This was one of my favourite courses in undergrad. As the title of the course indicates, it's about sensory processes, in particular vision (colour, depth, binding) and hearing.

Prof: Ullal: He is one of my favourite profs at Mcmaster. He's always willing to answer any...

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Originally Posted by R633

What is the required text for this course?

http://titles.mcmaster.ca/text/secti...hcourse=2 E03

There you go.

Don't buy the text.

Hey can someone please compare the work load between psych 2E03 and 2TT3? (Including the time to study?) I was just wondering because I am having trouble in deciding between the two and wanted the course that has a light workload. Thanks a lot.

A textbook required for PSYCH 2E03 (Sensory Processes)

OR is it a waste of money?

he says

textbook 10% of midterm
Notes 90%

I'd buy the textbook if you want a 12.

do not buy a textbook... i completely disagree with the previous post... with regards to the 12, his tests are based 100% on the lectures, so why can you not get a 12 without the textbook? even if you're the kind of person who likes to read along with the lectures, still do not buy it... it's 100% useless, his lectures have almost nothing to do with it - maybe 10% overlap at best... biggest waste of money in my uni career

note: i took this last year - this is assuming he didn't change the course and now explicitly tests the textbook... but if it's still optional... useless... even he will say

I agree with the previous post. I took this class in my 2nd year and I bought the textbook and didn't end up using it at all. All of his test questions are directly out of his lecture slides.
Also, make sure you attend all classes because even the smallest details he mentions in class can be and are usually tested.

I've heard the tests and exam for this course are very hard and unfair. Is it kind of impossible to get a 12 in this course? Any advice on how to do well in this course?

lol, it's definitely 12able.

I'm really surprised by the praise Dr. Ullal is getting.. I guess everyone has their own taste in teaching styles.

I personally despised the way he taught his lectures; there seemed to be no actual flow in his material, especially since he said "we'll talk about that later" regarding 10 different things in each lecture, when all I could think was it would make a lot more sense if he just said it then (i took 2H03 and 2F03 beforehand, hence i anticipated a lot of his material and found that he was extremely poor at describing things in a logical manner). I and everyone I took that course with last year (term 2) hated his teaching style (we all agreed that he seems like an extremely nice guy... the girls describe him as the cutest man ever lol).

Either way.. it is an easy course if you can follow his thought process. I didn't use the textbook more than a few times (so I recommend using course reserves rather than buying it), although I do remember he did in fact follow through with his 90% lecture + 10% textbook rule for his tests. He asks trivial questions, and his wording is actually very poor in his questions too, which I found unacceptable.

Luckily my previous knowledge from 2H03 and 2F03 carried through and gave me a good mark in this course.

i agree 100% with the prevoius post from Ali11.
This course--especially because it is a night course-- drives me up the wall. The way he teaches the material leaves me and others around me very puzzled. This can be very complex stuff for people who have never learned it before and he just talks about things as if we're an audience of graduate students in sensory processes who know exactly what he's talking about.
I find myself spending countless hours studying for midterms because i am basically re-teaching myself the whole course, and it doesn't even really pay off because the multiple choice in the midterm is pretty tricky.
Yes, Ullal is a very nice, "cute", funny man. However, I wish i had never taken this as an elective.. huge regret.. bringing down my average.. and everything that the previous post said is exactly the way it is.

I'm not sure why people said that the textbook is not needed maybe it was different before, but I'm taking the course right now and you definitely need the textbook. I remember quite a few questions on the midterm that were based only on the textbook and I remember having friends who did not read the textbook being completely confused by these questions. He does test extremely trivial material especially in written answers and his m/c are pretty tricky which makes it quite hard to determine what to study. There's only one assignment this time and it's to write a review paper on a primary literature he provided. I'm doing that right now so I don't know how they're going to mark it and I'm actually kinda confused as to what they want from us so I hope I don't completely screw this up. I can't say this is a completely bad course but there are definite aspects of it that I don't like at all but if you put work into it you can get a good mark even though I know I've said like all negative things about the course.

I loved this course. Even though this course is not an easy elective, the material is really interesting.
You don’t need the textbook THAT much, but I found the textbook explanations helped a lot since his powerpoints are sparse on text/elaborations.
Taking good notes is important for this class.
He says most of the stuff and we’re expected to write it down (the explanations/elaborations aren’t given in the notes).
I liked his teaching style and his powerpoints like how every couple slides he would remind us what topics we have covered, and now we’re moving on to “blahblah” topic. I liked his intro (this is the game plan for today) and summary slides.

Even though I didn’t do well on the tests, I thought they were fair.
I liked his MC questions because they were good questions. Many times I would be thinking, what is the answer to this question?, not because I wanted to get it right (well that too) but because it was a good question to ask and was something we should have asked ourselves while studying.
He said 10% of the textbook material was testable but it was more like 5%. There is a lot of overlap between his notes and the textbook. I would highly recommend doing the reading before class and then rereading it after class to see which parts connected with the lecture. Even though I didn’t do this (procrastination) it helped a lot the few times I did. The textbook was easy to follow along (and even kinda fun to read sometimes).

I found the short answers harder than the MC. If you don’t know enough about a certain topic to formulate an answer, you’re screwed.

The assignment was doable. He gave us a 5 page article on the olfactory system. We had to write a 2 page summary (double spaced). Outside references were not necessary.

How hard is this course? Compared to other courses... easier and LESS information dense than cell bio. It was easy in the sense there were no tutorials/presentations/labs. Only one assignment and 2 midterms. If I had to rank my courses for this semester in terms of hardness:
Organic chem>Cell Bio>Stats>Ecology>Psy ch


How to study for this course? Take notes on a laptop because you won't have enough room to write down stuff if you print 6 slides/page. Don't print the notes because its like 70-110slides/class (evening class). If you print it out, the font is too small anyways. Save ink and bring a laptop. Took me till the halfway into the semester to figure this out. Downside is there is only 4 laptops outlets in the whole room (TSHB128) so you need at least 2hours of battery life. We didn't go all the way till 10pm. Stopped at 9-9:20. The student ppt is different from the one he uses during class. There are many slides present in his notes but not ours (but they're only pictures). When studying, flip through the slides again and again until its stuck in your mind. I think studying with a group helped the most!

Topics Covered
Intro: déjà vu, jamais vu, hemineglect, prosopagnosia, multimodal binding, pseudoneglect, simultanagnosia, absolute thresholds, discriminative threshold, signal detection theory, capgras delusion, strabismus

Vision: eye anatomy, astigmatism, myopia, hyperopia, cataract, glaucoma, aqueous humor circulation, accommodation, ciliary muscle, suspensory ligaments, cycloplegia, retinal detachment, rods, cones, cis/trans-retinal, rhodopsin, Purkinje shift, right anopia, bitemporal hemianopia, homonymous hemianopia, melatonin, melaopsin, CO blobs, William's syndrome, deuteranopia

Sound: ear anatomy, tip links, tests for hearing, theories for hearing, sound localization, ITD, ILD, spectral cues
Touch: Merkel, Meissner, Ruffini, Pacininan receptors, dorsal column, lateral spinothalamic tract

Overall I would highly recommend this course. If sensory processes interests you and you’re okay with a medium-difficulty level course, then go for it!

I took this course as an elective and regretted it, least favorite course ever.
Ullal's teaching style and organization were not my thing.