PSY 200 Cognitive Psychology Writing Assignment

Overview:

The objective of the writing assignment is to provide an opportunity for you to think actively and independently about cognitive research. For this assignment, you will choose one of three pre-approved research articles: Berman et al. 2008, Chan et al., 2009, and Lindsay et al., 2004. These are posted on Blackboard. Your task is to carefully read the article, summarize the article, and provide a critique of it. Then, you will find a follow-up article, and then briefly summarize and critique it.

Format:

Your summary and critique should be no longer than 6 pages of double-spaced text. Font should be Arial, 12-point. Please note that the page limit does not include any title page or reference page. As mentioned in class, it is not about quantity of pages – it is the quality that you should focus on. 

o Please take this draft option seriously. That is, you should not submit a draft simply for the sake of doing so. Submitting only a partially complete paper will not allow us to give you good feedback. Grading. This paper is worth 20% of your final grade. In addition to the sections outlined below, please be sure to review the rubric in detail before submitting this assignment. The rubric will be posted on Blackboard. Part 1 (3-4 pages) • Research Question: What is the exact question asked in the paper? Why is this interesting?

• Introduction & Methodology Sections: What is the purpose of the experiment and how did the authors study it? That is, what is compared to what, and exactly how and why does any difference between these conditions (or lack thereof) answer the question posed. Don’t focus on the trivial experimental details. Rather, emphasize the main idea behind the paper (e.g. the task the subjects performed is likely to be important, the exact nature of the stimuli likely is not).

• Results: What were the main findings? How did they answer the question posed? • Implications: What can you conclude from the results – what are the broader implications of what the authors found? • Critique: What do you think about this paper? Does the design make sense or do you see flaws and if so what are they? If you don’t see any flaws, could you have answered the question with a different design? What further experiments would you want to try next, based on the results reported in this paper? o Please note that a “critique” is a detailed analysis and assessment. The critique does not need to be negative. I am interested in developing your scientific minds: think about what should come next in the line of research.