LITERATURE REVIEW IS ON THE FOLLOWING RESEARCH QUESTION
Why do we experience a loss of memory during / after trauma?
For this choice you will complete a thorough literature review on a topic of your choosing. Your topic can be on anything related to the broad field of Cognitive Psychology. You will need to be as specific as possible so that the paper is not overwhelming. All topics should be approved
The goal is to select a topic that interests you and then to conduct library and online research to learn as much about the topic as possible. You will then communicate your findings back to me through your written literature review. As should be intuitive, a literature review should attempt to synthesize all published research related to a given topic (i.e., it reviews the literature). To wit, literature reviews most often culminate with a tentative research proposal for a new study to be conducted on the topic. As such, it is best to begin your research with a specific question about human behavior that might be answered through a new study. For example, how do humans use memory for prior experiences when interpreting complex visual stimuli (i.e., how does our past help us figure out what we are looking at now?). Absolutely no quotations are allowed! (Minimum of 10 research articles must be used)
Completing this assignment will require you to use numerous research journals (both empirical and review) and possibly your textbook. Utmost care should be taken to avoid plagiarism (i.e., if it was not your original insight or language, cite the original). That being said, this paper is to be written by you, the student, and not by the authors of your sources
There is no formal requirement for sections to this paper. That is, you can structure the paper similar to a long introduction section from an empirical research article. If you choose to implement section headers, please be careful to do so only when necessary and useful and do so according to APA style.
When searching for a topic it may help to browse the contents of the textbook and ask yourself what questions you might have about the various topics we will cover in the class. Here are some examples to help get you started:
How does our attention system work to allow us to multi‐task in a modern environment, such as driving a car while talking on a cell phone? How did this system evolve?
What do people with synesthesia demonstrate about the way we perceive stimuli around us as recognizable patterns?
Do different parts of our brains perceive different aspects of vision (e.g., color vs. motion)?
Are categories of naturally occurring phenomenon (e.g., colors) the same across all cultures?
What are the components of working memory?
How does learning two languages as a child effect your scores on standardized tests?
Be creative and do not just use the examples that I provided. Think about what interests you most as that will make this the best paper for you to write and for me to read. Come up with several possible questions that interest you and I will help to guide you in the best direction in terms of available research and depth of topic.
