Test Yourself: Cognitive Psychology

Learning through assessment

I believe that learning through assessment is a key concept that can facilitate learning, understanding and competence in fundamental knowledge within the field of cognitive psychology. I will be using this text as a supplement to motivate learner interest in post lecture seminars and workshops.

The chapters are really well set out (i.e., logical subsections and clear format) and the brief chapter summaries are helpful. The questions provide useful MCQ exam practice. The section on scoring methods is also very helpful.

Book not good enough

Very useful.

I liked the good range of questions set within the book and I feel the students will be able to understand cognitive psychology a little better after reading this book. It is a good transition from A-level to degree.

The content does not reflect the course content sufficiently.

I like the idea gerenally, and the questions seem suitable. However, in my course the reading is more advanced and the topics are not covered well enough by the questions.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t find the test yourself books particularly suitable for my students or our style of assessment. The text books I have looked at have been great and I have sent back evaluation forms on these. However, I teach students on speech pathology & therapy programmes and the assessment of Psychology on these programmes tends to involve applying Psychology to Speech & Language Therapy; a Child Study based in Primary school, application of a psychology model to case vignettes or actual cases students are seeing in clinical practice. I should have responded to this effect. The text books; Developmental and Research methods have been added to my reference list, but I won’t be doing this with the test yourself books.

Good tips for different types of questions. Good range of MCQ essay questions and foundation/advanced level questions. A recommended text book or books would be appropriate to direct stude4nt to relevant text. These “learning through assessment” books are well-structured and contain an impressive database of relevant test questions at an appropriate level. The individual books would be suitable for undergraduates and some postgraduates in psychology. The subjects covered are a good match for the range of topics being taught in psychology departments today; all major research areas are well covered. \
The main strength of the series are the multiple choice questions, which have been well researched and follow good practice guidelines for the construction of this type of question. The “Succeeding at MCQs” tips at the beginning of the books are a strength, as are the “extended” MCQ questions. Less of a strength are the very short chapter introductions, which could be expanded to give the student a more accurate idea of what is being tested. Some key references might be appropriate here also. The suggested sample essay questions at the end of each chapter are useful as examples. It is likely however that each higher education institution teaching these subjects will take a different approach and it would be appropriate to emphasise this diversity of approaches in the introduction to the essay questions. The guidelines on “Writing an Essay: a Format for Success” is useful but could be expanded (especially in light of the almost blank second page of this section). More detail should be given on essay structure and referencing, and a selection of carefully selected websites on essay writing would also be helpful. Similarly, the dangers of plagiarism in student essays is very important and is not mentioned.\
Overall this series is impressive and students should be attracted. (It is very rare for universities to include MCQs in release of past papers to students, and the Test Yourself series may fill this gap.)\
I would recommend the individual texts to individual students with an interest in the individual subjects, rather than as a core text books for any particular course

Good concept but there is too little overlap with the material covered in my lectures.