2. IMPORTANT COMMENTS
ABOUT METHODS SECTION
• Remember
that the 7th word was red in
all three experimental trials
• Need to add to Methods section:
•
Mean, standard deviation
• Write
out number if beginning of sentence
3. MORE INFORMATION LEFT
OUT
• Order
sense
•
of events - Make sure they make
Talk about practice trials before experimental
trials
• Once
you’ve described the first trial, you just need
to state that they followed the same procedure,
but different words were used
•
Write in past tense in terms of what we did,
not in terms of instructions to participants
• Materials
•
Include the response sheet in materials
4. SIMPLE FORMATTING ISSUES
• Don’t
add additional spaces between
paragraphs and/or sections
• Space twice between sentences
• Don’t make one long, huge paragraph –
break it up!
• Write in past tense
• Trial vs. Trail
• Punctuation before quotations: 4’ X 7.’
5. LIST OF WORDS
• Table
of Words
You must refer to the table in your text
• APA style labeling and description
• Response sheet versus list of words: Figure
versus table
•
• Remember
to explicitly state that the
participants were instructed to recall the
words in no particular order
6. DETAILS
SMART Board (dimensions were 4’ X 7’)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007
• Font on projection: 32 Point Calibri Font
• Laboratory in Psychology course
•
•
Means of recruitment
Participants did not receive any incentives
• Numbers
•
•
Type out any numbers that are less than 10; 10
or more you can put in numerical form
• Unless
you are talking about number of participants
7. REMINDERS
• Make
sure you edit your graded
sections
• You will consolidate these sections to
make up your final paper
• You don’t want unnecessary point
deductions for easy fixes
• Make sure you reread your sections, as
I have made edits in () and red font
8. NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS
• There
•
were a total of 13 participants
8 Females and 5 Males
• Average
age = 22.5 years
• Standard deviation = 1.96 years
• Don’t forget to go back to your
methods section and edit this!
9. REPORTING AGE
•
Ways to write it out:
Fourteen participants (M = 22.50
females)…
1.96 years; 8
Participants consisted of 14 (Mage = 22.50, SD = 1.96
years; 8 females and 5 males) undergraduate
psychology students…
Fourteen undergraduate psychology students (5
male),with a mean age of 22.50 years (SD = 1.96
years), participated in…
10. Our Experiment
• What
•
did we do in our experiment?
What were we testing?
• What
did you expect to happen?
• You need to think about your
hypothesis before you run the analysis
•
No biased hypotheses
• After
running the analysis, think about
the results in relation to your hypothesis
11. Normal recall of words
• Our
experiment was a test of memory
skills in regards to amount of words
recalled
• When recalling a normal list of words,
what kind of graph would you expect if
you were considering word position in
relation to the amount of words
recalled?
•
By normal, I mean that all the words are
unbiased and the same size, color, etc.
12. The Von Restorff Effect
• Also
called the “isolation effect”
• Named after Dr. Hedwig Von Restorff
•
She discovered this effect after
performing a set of memory experiments
in 1933
• The
basic concept is that you have a
higher chance of remembering an
item that is isolated in a group of
similar items
•
Examples include color, highlighting, etc.
13. Recall of words with an
isolated word
• What
would you expect the graph
to look like if we were considering
word position with amount of words
recalled?
14. Understanding the Concepts
• You
will need to give a lot of thought to
the concepts
Important for Intro and Discussion Sections
• It will help you to choose the correct
papers for your Introduction section
• The articles you choose for your Intro
section should be related to the
experiment and concepts
•
• Provides
you with support for your hypothesis
