PSYCH 121
Laboratory in Cognitive Psychology
Description: Laboratory, four hours. Requisites: courses 10, 100A, 100B, 120A or 120B. Designed for Psychology and Cognitive Science majors. Laboratory experience with methods and phenomena from research on human perception, memory, and cognition. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - Dr. Holyoak is a sweet and caring professor. His presence was pleasant in lab and he was always willing to help with our papers/projects. I think what truly matters in this class though is the TA. We had a wonderful TA this quarter - shout out to you Maureen, you rock! - and I'm not sure if she TAs every time but that definitely matters. You have 2 written assignments and one big group project where you conduct a study, collect and analyze data and write a long paper with your group. It sounds intimidating but Dr. Holyoak and his TA are there to help you the entire time and they were even willing to revise and give feedback multiple times before the final submission. Great lab!
Winter 2020 - Dr. Holyoak is a sweet and caring professor. His presence was pleasant in lab and he was always willing to help with our papers/projects. I think what truly matters in this class though is the TA. We had a wonderful TA this quarter - shout out to you Maureen, you rock! - and I'm not sure if she TAs every time but that definitely matters. You have 2 written assignments and one big group project where you conduct a study, collect and analyze data and write a long paper with your group. It sounds intimidating but Dr. Holyoak and his TA are there to help you the entire time and they were even willing to revise and give feedback multiple times before the final submission. Great lab!
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - I was dreading this class at first but Prof. Liu was super helpful and understanding with any questions that came up. PsychoPy is a super easy platform to use and the team will walk you through it. She and my TA at the time, Bryce, were pretty lenient graders to me since I definitely turned in some projects at the last minute and got decently high marks. They also helped a lot with my group's coding project. With the group project, make sure your whole team is on the same page about what's going on. The papers do seem daunting but definitely start early! Would recommend to anyone who is intimidated by coding or labwork.
Spring 2025 - I was dreading this class at first but Prof. Liu was super helpful and understanding with any questions that came up. PsychoPy is a super easy platform to use and the team will walk you through it. She and my TA at the time, Bryce, were pretty lenient graders to me since I definitely turned in some projects at the last minute and got decently high marks. They also helped a lot with my group's coding project. With the group project, make sure your whole team is on the same page about what's going on. The papers do seem daunting but definitely start early! Would recommend to anyone who is intimidated by coding or labwork.
Most Helpful Review
Class was easy, but make sure you look over your final papers for little details and mistakes. It's not as hard as 100B and not as nitpicky, but TAs can grade hard for you not knowing basic APA format. Overall it's a nicer version of 100B since you go slower - not sure why 100B wasn't modeled like this to begin with!
Class was easy, but make sure you look over your final papers for little details and mistakes. It's not as hard as 100B and not as nitpicky, but TAs can grade hard for you not knowing basic APA format. Overall it's a nicer version of 100B since you go slower - not sure why 100B wasn't modeled like this to begin with!
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Professor Mcauliffe was honestly a great professor! He not only made lectures really fun to watch and listen to, but also made the material pretty easy to understand! He also really cares about his students. I had a personal situation which I went to his office hours for, and he really helped me out and took the time to actually make sure I was okay, rather than just focusing on how it would affect schoolwork (unlike a lot of profs here). The class consisted of a Results assignment (I think it was worth like 7% of our grade or something like that) online(super easy), 5 quizzes (abt 4 questions each) in-person based on the readings you do worth 10% total (these were a bit harder as they asked very specific things, so make sure to actually read lol), and the main thing you will do in the class is work on a group project that has something to do with the readings - you choose your own topic and everything, and he gives class time to work on it for majority of the quarter to consult with him and the TA about things. Attendance is not required except for when you present the projects. He records/posts lectures and his slides on his class website too (he doesn’t use BruinLearn, he uses his own website, and posts all grades to MyUCLA). My TA was Bailey, best TA I’ve ever had too! The professor can be a bit unresponsive to emails so she REALLY helped everyone out there. Overall SUPER doable class, really light workload, and a great professor. I learned a lot and was able to take part of a project that I could add to my resume, but I also had a great group, so it def depends who you’re working with! Def recommend taking this class if you have a lab, pretty easy A!
Fall 2024 - Professor Mcauliffe was honestly a great professor! He not only made lectures really fun to watch and listen to, but also made the material pretty easy to understand! He also really cares about his students. I had a personal situation which I went to his office hours for, and he really helped me out and took the time to actually make sure I was okay, rather than just focusing on how it would affect schoolwork (unlike a lot of profs here). The class consisted of a Results assignment (I think it was worth like 7% of our grade or something like that) online(super easy), 5 quizzes (abt 4 questions each) in-person based on the readings you do worth 10% total (these were a bit harder as they asked very specific things, so make sure to actually read lol), and the main thing you will do in the class is work on a group project that has something to do with the readings - you choose your own topic and everything, and he gives class time to work on it for majority of the quarter to consult with him and the TA about things. Attendance is not required except for when you present the projects. He records/posts lectures and his slides on his class website too (he doesn’t use BruinLearn, he uses his own website, and posts all grades to MyUCLA). My TA was Bailey, best TA I’ve ever had too! The professor can be a bit unresponsive to emails so she REALLY helped everyone out there. Overall SUPER doable class, really light workload, and a great professor. I learned a lot and was able to take part of a project that I could add to my resume, but I also had a great group, so it def depends who you’re working with! Def recommend taking this class if you have a lab, pretty easy A!
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