This assignment requires you to write a 10 page academic paper, which will hone and assess your skills in four categories:

1. Academic research
2. Critically evaluating research
3. Research design
4. Academic writing

Instructions:

1. Come up with a research question based on your chapter readings. A good research question is one that is open ended, yet has a definitive answer. Here are some examples of good and bad questions.

Example A: "At what age do babies learn to crawl?"

Assessment: Bad question, because it is not open ended. A mere "9-12 months" is enough to answer this question.

Example B: "Is vision more important than audition?"

Assessment: Bad question, because there is no true definitive answer. The answer is subjective, and depends on what you mean by "important", and what species and situation you are looking at.

Example C: "How does expertise in one cognitive domain (such as language) translate into expertise in another domain (such as music)?

Assessment: Great question, because there is a lot of research done on this topic, it has some good theoretical considerations, and you can potentially design experiments in the lab to test it out.

Although not required, I strongly urge you to email me your question, so I can give you my input before you start on the project.

2. Read your textbook section(s) corresponding to this topic. You will need it to write your introduction.

3. Find THREE empirical research articles about this topic. What kind of research article? It needs to be a primary source. This means that you will need to find the original article that did the study. You cannot use a summary (such as a CNN summary, or a WebMD summary). In order to find your articles, you need to use the PsycInfo handout I provided. Again, I recommend that you send me your article list once you find it so I can assure you that they are good articles to use.

4. Read your articles in detail. What do I mean by "in detail"? You cannot just read the abstract and the discussion and expect that to be sufficient. There will likely be aspects of the articles you do not understand entirely. Please email me as soon as you stumble upon anything like that.

5. As you read your 3 articles, critically evaluate the research. Do you think the researchers appropriately answered the questions? What are some flaws with the design? Do you think their conclusions fit in with the results? For instance, say you read an article about why music lessons are important for children's school achievement. Let's say the researchers tested children enrolled in music lessons, and compared their school performance to children who were not enrolled in music lessons. And they said "HEY! Look at this! Children who took music lessons had higher school grades than children who did not take music lessons! Thus, music lessons lead to higher school grades." What issue do you find with this study? (Think about it for a second before you read my response.) Well, here are several issues. Firstly, we all know that correlation does not equal causation. That is, just because two things are correlated (in this case, music lessons and school grades), does not mean one causes the other. It could merely be that children who are more academically successful end up taking music lessons to challenge them further. Also, it could be that a third variable is affecting both. For instance, parents who are more involved in their children's education might lead to children who are better at school, and are involved in music lessons.

So, this is the kind of critical thinking I am looking for, for EACH of your three articles.

6. Based on your initial textbook reading, and the critical reading of your three articles, come up with your own research proposal. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO COLLECT ANY DATA. I only need you to design your own study. For instance, in continuation with the previous music class example, you may come up with the following study: If you take 2nd grade children, and you randomly assign half of them to music lessons, and the other half to 2nd language lessons, do students in one group do better in their academics than the other?

7. For your research design, come up with a thorough methods section. This needs to include information about what participants you are going to recruit, how many, and a detailed study design. Then come up with a brief (approx. two paragraphs) section on what results you expect to find, and what this means in terms of the big picture.

8. Finally, write an abstract. Even though the abstract goes at the start of your paper, it is always written after your entire paper is written. It is a summary of your whole paper. Read abstracts of your 3 articles to get an idea. Your abstract must be no longer than 200 words. It must be on its own page, with the title of your paper on the first line, then the word "ABSTRACT" (written in all caps, centered) on the next line. Your abstract will then start on the line below.