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Cognitive Psychology Assessment 1 Attentional Blink Research Report

Report overview

Write your report in the style of a journal article, with the following structure:

• Title page: Title of the report, your ID number, and word count (must be below 1500).

• Note that you SHOULD NOT include an abstract as this will not be marked but will use up words from your word count.

• Introduction: Describe the basic phenomenon and hypotheses

• Methods: Describe the procedure of the experiment

• Results: Describe the results

• Discussion: Discuss what the findings mean.

• References: Cite references using at least 5 sources (articles / books)

• Maximum 1500 words (excluding References, Legends, & Title page).

General guidance

• Explain everything that the reader needs to know to understand the study, but remain concise (that is, avoid redundancy)

• Write the report from the perspective of the experimenter. This means writing about the experiment in first person, i.e. we conducted an experiment with XX participants; our results demonstrate.

• Use the Mark Scheme (link on Canvas)
  
  
  • Read the list of criteria for a first-class report and then think about how you can demonstrate each of those criteria in your writing!
  
  
  

How long should the title be?

• The title should be a short statement that captures the essence of the experiment and is interesting. Therefore, it should not be longer than 150 characters (with spaces).

What should I write in the introduction?

• The main job of the introduction is to make the reader familiar with the basic phenomenon and the theoretical concepts behind the experiment. A good introduction will answer the following questions:
  
  
  • What is attention and what is it good for?
  
  
  • What is the Attentional Blink?
  
  
  • Under which circumstances can the AB be observed?
  
  
  • What are the theories to explain AB?
  
  
  • What question did you investigate and what were your hypotheses?
    
    
    • You are completely fine to state that your hypothesis is that youll replicate Raymond (1992). You dont need to pretend that this is an entirely novel study. However, make sure you describe exactly what pattern of data would support such a hypothesis!
    
    
    
  
  
  

What should I write in the methods section?

• The main job of the methods section is to allow the reader to replicate your study. A good methods section will answer the following questions:
  
  
  • How many participants took part?
  
  
  • How were they assigned to the experimental conditions?
  
  
  • What was the stimulus material and how was it presented?
  
  
  • How were the participants instructed, what was their task?
  
  
  • What are the main measures of interest?
  
  
  

What should I write in the results section?

• The main job of the results section is to present our findings. Describe the results in a clear way but do not interpret the results. You can/should use figures to visualise the results. You may use the figures in the module slides / data sheets, or make your own (you dont need to cite the slides if you use these).

• I do not expect that you will include any inferential statistics. This report is about improving your ability to write about experiments, rather than a test of your statistics abilities.

What should I write in the discussion section?

• The main job of the discussion section is to interpret the findings of the experiment within the theoretical framework set out by the introduction. A good discussion will answer the following questions:
  
  
  • Did the results confirm the hypothesis?
  
  
  • How do these results relate to the literature presented in the introduction?
  
  
  • Which aspects of the results are in line with previous literature, which aspects arent?
  
  
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    What are open questions that should be addressed in future studies, and how?

  
  
  

Which references can I use and how should I cite those?

• Your report must cite at least 5 sources. You may include the 3 seed readings (on Canvas) as your sources and/or use them to identify other relevant sources to reference.

• There are three different types of references that you could use for your report:
  
  
  • Research articles
  
  
  • Articles in edited books
  
  
  • Books
  
  
  

• Citing websites / blogs / articles that arent peer-reviewed is bad practice and you will likely lose marks for this.

• For citation format, use the APA guidelines (you could use the link below for help generating APA formatted references)
  
  
  • http://apareferencing.ukessays.com/
  
  
  

Writing support

• Our live sessions in Weeks 3 to 5 will all include time to answer questions about your assignment

• Post questions on the Discussion board

• Ask me during my online office hour

• There are example essays from a similar assignment available on the module Canvas pages to help you with the appropriate style, content, and structure.