Guidelines for Course Project

The course project involves conducting an in-class experiment and summarizing that study in a 7 to 9-page paper. The topic(s) for the project will be presented later. The collected data will be analyzed and the results will be presented to you. Your task will be to interpret the results and summarize the experiment in a research paper.

The paper should be written in APA (American Psychological Association) format and should include the following sections: (1) title page, (2) abstract, (3) introduction, (4) method, (5) results, (6) discussion, and (7) references. Append tables and figures to the back of the paper. A minimum of one table and one figure should be included.

In the introduction you should: (1) state the purpose of the study, (2) briefly describe the type of study being conducted, (3) review the relevant literature, (4) summarize the review and define the research questions to be investigated, and (5) make a set of specific predictions about the expected findings. I will provide two papers for each topic, which will be available on WebCT. You will need to find one additional paper and integrate it into the introduction. For the literature review, it is best to proceed topically as opposed to a study-by-study basis. That is, define and discuss the major sub topics citing literature that pertains to each. Towards the end of the introduction summarize the research and identify the question(s) that will be answered. Briefly summarize the method and make predictions. When writing the introduction and discussion sections maintain focus on the topic and avoid extraneous issues. Do not get lost in a description of the specifics of the experiments or the minutia of the analyses.

The method section should summarize the procedure that we did for the in-class experiment. Include separate sub-sections that describe the studies: (1) participants, (2) materials, and (2) procedures.

In the results section summarize the results of the study. Be sure to present and describe the means and report any statistical tests that were conducted. I will analyze the data for each experiment present the results in class. You should summarize the means in a table, and also a figure (most likely a bar graph).

In the discussion section, summarize the main findings and discuss whether or not they support the predictions. Discuss the implications of the results and determine whether they support or are inconsistent with the findings of the reviewed studies. Identify shortcomings of the procedure and limitations of the results.

References should be cited in the text and listed in an appended reference section. A minimum of three references are required. The best way to obtain references/articles is to find a fairly recent article and work backwards from its reference section. The most common reference types are edited book and journal article, which are presented below, respectively:

Reference Examples

Zacks, R. T., Hasher, L., & Li K. Z. H. (2000). Human memory. In F. I. M. Craik, & T. A. Salthouse (Eds.), The handbook of cognition and aging (2nd ed.)(pp. 293-357). Manwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Zelinski, E. M., & Burnight, K. P. (1997). Sixteen-year longitudinal and time lag changes in memory and cognition in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 12, 503-513.

Excellent

Good

Needs improvement

Needs inclusion

TITLE PAGE: Text centered w/ title, name, affiliation

Introduction (_____/10 points)

State purpose of the study

Identify and describe type of study being conducted and the motivation for the study

Define major topics and issues in a literature review

Briefly describe the experiment that will be conducted

Describe possible results/outcomes

Formally state predictions/hypotheses

Method (_____/10 points)

Design: Describe the experimental design

Identify and describe the dependent variable (DV)

Identify and describe the independent variable (IV)

Subjects

How many subjects? How many per group?

Describe subject characteristics

How were the subjects recruited for the study?

Materials

Describe the study materials: what type of stimuli were used?; how many items were presented?; what were the characteristics of the stimuli?; were they presented on paper or by computer?

Describe the test materials: what type of stimuli were used?; how many items were presented?; what were the characteristics of the stimuli?; were they presented on paper or by computer?

Describe the experimental setting

Procedure

Describe the procedure in a step-by-step manner.

Results (_____/10 points)

Present and describe the means or frequencies (include a table of the means if needed)

Describe the patterns observed in the data

Describe the “significant” differences and non-significant results

Describe other results (e.g., effect sizes)

Discussion (_____/10 points)

Summarize the study design and the results

Restate each hypothesis and determine whether or not the results support.

Discuss the implications of the results

Were the results consistent with the previous literature?

Discuss possible shortcomings of the experiment

What are possible problems with the sample, materials, and procedure?

How could the experiment be improved?

What future experiments would you suggest?

Abstract, References and Readability (_____/10 points)

GRADE: (_____/50 POINTS):

We conducted an experiment on the development of false memory. Roediger and McDermott (1994, 1995) showed that when a study list includes semantically related words such as “bed”, “rest” and, “pillow” false memories can be created for other semantically related words that were not in the list (e.g., “sleep). In their experiment, falsely recalled items were referred to as critical lures. Participants often recalled the critical lure, and they are likely to report high confidence ratings for their memory for the critical lure.

Our experiment was designed to demonstrate this false memory effect. Two predictions are:

1. the critical lure will be recalled at about the same rate as other words in the study list.

2. the critical lure will be associated with high confidence ratings that are not lower than the average confidence rating of the study items.

The subjects consisted of 34 college students who were enrolled in a Cognitive Psychology course taught at California State University, Los Angeles. Age, gender, and other demographic characteristics were not recorded.

The results appear below:

Items recalled

​Proportion of studied items recalled: ​​ ​​.64

​Proportion of subjects to recall critical lure: ​​​.63

Confidence ratings

​Average confidence rating for correctly recalled item:​3.80

​Average confidence rating for the critical lure:​​3.59

​

Test of Hypothesis 1: One-group T-Test comparing recall of the critical lure (pop value) versus the proportion recalled.

Critical lure?

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid

no

13

37.1

37.1

37.1

yes

22

62.9

62.9

100.0

Total

35

100.0

100.0

One-Sample Statistics

N

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

avrecall

35

.6419

.14288

.02415

One-Sample Test

Test Value = .629

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean Difference

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

Lower

Upper

avrecall

.534

34

.597

.01290

-.0362

.0620

Test of Hypothesis 2: Dependent groups T-Test comparing confidence rating of the critical lure versus the average confidence rating for items recalled

Paired Samples Statistics

Mean

N

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Pair 1

Recall confidence

3.7985

22

.27355

.05832

Lure confidence

3.5909

22

.50324

.10729

Paired Samples Test on Confidence Ratings

Paired Differences

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Pair 1

CR – Lure

.20759

.62193

.13260

1.566

21

.132

I have additional articles to email the writer. Also you must choose one more article for false memory testing.