a liar? American Psychologist, 46,913-920."
  • Anastasia K.:
  1. "Eric Eich, Dawn Macaulay, Richard J. Loewenstein and Patrice H. Dihle (1997). Memory, Amnesia, and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Psychological Science,8, pp. 417-422"
  2. "Ingmar Persson (1997). The Involvement of Our Identity in Experiential Memory. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27, 447-465"
  • Julian R. 07:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "McGlone, M.S., & Harding, J.L. (1998). Back (or forward?) to the future: The role of perspective in temporal language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1211–1223."
  2. "Alloway, T. P., Ramscar, M., & Corley, M. (2001). The roles of thought and experience in the understanding of spatio-temporal metaphors."
  • Georgina K. 07:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Autism and Pitch Processing: A Precursor for Savant Musical Ability?"
  2. "Determinants of Melody Span in a Developmentally Disabled Musical Savant"
  • Krystal S. 04:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Word Length and the Structure of Short-Term Memory"
  2. [LINK2 "TITLE2"]
  • Ania M. 06:24, 1 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation"
  2. "Neural Correlates of Mindfulness and Concentration in Buddhist Monks: an fMRI study"
  • Lizzy B:
  1. "Intonation and Communicative Intent in Mothers' Speech to Infants: Is the Melody the Message?"
  2. "Is Infant-Directed Speech Prosody a Result of the Vocal Expression of Emotion?"
  • Sneha S. 16:49, 1 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "SEE THE BALL,HIT THE BALL"
  2. "Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training"
  • Kevin H. 02:00, 2 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "A portable, autonomous, urban reconnaissance robot"
  2. "A small, cheap, and portable reconnaissance robot"
  • Sally W 05:44, 2 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Lying in everyday life"
  2. "An event-related fMRI study of self-paced alphabetically ordered writing of single letters"
  • Justin C 06:53, 2 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Attention and Task Difficulty: When Is Performance Facilitated?"
  2. "Allocation of Attention in the Visual Field"
  • Lee R 07:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Aggressive Behavior In Children's Dolls' House Play"
  2. "Relational Aggression, Gender, And Social Psychological Adjustment"
  • Vania B 11:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth"
  2. "How extending your middle finger affects your perception of others: Learned movements influence concept accessibility"
  • ANDERS L 07:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "Hearing Sounds, Understanding Actions: Action Representation in Mirror Neurons"
  2. "Meaningful auditory information enhances perception of visual biological motion"
  • Ben H 07:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC):
  1. "People thinking about thinking people: the role of the temporo parietal junction in" theory of mind""
  2. "Problems with the seeing= knowing rule"
  • Benj Dec 4, 2010. 2:21 PM PST:
  1. [4] "Emotional effects of startling background music during reading news reports"]
  2. [5] "Intense emotional responses to music"

Frequently Asked Questions

If a source was used for a target article from earlier in the term, can I still use it for the upcoming target article?

Yes. The same source may be fitting for multiple target article assignments and so they may be reused. The restriction is only on having the same source used by two different students for a target article due on the same day.

- Brett

I'm not sure what the target article assignment is asking me to do? What does X mean?

A good starting point is to do the readings for day the target article is due. The target article topics coincide with the readings for the due date, so this should be helpful. There are also two sample target articles one the main course page that may be helpful to look over as an example of how to do the target article assignments. Of course, if after doing the readings, you still find the topic confusing, feel free to contact the TAs for further clarification.

- Brett

Do I need to cite my sources for the essays? If so, what format should I use?

You don't need to reference any papers for the essays, but if you do gather information from some sort of source (e.g. from a book, website, journal, etc.), you should include it in a references section. We won't get picky about requiring proper MLA format, but make sure you include enough information for any sources you list such that we could find the relevant information from your reference. You can include references from either the course readings or other sources if you wish. Also, note that your references section does not count toward the 400 word limit of the essay.

That said, you may find that referencing other peoples ideas, research, etc. may strengthen your argument. I didn't use any sources in my essays for 303 last year, but a lot of people did (and so did the people who got 10/10 on the sample essays listed on the course page). It's up to you to decide.

- Brett

How can I improve my essays?

