The purpose of these assignments is to give you the opportunity to act as both a participant and experimenter in cognitive psychology experiments. In science, it is very important that researchers are able to clearly communicate their findings with other researchers as well as the public. All good writing shares some of the same features, but in science one important goal is to make sure the reader understands what was done in the research, why it was so important that it was done, how the results were evaluated, and what the results are able to teach us. All this should be done is as few words as possible while still being very clear to the reader.
During class you will participate in replications of classic cognitive psychology experiments using Top Hat. The point of the assignments is to give you hands on experience both participating in experiments and acting as an experimenter. The more students that participate in the class experiments, the better the assignment will work and the more you will get out of it. I will perform simple statistical analyses based on the class data and present it the following class.
We will be writing experiment 4
Experiment 4 is based on the following paper. This for your reference for the lab report.
Knott, L & Dewhurst, S. (2007). The effects of divided attention at study and test on false recognition: a comparison of DRM and categorized lists. Memory and Cognition, 35, 1954-1965.(included below, please read)
*** The lab instructions, word lists for the experiment, and results of experiment 4 are provided below, please check it.
The written reports are intended to give you practice writing clear and concise summaries. The reports should be no more than 5 pages double-spaced, excluding title page, abstract, and references. Graders
may stop reading any papers that are longer than the 5-page limit. For all of the reports make sure you write in APA style. I have included many links on the course website to resources you can use to learn
how to correctly use APA style.
Each report should include the following sections:
i. Title page: Make sure your title page is written in APA style. This includes the appropriate use
of headers and font size.
ii. Abstract: The abstract is meant to provide an “executive summary” of the whole report in one paragraph. This includes the rationale for the study, what happened in the experiment, the main findings and implications. Your abstract should be between 150-250 words.
iii. Introduction: Give a clear statement about why this experiment was conducted. You should also include some background information about what was known prior to this experiment in order to put the purpose of the experiment in context. By the end of the introduction both the purpose of the experiment and all hypotheses should be clear. Note: The purpose of an experiment is not a statement of what participants did in the experiment. For example, you should not include statements like “The purpose of this experiment was to see how many words people remembered”. A better statement would be, “The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effect of word length on recall”. This statement explains why we wanted to see how many words people remembered (because we want to know if word length influences memory).
iv. Method: A good method section should contain all the information necessary for someone to replicate the experiment. There are, of course, limits to the information you need to provide (it is assumed that participants fill out a paper questionnaire with a pen or pencil). The method section should contain sub-sections to help organize the information Participants Basic demographic information of the sample should be provided here. Because we will be participating in experiments as a class, you will have limited demographic information to include, but you should still include the information you do have about the participants. Stimuli and apparatus A brief description (not a list) is necessary of the materials used. Use your discretion by only talking about crucial items. Design and Procedure This section should describe, in detail, what participants did during the experiment (something participants would have known), as well as how the experiment was structured (something that participants may not necessarily have known). For example, did all the participants take part in all conditions (‘within-participants’) or were only certain conditions completed by certain individuals (‘between-participants’)? What kinds of different trials were there and how many of each type did the participants take part in? Were the participants given any practice before carrying out the experiment? What was explained to the participant? What did the participant experience and how did the participants respond?
v. Results: List the class result, but don’t go into detail here about all the numbers. What you should do is give a summary statement of the results. This includes information about the descriptive statistics, along with results from inferential statistics, which will be provided to you in class. You are not expected to do any calculations yourself. You can then present all the numbers in a table or graph format. Note: This is not a hard and fast rule, if you only have 2 numbers it may be best just to write in the numbers in the text and not include a table or graph.
Any tables or figures do not count toward the page limit. You need to use your judgment and present the results in the clearest way possible for your reader. Make sure you don’t present redundant or irrelevant information (e.g. don’t include a table and a graph of the same information).
vi. Discussion: Explain what these results mean. In other words, how do the results relate to the purpose you explained at the beginning? This is where you can make inferences about cognitive processes behind the pattern of results. Make sure you are as detailed as possible in this
section. You need to explain how the results support each statement you make in this conclusion. Do not draw a conclusion that does not have direct support from the results. Make sure you draw a direct link between the results and your interpretation. You should also include
some reference to previous work (like you did in the introduction). How do the results of the class experiment relate to previous research? Are the results similar? Different? Are they what we predicted in our hypotheses based on what the existing literature said? What are the
limitations of the experiment? What future experiments would be interesting based on the results of the class experiment?
vii. References: This section should include a list of all the sources you cited in your report, but should not include sources you may have read but didn’t include. If you have cited personal communications in your text, you should not include them in the reference section. The purpose
of this section is so others can look up the information you cite – since someone else can’t look up your personal communication, it shouldn’t go here. Make sure your references are written according to APA, 7th ed. guidelines.
**I have provided 2 sample lab reports for your reference, please read them and use them as guidance for this lab report.
*** Please check the files that I have also provided below for the Grading rubric, comment bank, and decimal places as they are relevant and important to the lab report
*** Please check the following Lab report instruction videos as well. (important and they are all short videos)
https://youtu.be/vVU6x2DQk8s (introduction)
https://youtu.be/TsTkJok4H3w (method)
https://youtu.be/fKmA7wSBqlU (result)
https://youtu.be/D9m_uRs72V4 (discussion)
https://youtu.be/ma8hLJmvjaI (writing style)
*** please also check the lab report tips pdf file for guidelines (important)
