Intro to Models of Human Behavior
Fall 1994; Chizuko Izawa
Introduction to mathematical models for such dimensions of mind as
learning, memory, expectation, preference, choice, judgment,
perception, and problem solving.
This had to have been one of the most frightening and traumatic
experiences of my life. There were only 5 people in the class: 3 senior
psych majors, one psych grad, and little ol' me. It was all about
Markov chains and drawing trees and probability and who knows what.
Selected Topics from my Shoddy Notes
- Cognitive psychology
- Mathematical psychology and models
- Vectors and matrices
- Stochastic matrices (Markov chains)
- Markov trees
- Prediction and probability
- Paired-associate learning
- Learning and retention
Projects and Papers
Research Proposal. Just what it sounds like. We were
required to invent an original experiment, and then present our proposals.
I don't know where some of the other people in the class got their
experiments from, but they had nothing to do with anything we'd
learned in the class as far as I could tell. I developed an experiment
based on the sort of stuff we'd been learning. That's probably one
reason why I got the only "A" in the class.
Texts
Izawa, C. (ed.) 1989. Current Issues in Cognitive Processes: the
Tulane Flowerree Symposium on Cognition.
Izawa, C. 1993. Cognitive Psychology Applied.
Incidentally, I still resent the fact that I wasn't able to sell
these stinking books back and consequently still have them. I may
yet get around to burning them, like I always intened to.
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