Exploring Psychological Research

video link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10vcVdgBNcUAfmfXu5Nr6muuXEkX8Z5pv/view?usp=drivesdk

Purpose of Assignment:

This Exploring Psychological Research (EPR) activity is designed to increase your understanding of empirically-based research studies.  The article you are going to read here specifically looks at the ideas of attention and distraction.

Introduction:

When you are in an introductory (or upper level) psychology class, you often hear professors say “research concludes that…..”  or “Data indicates….”  or “A classic study demonstrated…”  One question you should have is:  Where is all this content coming from?

The brief answer to that question is:  most of it comes from peer-reviewed journals.  There are hundreds of options–some contain empirical studies on any topic in psychology like “Psychological Bulletin” and some focus on specific areas of study like “Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience”

After psychology researchers perform their research, they submit their work to a specific journal to try to get it published–this is how researchers share their work!  Reviewers (other psychologists with expertise in the topic) will decide if the research is conducted appropriately (did they use the correct statistical analyses?;  are the variables defined properly?, etc.) and worthy of publication.  If so, the article will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Most empirical articles follow a specific format which includes an abstract as well as introduction, method, results, and discussion sections.  Each of these components contain specific information.

This EPR has you find specific information in an article to learn more about the formatting used in primary source research materials.

The following article is from the journal Psychological Science.  Download it, read it, and have it readily available to answer the questions in this EPR.

Instruction:

The following article is from the journal Psychological Science.  Download it, read it, and have it readily available to answer the questions in this EPR.  There is no time limit, and you have one attempt on this EPR.  If you haven’t already watched the Katura Lecture “Parts of an Empirical Article.” you should do that prior to completing this assignment.