To: students Psych 217 2009s
From: George Sperling
Re: Course update, HW, classroom presentations

The web page for Psych 217 is
  http://aris.ss.uci.edu/HIPLab/Vision_Class_Psych217/index.html
     Password info for Course Materials was provided in class.

The web page has recently been updated.  It contains materials
similar to the web page for "Psych 131A=BioSci 182: Vision".
As this is a new version of the web page, please email me ASAP
if you run into a problem.

There are two HW assignments (Visual Angles, Photometry) that
should be turned in at or before the beginning of Psych 217 on
April 9.
  http://www.socsci.uci.edu/HIPLab/ -> Psychology 217 (4) ->
      Course Materials -> Homework 1. Visual angles; mapping blind spots
      Course Materials -> Homework 2. Photometry

In addition to reading a textbook of your choice, you should
also read two articles especially created for the initial
lectures and posted under "Supplementary Readings"

    Type 1 and Type 2 Experiments (Sperling)

    Optics and Visual Acuity (Yellott)

  You should also start memorizing the following charts:
    Parts of the Eye
    Neurons of the Retina
    Visual Processing Pathways

To confirm that you are keeping up with the material, consult
the Notes for each lecture and make sure that you understand
each of the listed topics and concepts.  Use materials on the
class web page, textbooks, other students, and google--whatever
is necessary.  You can also look at the many old examinations on
the web page to see the questions that typically are asked about
lecture topics.

During the class meetings 3-10, each student will be required
make one brief class presentation of an assigned article.  This 
is intended to be 12 min long (excluding interruptions) with a
3 minute subsequent question period.  This form of oral presentation
(along with posters) has become essentially a universal standard for
oral communication of scientific progress at professional meetings.
In Psych 217, the presenter is expected to make a powerpoint (or
equivalent) display to accompany the presentation, and to email the
presentation file to      at least one hour
before class.  The presenter's name and the most important author's
name(s) should be incorporated into the name of the presentation file
as in this example: Smith_Hubel+Wiesel.ppt   Please avoid spaces
in file names, use underscores instead; this avoids problems for
some programs in some operating systems.

In the classroom presentation (as at a professional meeting)
the aim is NOT to describe everything in the article but rather
to FOCUS on the most important points and to make sure these
are understood.  When describing an experiment or a procedure,
it is extremely useful to demonstrate sample trials or sample
procedures very early in the presentation so that the audience
has a better idea of what the subjects, human or animal, faced.
At the end of the day, attendees at professional meetings may
have heard one or two dozen presentations.  Your presentation
will have been successful if, at the end of the day, a listener
can remember enough of your presentation to fill more than a
single sentence.  The class presentation is like performing in
a master class in performance arts: The master (in this case
the professor) and the attending students offer positive
suggestions and encouragement to the performers.

A list of articles and presenters will be forthcoming.  Articles
are available on
      https://webfiles.uci.edu  -> sperling -> Vision_pdfs