ALL RESPONSES MUST BE PARAPHRASED (Written in your own words) 

  • According to the article, what is the interesting observation or question that motivates the investigation?
  • In a journal article this found in the first or second paragraph (abstract may help).
  • If it is not stated explicitly, what do you think it is?
  • Give a non-technical explanation, like you were explaining it to a family member who does not study psychology.
  • There is ALWAYS a question or real-world observation that motivates the research (we are doing research in psychology, here, so there must be some aspect about humans that motivates the research).

This is a very broad “Why is this interesting” question.

– It is NOT about theories or prior studies.

– It is NOT because it will help people.

Example:

Why do certain faces look attractive and others look less attractive? Is it because certain facial configurations are intrinsically more appealing or are we constantly recalibrating our perception in response to the range of faces that we see every day?

OR

People solve more problems after a period of sleep. Is this because sleep is beneficial to problem solving or is it because sleep interrupts our repeated (often failed) attempts to solve the problem and this period of delay helps us come up with an answer

  • On the basis of the reviewed literature, what reasons do the authors give for why their study needs to be done?
  • This will usually come towards the end of the introduction.
  • If it is not stated explicitly, what implicit reasoning have the authors provided?
  • We’re interested in how the general question about the world that you outlined in Question 1 has been investigated in the scientific literature.
  • Here is where you talk about the prior research and the theories.

Example:

While people solve more problems after a period of sleep, they also solve more problems after a period of delay, suggesting that any kind of ‘incubation’ interval – whether sleep or a delay period -allows individuals to forget wrong solution attempts and allows spreading of activation to correct items. To better understand whether sleep is helpful for problem solving, it is important to compare problem solving performance after a period sleep, after a delay period without sleep, or with no delay.

3) State the hypothesis or hypotheses of the research in terms of the IV(s) and DV(s). (e.g., the reaction time will be shorter for participants in the blue group than the purple group.)

  • Note that a hypothesis is not the same as a general prediction.
  • A hypothesis needs to be stated in terms of the IVs and DVs

Example:

There will be an interaction between adaptating condition and test time, such that mean distortion level in the post-adaptation phase will shift towards the negative end of the continuum in the negative condition and towards the positive end of the continuum in the positive condition, relative to the preadaptation phase.

Fill in the details of the following methodological elements and explain the reasons why the authors chose each one.

– If the reason is not stated explicitly, what implicit reasoning have the authors provided?

4) the participants

  • You’ll need to go to the method section.
  • If the reason is not stated explicitly, what implicit reasoning have the authors provided?

Example:

The participants were adult university students who were paid for their participation. No reason is given why university students were chosen, but it is assumed that this is a convenience sample and that they are representative of adults from the general population.

5) the sample size(s)

  • If the reason is not stated explicitly, what implicit reasoning have the authors provided?

Example:

There were sixty-one participants in the experiment – 27 male and 34 female. No explicit justification was provided for the sample size but it is assumed that it is a sufficiently large sample to observe the expected effect sizes.

6) the stimuli and experimental task(s)

  • If the reason is not stated explicitly, what implicit reasoning have the authors provided?
  • Information about the details of the stimuli and experimental tasks can be found in the method section, but the reasoning for why they have been chosen is in the last two paragraphs of the introduction.

Example:

Experiment 1: The stimuli consisted of photographs of 10 young adult Caucasian faces, which had been altered using a spherical distortion to manipulate attractiveness along an 11-step distortion continuum from negative (compressed) to positive (expanded). Participants first rated the 110 test faces for attractiveness or normality before completing an adaptation phase, in which they were asked simply to pay attention to a series of faces. Half of the participants saw faces from the negative end of the continuum and half from the positive end of the continuum. In the final postadaptation phase the participants performed the rating task again (for either attractiveness or normality) on the 110 test faces. To maintain the adaptation during the rating phase, the faces to be rated were interspersed with faces from the adaptation phase.

The authors justified the choice of task in the introduction by arguing that it had been used in previous research to show adaptation in perception of normality. They reasoned that the same effect should be shown if the participants are asked to rate the faces for attractiveness instead.

7) State the independent variable(s) and whether they are between-subjects or within-subjects variables.

  • It’s a grouping variable.
  • You are comparing the results from a set of participants to another, or from a set of stimuli to another.
  • IVs have to have a general label (e.g., adapting condition) and two or more levels (e.g., positive, negative).

Example:

IV1 (Between subjects): adapting condition (2 levels: positive, negative)

IV2 (Within subjects): test time (2 levels: preadaptation, postadaptation)

OR

IV1 (Between subjects): Condition (3 levels: control, incubation, sleep) IV2 (Within subjects): Test (2 levels: first test, second test)
IV3 (Within subjects): Item difficulty (2 levels: easy, difficult)

8) State the dependent variable(s).

  • It is what you measure.
  • To be a dependent variable, it needs to be a number that you can add up and divide.
  • The dependent variable(s) isn’t always explicitly stated in the introduction

Example:

  • The mean distortion level (along the distortion continuum) of the face rated most attractive, 2) The mean distortion level (along the distortion continuum) of the face rated most normal.

OR

The dependent variable is the proportion of correct responses to RAT items

9) What did the authors find?

  • e., what were the results?
  • There is often a summary of what was found at the beginning of the discussion.)

Example:

The hypothesis was supported. The authors found that the participants in the sleep condition performed better on the problem solving task than participants in the incubation conditions. Interestingly the benefits of sleep to problem solving were only found for RAT problems that were difficult; there was no benefit of sleep to problem solving for easy RAT problems.

10) As a result of this study, what new knowledge has been gained about the aspect of human behaviour that was being investigated in the study?

  • e., how do the authors interpret their results – what does it all mean?)
  • Clearly this is in the General Discussion, but you might also find the Abstract

Example:

Our perception of what is attractive is affected by the appearance of faces we experience and averageness is a factor in what we perceive to be attractive. This effect is not a low level visual effect, which suggests that higher-level neurons contribute to the adaptation effect.

11) Based on the authors’ interpretation of the results in the (General) Discussion section, list at least two suggestions of a study that could be done next to build our knowledge in this area.

  • If the authors list a suggestion you can write that here, if not you will need to come up with your own.

Example:

  • The results have shown that high-level mechanisms are involved in face adaptation, but additional research is required to investigate the relative contribution of high- and low-level mechanisms in adaptation.
  • Having established that high-level mechanisms contribute to face adaptation effects, future research should determine if those mechanisms are face-specific.
  • They suggest that the long-term effects of face adaption still needs to be tested, as well as their interaction with the short-term processes investigated in this study