Cognitive Psychology

Research Project

This purpose of this research project is to introduce and give you hands on experience with cognitive research. For this project, you are to select a topic (or think of a question you have) in Cognition then develop a hypothesis and a research method in which to prove/disprove the hypothesis. If you are having difficulty thinking of a research question the textbook will be a great source of inspiration. Research methods should be experimental (no surveys or correlations). Videotape portions of your project as you are conducting it to show during presentation. Your subject pool must include at least 10 people. This project CAN be done in groups.

Please LABEL each section of your paper with the headings below:
Remember: Research papers have a formal tone; do not use the pronoun "I" or any slang in the paper.

I. Introduction

In this section, you review previous research that relates to your research question. Essentially, you are discussing what has already been found and what is missing which then motivates your study. In order to do this you must have some general knowledge of what has been done in this area. Here you would use your book, the Internet (must be credible source- not Wikipedia!!) and at least one scholarly article (newspaper, University website or a psychology database like Science Daily.com). Previous research can ALWAYS be found- if you are having trouble locating some sources please come talk/email me and I can help you find some. You should summarize the references and then explain how your study is related. All references should be cited in-text according to APA's author year format; that is after paraphrasing a source you immediately acknowledge at the end of the sentence where you paraphrased from.

II. Methods

Describe in detail your procedure (what you did step by step), your participants (average age, number of males, number of females but no names!) and any equipment you used (i.e. computers). Be sure to include the type of research method you used, when, where and how you made your observations and any operational definitions used. After reading this section someone should be able to replicate exactly what you did by the details you provide.

III. Results

Describe and display your results using graphs. Please title and label your graph. All graphs should contain aggregated (i.e. averages & percentages) results, not raw data. The written section should describe the results the graph shows but not explain findings (the explanation falls under discussion). The general rule is that one could read either the written results or just look at the graph and understand what you found.

IV. Discussion

Discuss and interpret your results here. What do you think they mean? How do they answer the question that you set out to answer? How do they fail to do so? What improvements might be made to the study? What ideas or problems did you have while conducting it? You should also make an effort to compare your observations with those in the literature, pointing out where your observations confirm, dispute or add to existing reports.

List here the sources that you cited in your paper. References should be in APA style (click link to example below) and include only what you cited in the body of your paper. This paper should include at least three references including your textbook, the internet and a scholarly article. You may want to use more but this is the minimum requirement.

This purpose of this research project is to introduce and give you hands on experience with cognitive research. For this project, you are to select a topic (or think of a question you have) in cognitive psychology then develop a hypothesis and a research method in which to prove/disprove the hypothesis. Research methods should be experimental. Videotape portions of your project as you are conducting it to show during presentation. Your subject pool must include at least 10 people. This project CAN be done in groups. The full instructions/grading for this project can be found on eCompanion.

Potential Subject Areas

Cognitive

- Cell phones & driving

- Sleep learning; dreaming & problem solving

- Memory experiments, eye-witness memory, memory errors

- Perception: visual, auditory

- Placebo effects

- Effect of expectations

- Top-down processing

- Attention

- Reasoning & Problem Solving

- Creativity

- Subliminal messages

- Cognitive Development (Piaget Tasks)

- Personality & thinking styles

- Evolutionary involves on cognitive processes

- Language & language acquistion