Experimental Psychology PSY 433

1. Experimental PsychologyPSY 433 Chapter 5 Literature Review

2. Reading is Essential • It is difficult to write about a topic without knowing what you want to say about it. • Reading other articles helps you formulate your ideas. • Reading other articles gives you terminology and references to support your own work. • Reading other articles allows you to give proper credit to people who originated ideas. • After reading, be sure to allow time to digest (think about) what you’ve read.

3. Selecting a Topic • Sources of ideas include: • Past or present courses • Current events important in your life • Replications of classic research • Extensions of existing research • Paradoxes (contradictions, controversies) • Your own thoughts, feelings & behavior • The Discussion sections of articles frequently provide ideas and topics for further research.

4. Criteria for a Good Project • Narrow your focus to a specific question. • Is there a theory that might explain it – good research is theory-driven. • Theories are found in the literature – reading required before you can find your topic! • Can the theory be tested – what kind of experiment would test it? • You must have 2 IVs (one can be sex/gender). • Is it practical to accomplish within 5-6 weeks? • Are the needed resources available?

5. Forbidden Topics • Mozart Effect – no studies testing whether listening to any type of music improves cognitive ability or test performance. • No studies of whether noise is distracting. • No memory studies testing whether the color of type affects retention, etc. • Memory studies must test some aspect of current memory theory, not simply what is easy or hard to remember. • No Stroop effect replications.

6. Library Research • Christy Stevens (Reference Librarian) can help you find more sources – attendance at the database workshop on 4/19 is mandatory. • PsycInfo is the main database in psychology. • Many articles can be downloaded as pdf or text files. • Look at the references for relevant articles – they will lead you to more sources. • Check the citations for relevant articles – they will lead you to more current work. • Authors working in a field frequently have copies of their articles on their websites.

7. More Ways to Find Articles • Use a key theorist’s name as a search term. • Adding it together with your topic will limit the number of articles when there are too many. • Use “definition” or “review” as a keyword. Often this doesn’t help but occasionally a really good reference is found this way. • Once you have found a good article, use an “exact phrase match” using an important phrase to find similar papers.

8. Using the Internet • In general, the internet (including Wikipedia) is NOT a peer-reviewed source of information. • Journals online are peer-reviewed and are treated the same as their published editions. • Just because something is published doesn’t make it correct: • Do not use articles as models of APA format. • Be critical of the content of articles. • Be VERY critical of anything on a webpage.

9. Hints for Finding Good Sources • Look at the extension of the website in your list of search results: • .gov, .edu give better results than .org, .com, or .net • If you click on the cached link the search terms will appear in a different color, making them easier to locate. • When you find a good website, the links are often reliable too – a reliable website usually provides links to other reliable sites.

10. Reading Articles • Use peer-reviewed sources. PsycInfo tells you whether a journal is peer-reviewed or not. • The abstract will tell you whether the article is relevant to your question. • Good abstracts help you choose sources. • As you read abstracts notice what was helpful to you as a researcher for when you write your own abstract. • The first paragraph of the Introduction should tell you what the article is about. • The last paragraph of the Introduction should give the research hypothesis and predictions.

11. Reading (Cont.) • The Introduction section is like a mini-tutorial on your topic – read it before you finalize plans for your own experiment. • It should describe the controversies in the field. • It will define unfamiliar terms. • It will explain the major theoretical approaches to a topic. • It will summarize previous findings and describe the current state of understanding.

12. Reading (cont.) • Skim the methods to see what subjects did, but no need to read the details unless you are planning to replicate the experiment. • The first paragraph of the Discussion summarizes the findings. No need to read the Results section unless you want more detail. • The last paragraph of the Discussion gives the author’s conclusions and significance of the findings. • Read the rest only for specific information.

13. What is a Literature Review • A summary and analysis of what has been done previously on a topic: • Introduce the topic (research question) and key terms. • Provide an overview of the amount of available literature and its types. • Point out gaps in the literature, if any (your study may address such a gap). • Describe and reconcile discrepancies in the literature (discuss controversies & debates).

14. Avoiding Plagiarism • Articles in your literature review should be analyzed and summarized, not described in detail. • Write what you think about the articles, not just what the authors said or did. • Borrowed phrases from other articles can be used if quoted: • Use quotation marks (“…“) • Give page number • Cite source in text and in references • Do this very sparingly – only when needed.

15. Avoiding Plagiarism (cont.) • Methods and results cannot be copied from your group members. • The numbers and methods may be the same, but what you say about them must be individually written. Graphs and tables may be the same. • Do not use a group member’s paper as a template – write yours from scratch. • Do NOT string together words or phrases from other articles and present them as your own writing. • Cite sources for important ideas, not just text.