Purpose: We want to turn to empirical research (rather than intuition or pseudoscience) to answer important questions. The goal of this assignment is to become familiar with original research articles and think about ways to operationalize variables.
Task: Your task is to provide a thoughtful analysis of an original research article. If you are new to reading scientific articles, thisLinks to an external site. Links to an external site.is a helpful guide.
**Note: If you are using your 48-hour extension (or 1 24-hour extension) please note this in the comments box when you submit your paper. OAE extensions need to be approved by Allison prior to the assignment due date**
Look at this study Download this studyreferenced in the Brain lecture (note we are focusing on the juggling study, not the cognitive bias study on the second page). In no more than three double-spaced pages, answer the following questions. Use your own words. Remember that cutting and pasting or just re-arranging the words from the article both constitute plagiarism, and that working with others or using LLM’s such as Chat GPT are not permitted. If you need support understanding the article, please visit any TF’s office hours – we are happy to work with you.
It is fine to answer the questions in numbered form.
In your own words, what was your understanding of what these researchers did based on how the study was described in the Brain lecture?
In your own words, what was your understanding of what these researchers found based on how the study was described in the Brain lecture?
What are three examples of details that are included in the article that were not included in lecture?
Do you think this study does a poor, middling, or good job studying a representative group of participants? Explain your answer in terms of the number and diversity of participants as well as the conclusions the study is trying to make.
Based on what you learned in the methods lecture, is this study an experiment? Why or why not?
Conceptually, what is/are the independent variable(s)? How is this / are these variable(s) operationalized? As an example, someone might be interested in studying the effects of stress as a concept, and they might operationalize stress by telling people they will be singing karaoke in front of strangers.
Conceptually, what is/are the dependent variable(s)? How is this / are these variable(s) operationalized? As an example, someone might be interested in studying how stress affects performance as a concept, and they might operationalize performance by measuring how accurately someone hits the notes in a karaoke song.
The research paper says, “In the longitudinal analysis, the juggler group demonstrated a significant (44 d.f., P<0.05) transient bilateral expansion in grey matter in the mid-temporal area (hMT/V5) and in the left posterior intraparietal sulcus between the first and the second scans.” Without using the author’s words or any technical jargon, describe to someone with no psychology knowledge WHAT happened in the brain and WHERE it happened (reference where you might touch your head rather than using any brain-related terms).
The research papers says, “We found a close relationship in these regions between the transient structural grey-matter changes and the juggling performance.” Do you think this “close relationship” would be a positive correlation or negative correlation? Why?
Describe a different way you could study brain plasticity. Specifically,
Describe a different behavior that might affect the brain – make sure this is something that can be studied ethically and reasonably (for example, multiple years of deprivation from human contact likely affects the brain but is not ethical or reasonable to manipulate experimentally).
Describe how you could operationalize this behavior to study it in the lab. Make your operationalization specific enough that someone could conduct this study.
Describe where in the brain you would predict changes to occur (the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, the motor cortex, etc.). Why would you expect changes here?
