PSYC3501 examines the mental processes underlying everything from remembering a phone number to solving a complex problem, using decades of well-replicated experimental research on how the mind actually works.
Attention and memory systems
PSYC3501 covers models of memory — sensory memory, short-term/working memory, and long-term memory — and the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval, along with attention research explaining why humans have limited capacity to process simultaneous information, and the well-documented reconstructive (not video-like) nature of memory.
Perception and reasoning
The course covers perceptual processes — how sensory information is organized and interpreted — and reasoning and decision-making research, including well-documented cognitive biases and heuristics (mental shortcuts) that systematically shape judgment, sometimes leading to predictable errors.
Key topics in PSYC3501
- Memory models: sensory, short-term/working, and long-term memory
- Encoding, storage, and retrieval processes
- Attention: selective attention and the limits of divided attention
- The reconstructive nature of memory and memory distortion
- Perceptual organization and interpretation of sensory information
- Cognitive biases and heuristics in reasoning and decision-making
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Worked example: the availability heuristic in action
- Heuristic: The availability heuristic — judging the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples come to mind
- Real-world example: After extensive news coverage of a plane crash, people often overestimate the actual risk of flying compared to statistically far more common risks like car accidents
- Why it happens: Vivid, emotionally salient, heavily-covered events are more mentally "available" than statistically common but less dramatic risks
- Lesson: This is a predictable, systematic reasoning bias — not a personal failure of logic — that affects even experts when they aren't deliberately correcting for it
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Frequently asked questions
Research consistently shows that memory doesn't work like a video camera passively recording and later replaying an exact record of events — instead, each time a memory is recalled, it is actively reconstructed from stored fragments, and this reconstruction process can be influenced and altered by information encountered after the original event, by the wording of questions asked during recall, and by a person's expectations and beliefs, all without the person being aware any distortion has occurred. PSYC3501 teaches this reconstructive model because it has significant real-world implications — it explains why eyewitness testimony can be genuinely unreliable despite sincere confidence, why leading questions can implant false details into a memory, and why two people can have sincerely different memories of the same shared event, none of which would make sense if memory functioned as a fixed, unchanging recording of past events.
A cognitive heuristic is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb that allows for quick, generally efficient judgments and decisions without the cognitive effort required for exhaustive, fully rational analysis of every available piece of information — the availability heuristic (judging likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind) and the representativeness heuristic (judging likelihood based on how similar something is to a prototype) are classic examples. PSYC3501 teaches that humans rely on heuristics because full, exhaustive rational analysis of every decision would be far too cognitively demanding and slow for the countless judgments people make daily — heuristics generally produce reasonably good, fast judgments most of the time, which is precisely why they persist despite occasionally producing predictable, systematic errors in specific situations where the heuristic's underlying assumption doesn't hold (like overestimating plane crash risk due to vivid media coverage) — understanding when and why these predictable errors occur is valuable both for recognizing one's own susceptibility to them and for designing decisions, policies, or communications that account for how people actually reason, rather than how a purely rational actor theoretically would.