McAuliffe doesn't deserve all the bad reviews he gets. He's a very funny and engaging professor, and everything he talks about in his lectures is very interesting. If you just pay attention and review his lectures, you'll get a good grade. I studied for 2 hours before each test and got an A in the class.

The mean for the first midterm was around a 60% and the mean for the second midterm was around 70%. The class is curved in your favor so if you're above the mean you're fine.
The final study guide is composed of study guide 1 and 2 and then he has a study guide for the material covered after that. I recommend going to his office hours and asking him every question on the study guide because the grading is hard and he is looking for specific answers to arbitrary questions.
The subject matter is not hard but he wants you to memorize specific things that he glosses over in lecture. For example on a slide it says "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" and he wants you to know that this is the only sentence that makes sense in the English language using the same word 4-5 times. If you don't go to class you won't know what he's talking about. Midterms have questions like "in class we talked about..." or give me examples that I said in class.
The book was around 90 dollars to buy and about 40 dolalrs to rent which is similar to other psychology textbooks.
In 2 months I'll know nothing about what I learned except the youtube videos he played to explain topics.
Group project was just a time waster. The topic was anything you wanted it to be which very vague grading guidelines.

I wish I had looked on here before I took Psych 85 with Mcauliffe. I walked out of nearly every lecture feeling like I learned nothing besides some ridiculous story about his personal life that wasn't useful at all for the exams. The lectures were disorganized and barely grazed the surface of concepts, yet on the exams we were expected to know the material in depth. He would start explaining things and then never finish or jump between ideas so quickly that it was hard to even keep up with note taking. There might as well not have been any slides because they were so unhelpful I ended up looking up all the definitions on Google anyways. The most annoying thing was that he was never CLEAR with how he explained concepts and never clarified what we should be trying to understand. He would just ramble on and on and ideas would get muddled together so in the end I had no idea what he was trying to say. The study guide was just a huge list of every idea he had touched on but provided no practice questions. The exams were hard and graded hard and the only way I passed the class was because the majority of the class did just as badly as I did. I'm honestly disappointed because I was very excited about the subject but I felt no connection with his teaching style. I'm a 3rd year and he has been my worst teacher at UCLA.

I think that the class was extremely fair. Mcauliffe is definitely is not the best at having informative powerpoints to study from. Some of the slides are just pictures that you would have no clue what they are referring to unless you were in class. The key to the class is to go and take notes because it is not podcasted. He gives study guides for the midterms and final which are VERY helpful if you understand the questions that you answer. The TA review sessions were also very helpful in trying to figure out what material would be relevant. All in all I never really thought there were any curveballs on any of the exams. Just go to class and review sessions, do the study guides and you will be fine.

Although I have a deep interest for this subject, I did not enjoy this course because of the instructor. Professor McAuliffe is not an ineffective teacher, and he is able and willing to teach the bare minimum of the course; he is also approachable and seems concerned about our learning and enjoyment of the class. However, he never delves deeply into the material nor communicates the underlying concepts behind the material. That may be appropriate as this was an introductory course, but his lectures and lecture slides are brief, superficial, and lacking of continuity, and often peppered with numerous diversions and personal anecdotes that waste time. I often felt like I was expected to memorize arbitrary facts whose basis was never touched upon. His class demonstrations were often unorganized and took more time than they should. The exams were fair, but I relied heavily on the TA's midterm reviews more than material from class. The readings were much denser and at a higher level than anything else we learned, and they were not covered in detail. Also, the video assignment was ridiculous - I think we should have been given more direction rather than be expected to conjure an inspired and creative piece out of an uninspiring course.

Basically, if you're going to take this class you're either a cognitive science or a linguistics or a psychobio major. Here's my advice about taking introduction to cognitive science: The subject itself is really hard! Take it that you're going to absorb an overview of all kinds of cognitive science relevant topics, pick out the important aspect of each topic and know it well enough to explain in a few words what each topic is on an exam. It doesn't matter who's teaching Psych 85, you're going to have to do some grad level studying. Some folks suggests taking upper div cog sci courses before attempting this lower div course, which is a luxury for sophomores in the pre-major. Study hard and good luck.

Apparently, this prof doesn't usually teach this class, but you could have fooled me. Powerpoints, constant encouragement, and a so-bad-its-good sense of humor, McAullife presented the material in a an easy to understand and well-thought out way. A great class, an a great prof.

Professor McAuliffe ended up being not what I expected. He showed up late to every class, and had problems setting up the powerpoint stuff every time. He'd then kinda skim through the slides as if he'd never seen them before, and just share whatever popped into his head; the material for this class is really abstract to begin with, so his style made it that much harder to understand. It seems like he had difficulty "dumbing down" the material for us, since psych 85 isn't supposed to be an advanced class...maybe that was the problem. But regardless, if you're the kind of person who needs clear communication of course concepts by the professor, he's probably not the right guy for you. You won't fall asleep in his class, because he's entertaining and does funny impersonations and stuff, but unless you're the kind of person who likes to do four units of work just for fun without any payoff, I'd recommend another teacher. And ditto to the review below; the stuff he pulled finals week really sucked.

Beware the positive reviews of this instructor! Apparently the people who wrote them are very easily bought off, just as he tried to do to us on evaluation day by singing us a cheezy song and handing out Starbursts. Yes, its always cool to have an unconventional teacher but when you reach the end of a quarter and find yourself asking "what did I really learn," something is wrong. An instructor that doesn't take his position and responsibilties seriously should not be teaching alongside the many effective professores at UCLA. Not only was he about 10 minutes late almost every single day, he was so unprepared that it took him another 10 minutes just to set up. He also decided to fly to a wedding the weekend before our finals, leaving us with no office hours and no graded mid-terms to review. This does not show a concern for student learning. The lectures, though interesting, were very unstructured and the exams were beyond prediction. The assigned texts in this course were too overly technical and scientific for an introductory course that is simply supposed to survey the field. The subject matter is fascinating and so I recommend this class, but if you have another choice in instructor, take it.

One of the most entertaining professors I've ever had. The lectures were so interesting that I didn't miss a single one - a rare feat for someone with my attendance record. The material can be kind of abstract, but I found that it was not hard to grasp, provided I had listened in lecture and done the reading. The tests can be kind of tricky, but if you prepare for them and really know the material, they were not difficult at all - I kept up with the reading and didn't have to deal with any last-minute cramming and ended up with a solid A.