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Natural Sciences Tripos, Part II, Psychology

The regulation and the supplementary regulation for the subject Psychology in Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos have been amended as set out below. The purpose of these amendments is (a) to focus one paper (Paper 1) on essential methodological and statistical knowledge and skills, together with general knowledge of the whole subject, and (b) as a consequence of this change in the character of Paper 1, to restrict the operation of the provision whereby, if a candidate offers an optional dissertation, his or her weakest paper is discounted in favour of the dissertation; in future this provision will be restricted to Papers 2-4.

The regulations for the Natural Sciences Tripos (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 362) have been amended, with effect from 1 October 1999, as follows:

Regulation 32.

By amending sub-paragraph (a) of the paragraph relating to Psychology so as to read:

(a) Each candidate shall offer four written papers, Papers 1-4, of three hours each, provided that a candidate may submit, in addition to those papers, an original dissertation of not more than 8,000 words (excluding appendices, footnotes, and bibliography), approval for the title of which shall be obtained by the candidate from the Senior Examiner not later than the division of the Lent Term next preceding the examination. A candidate offering a dissertation shall send two copies to the Senior Examiner so as to arrive not later than the first Saturday of the Full Easter Term in which the examination is to be held; the Examiners shall have power, if they consider that a dissertation is not sufficiently legible, to require that it be resubmitted in typescript. If a candidate offers four papers and a dissertation, the Examiners shall assess his or her performance on (i) Paper 1 and (ii) three out of the four components comprising the dissertation and Papers 2-4, discounting the one component out of the four in which they judge the candidate's work to be least good.

The supplementary regulations for Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 378) have also been amended, with effect from the same date, as follows:

Psychology

By amending the detail so as to read:

Paper 1 will be divided into three sections (a)-(c). Section (a) will contain questions on statistics. Section (b) will contain questions on methodology and experimental design. Section (c) will examine candidates' capacity to relate information from different branches of the subject, and may also include questions on the history and philosophy of psychology. Papers 2-4 will each be divided into four sections (a)-(d), which will contain questions on the following specialized fields of psychological inquiry: Section (a) sensory processes, psychophysics, perception, and human performance and action; Section (b) human learning and memory, language, thought, and intelligence; Section (c) comparative psychology of learning and cognition, brain mechanisms of cognition, memory and motivation, and neuropsychology; Section (d) personality, developmental and abnormal psychology.


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Cambridge University Reporter, 3 March 1999
Copyright © 1999 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.