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Hc1 2007--2008: Assessed Assignment 1
Communicating, Reasoning and Persuading

Issued: Thursday 24 January, Deadline: 4pm Thursday 7 February

Please attempt all three tasks. This exercise should take you 2 hours, after having familiarised yourself with the material presented in the lectures and tutorials. You should expect to write about 500 words per task.

The student guide gives details of submission procedure and late penalties. Only one copy of your work is required, but be sure to protect yourself against accidents on our part by keeping a copy for yourself.

This assignment will contribute 8% to your overall mark on the course.

Tasks

1. Take some familiar communication situation and describe its phatic and ideational aspects. What are the difficulties that you encounter in fitting these concepts to your example?
2. Conduct Wason's experiment on a friend. Record the results of this experiment. Summarise the possible explanations for the behaviour you observed in this experiment.
3. Find one anecdotal current news story; what are they trying to persuade you of? What base rate information do you need to assesss the claims?

Assessments should be submitted to the Informatics Teaching Office (ITO) in Appleton Tower, Room 4.02, Level 4. You must submit a single copy of each assignment---please make sure you staple the pages together. Please make sure that the assignments are clearly marked with your name, matric number, your course, your tutorial group, and name of assignment. Please note the policy on late assignments.

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