See the section "Essay Tips" in the wiki. Also, feel free to contact the TAs if you would like to go over any essays that have been marked for additional feedback and advice.

- Brett

How can I do better on the quizzes? I've done the readings, but I still have trouble with the quizzes!

The following are tips that Haven and I came up with for how we did well in the quizzes last term:

  1. Reading the essays once or just scanning the pages will not be enough to do well on the quizzes. You need to actively engage the material multiple times.
  2. Do the readings a few days in advance. As you’re reading, highlight or underline important points and circle key terms. Aim to underline no more than one-third of the essay. This forces you to read actively as you need to pay attention to determine what is most important in the reading.
  3. Now that you’ve underlined important points and circled key terms in advance, come to class early and review the parts you’ve underlined and circled. This will ensure the material is fresh in your mind.
  4. Remember that a lot of the terms from the readings have a common usage and a technical usage. They are not the same. You need to know the technical usage presented in the readings. You will not get marks for describing the common usage of the term. (For example, if the quiz asked something like “what is an argument” and you wrote something like “an argument is when two people disagree on something,” you are using the common usage of the term. A more appropriate response would be something like “an argument is a position that is stated and then backed up with evidence so as to persuade others to adopt the same position”)

- Brett

Essay Writing Tips

Include a Brief Introductory Paragraph

Although you are working with a word limit, it is always a good idea to start an essay with a quick, "This is what I will be discussing, and here's how I'm going to do it." For these essays, it will usually look something like three:

"The compositional hierarchy is a valid model for a variety of natural systems. It is a good model to use whenever appropriate, since it is easy to understand and talk about. Three areas of research that could benefit from modeling data this way are: (1) cellular biology, (2) nuclear physics, and (3) visual perception."

Note how in the above example the three main points of the paper are clearly identified. The following paragraphs will each take-up one of these points and argue for it fully.

Conclusions Can Be Ommitted

Conclusions are usually a good idea, but these essays are so short that they are not really necessary (and waste space).

Choose an Interpretation of the Topic, State it, and Stick with it

Often, your essay topics will be a bit vague. For essay 1, you might have wondered, "What the heck does useful mean?" You can frame the essay as you like, as long as your framing is clearly stated and consistently followed.

Define Important Terms

This is just as much for you as for the reader. If you are worried that definitions take up word count, do this: briefly define key words in the intro, write your paper with those definitions in mind, and then remove the definitions if you run out of room. That way, there will be consistency within your essay. Definitions aren't a requirement, but they are a good thing to have if you can fit them in without breaking the flow.

Define Technical Terms

These essays should be readable by most Cogs students. Don't isolate your reader by using a technical term and assuming she'll know what it means. If you are worried about breaking the flow, use a footnote.

Don't Define Terms that are Used in their Common Usage

Although it is important to define terms, stick to defining the terms that are likely to cause confusion to your reader. Defining terms that are used in their common usage wastes space and bores the reader. For example, if the topic is "kittens are cute," you do not need to write something like "I define 'kittens' for the purpose of my essay as 'domesticated felines under the age of 2 years' and I define 'cute' as meaning 'of a certain aesthetic that is found to be endearing and heart-warming to human beings.'"

Stick to defining terms only in cases where you are using terms outside of their common usage or are making a sharper distinction between two terms than is common.

State the Paragraph's Point at it's Beginning

Each of the paragraphs following your introductory paragraph, should each be making a point that supports your thesis. State the point your paragraph is making right at the beginning of the paragraph and then use the rest of the paragraph to provide evidence, arguments, etc., that support this point.

When you do the opposite of this, and make your point at the end of your paragraph, it creates confusion for the reader as they do not know where the argument is going, and by the time they do (at the end of the paragraph) they will need to go back and reread the paragraph to understand how the evidence you offered supports the point you were making. In general, this can confuse and/or frustrate the reader.

Use as Few Words as Possible

For example, don't say, "One example of a research area that I could think of in which compositional hierarchies could prove useful is cell biology due to the fact that cells are actually compositional hierarchies." Rather, say something like "Cells are compositional hierarchies, so it is natural and useful to model them as such."

Research and Graduate School Resources

For more information on research at UBC, graduate school, and writing and critical thinking skills visit the COGS 303 Wiki Resources page.

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