PSY 410-002 – Cognitive Psychology Lab



PSY 410 – Cognitive Psychology Lab. J.P.Toth Fall 2013

Lab Assignment #5: Memory Span & Final Project Literature Search

You have two goals in this lab. The first is to conduct a literature search for papers that are clearly relevant to your research project. Reading the background literature is critically important for any research project. Not only does it help you better understand your topic, it also provides guidance in developing methods and analyzing results, and describes information that is useful for writing the Introduction & Discussion of your paper. The second goal is experience two classic memory tasks, one measuring Short-Term Memory, the other measuring Working Memory.

A. Do a focused literature search to identify 3 articles that are clearly relevant to your research project.

❑ There are three main ways that researchers find relevant research articles, all of which can be employed by using the resources available through the Randall Library website. The first method, which is best when you're not exactly sure what you're looking for, is to use the PsycINFO database. You can find this resource by clicking on the "By Name A-Z" link off the main library page (next to "More eResources/ Databases"), then clicking "P", and then the database. Once you're in, do a search using search terms (one per box) that are relevant to your topic. This will bring up a series of articles which can then look though. Note that people rarely know/use the best terms in their first few searches, so you should do multiple searches, using more refined search terms as you learn more about a topic.

❑ A second, more directed way to find articles is to search the content of specific journals. Here's how to do it: Go to the library home page; click the "Journals" tab; enter the name of a journal; click one of the links under "This title is available electronically via:". [Note that some of the best cognitive journals are Psychological Science; Current Directions in Psychological Science; Psychonomic Bulletin & Review; Memory and Cognition; Trends in Cognitive Sciences; Cognition and Consciousness; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition; and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General]. Once you access the e-version of the journal electronic holdings, you should be able to browse the journal issue-by-issue; or, better, use the "Search within this publication" link to find articles relevant to your topic.

❑ Finally, a third method is simply to use the reference sections of papers you've already identified. This is probably the easiest method but only works well if the article you're using is relatively recent and from a good journal (like those listed above). As well, it is still important for you to find and read the articles you've identified to make sure they are clearly relevant to your topic.

❑ After examining multiple papers and carefully reading their abstracts, choose the 3 that are most relevant to your research question.

❑ ACTION ITEM: Title the first page of a Word document "References". On this page, provide (a) references to your three most relevant articles using strict APA formatting; and (b) the abstract for each article. Paste each single-spaced abstract directly beneath its reference, with one space between the ref & abstract. Note that points for this portion of the lab will be based on both format & relevance to your project.

B. CogLab experiments: Memory Span & Operation Span.

❑ Complete both the Memory Span & Operation Span experiments in CogLab, entering your data into the fields below (i.e., C.1 & C.2). Then answer the following questions (C.3 – C.5). Make sure to include this information (C.1 – C.5) in your final Word document, pasted below your references & abstracts.

C.1. From the Memory Span Experiment, what is your memory span for…

Numbers: ____ Letters that sound different: ____ Letters that sound similar: ____

Short words: ____ Long words: ____

C.2. From the Operation Span Experiment…

What is your estimated working-memory capacity (span score): ______

What was your math accuracy: ______

C.3. Describe two ways in which the Memory Span task could be made easier so that the measure of people's memory span would become longer.

C.4. What is the most important methodological difference between the Memory Span and Operation Span tasks? Why is this difference important for how we, as researchers, assess a person's short-term memory?

C.5. Working memory capacity as measured by the Operation Span task has been shown to predict performance in a wide variety of real-world settings including academic success, ability to follow directions, computer programming skills, and even pilot performance (to name a few). Memory Span performance does not show the same predictive ability. Why does Operation Span have greater power to predict real-world behaviors? [Hint: Ask yourself what most of those real-world behaviors have in common at a cognitive-processing level]

➢ E-mail your completed lab assignment (a single Word document) to the TA by 5pm this Friday!

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