Physical Exercise and Cognitive Functioning in Children.

Thesis (5 points)

Instructions: Please review the Individual Project Rubric and Project Guidelines slideshow for details on the overall assignment. Complete this worksheet and upload your submission to the appropriate link listed under your Assignments folder in Blackboard. Describe your ideas for the project by answering the questions below.

1. The research project must relate to Cognitive Psychology

a. What is the cognitive process you are studying?

b. If not a single process, what combinations of processes are you studying, and what is the most relevant process? You will only be able to measure one process. So, if there are two processes, it is likely that one is being used to manipulate the other (e.g., effects of attention on memory).

2. The research project must be socially relevant

a. How is your study socially relevant? Many students find that it is easier to come up with focused ideas when their experiment is directed at solving a socially relevant problem. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation also program their funding agenda with socially relevant problems as well.

b. Be sure that your project is primarily directed at understanding a cognitive process. Sometimes students get so involved with the social relevance of the project, they forget to address a cognitive process.

3. The research project must be original work that has not been done in the field yet

a. What unsolved problem will your study address?

b. This requirement is often the one that students struggle with the most because it is difficult to make an innovative contribution to a field that you are learning about.

c. There are several ways to come up with an idea that has not been done before:

i. The textbook is a great place to start.

ii. You should also look at peer-reviewed REVIEW articles and meta-analyses from the past 2 years. This endeavor will bring you up to speed on the literature quickly.

iii. Consider replicating a recent study, but alter one critical element. For example, you can try the experiment in a new subject population. You might also change the stimulus. You can also design a complementary study (e.g., a physiological investigation that might follow up on previous behavioral studies).

4. The research project must interest you

a. This is typically the easiest requirement to satisfy. However, it is also the most important. Please do not look at this project as "just another homework assignment." This is an opportunity for you to study whatever interests you professionally. The human brain is connected to every experience you have, and this assignment help you achieve your career goals, academic goals, or personal life goals.

5. The thesis should also meet the following criteria

a. Good scientists know how to gage quality. The instructor will eventually review your project, but you and only you must be the arbiter of good taste when it comes to designing this experiment. You will know you have a working project when you can answer the aforementioned questions with confidence. It's fine to ask your peers and instructor for feedback, but please don't expect anyone to tell you if you "got it right" or if the project is "ready."

Introduction and Bibliography (5 points)

Instructions: Please write a two-page (double spaced, 12-point font) Introduction. Review the Individual Project Rubric and the Project Guidelines slideshow for guidance. For this worksheet, you may use an outline format rather than writing in expository form. The purpose of the Introduction is to motivate the thesis statement. It is important to address the following in order to logically motivate the thesis:

1. Describe the general topic of interest

a. Do not state the thesis here

b. Assume your readership is composed of professionals in Psychology who are not specialists in this area.

2. Describe what work has been done in the field

a. Provide a thorough (but not exhaustive) review of the literature that directly relates to the topic. Somewhere between 3 and 10 references is appropriate.

b. Remember the goal is to motivate the thesis and not summarize the entire field.

c. It is highly likely that someone has conducted research in your area. Do not be satisfied if a hasty web search doesn’t yield articles. You will be held accountable for knowing the literature.

d. In the event that you are struggling to find articles that address your unique combination of genres (e.g., the effects of eating PlayDough® on Attention), provide a literature review for each area.

e. Cite any statement of fact that’s not your own original idea.

3. Describe what work needs to be done, or what gaps exist in our knowledge

a. Now that you have described the work to date, what work has yet to be done?

b. What questions remain?

c. How might current theories be challenged?

d. What replications might be conducted to further test the strength of a theory?

4. Discuss how your study will fill those gaps

a. Briefly discuss how your study will satisfy the needs listed above.

b. Do not include detailed references to methodology. Only included a brief reference to your methods if they are the most important part of the study (e.g., following up on a behavioral experiment with an fMRI study).

5. State your thesis as a prediction

a. Now that your thesis is properly motivated, you can state the thesis as a single prediction (e.g., “It is predicted that….”)

b. A good thesis includes references to the independent variables, the dependent variables, the specific cognitive process being measured, and the conditions. See the Project Guidelines for an example.

6. On a separate page in this document, please include an APA style bibliography of your

source.

Methods (5 points)

Instructions: Please draft an outline of your methods using the following subheadings. Refer to the Individual Project Rubric and the Project Guidelines slideshow for guidance. The methods section should be sufficiently detailed so that another person can replicate your experiment exactly. Refer to the sample papers to view the level of detail that researchers describe their experiments. Think of this as a cookbook, where some sections describe the ingredients (i.e., Subjects and Apparatus) and other sections describe what was done with the ingredients (i.e., Procedures). If you are using commonly used methods or techniques (e.g., MRI, EEG, or some standardized test like the MMPI-2), refer to those methods using APA citations rather than providing detail that obscures your own methodology. Use the following as a guide, but provide more detail as needed:

1. Subjects

a. What is your population of interest?

b. What subjects were sampled from that population? How were they recruited?

c. What were the conditions (e.g., experimental vs. control groups) and how did you assign subjects to the conditions?

d. What subjects were included? What screening criteria were used to determine if a subject was eligible for the study (e.g., include only subjects with Type 2 Diabetes)?

e. What people were excluded (e.g., exclude subjects with Type 1 Diabetes)?

f. What was the average age of the subjects? Describe the other relevant demographics like gender, ethnicity, education, etc.

g. How were subjects motivated to participate? Were they paid? Did they receive course credit?

2. Apparatus

a. What materials did you use?

b. Describe your stimuli in detail.

c. How were stimuli presented?

d. How were responses measured?

e. Other equipment?

3. Procedures

a. What conditions did you create and compare?

b. What were subjects in each condition asked to do?

c. How did you explain things to the subjects?

d. How did you collect data?

Results (5 points)

Instructions: Please draft an outline of your results. Refer to the Individual Project Rubric and the Project Guidelines slideshow for guidance. The Results section should be briefly describe the data without expanding upon the methods or making conclusions. Describe the data in the text and using figures or tables. Report descriptive and inferential statistics. I acknowledge that some of you may not have taken courses in Statistics or Research Methods yet. Refer to those in your group who have. Do the best you can given the examples from this class and seek help from the instructor when needed. Because we don’t have time or permission to collect data for this course, we will be using random number generators to create fake datasets to analyze. Of course, it is never appropriate to manufacture data in a real experiment, but this will give you an opportunity to work with raw data in the context of this course.

1. Manufacture data that supports your hypothesis

a. You may also elect to manufacture data that contradicts your hypothesis.

b. Use the following web sites to create a dataset:

i. http://www.generatedata.com/

ii. http://www.apa.org/research/responsible/data-links.aspx

iii. https://www.randomizer.org/

2. Describe the outcome of your experiment

3. Include descriptive statistics that describe the data within groups

a. Refer to the Course Documents for materials that describe how to compute the following statistics.

b. For each group, provide the mean (i.e., the average) and a measure of error (e.g., standard deviation, standard error, or confidence intervals).

c. Use the appropriate SI units (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html).

d. Report raw data and not percentages. Do not report percentages because they describe the proportion of the total population. Technically, there is no measure of error on a percentage despite what you see in the newspaper or TV.

4. Include inferential statistics to describe the relationship between groups

a. Refer to the Course Documents for materials that describe how to compute the following statistics.

b. If you kept your experiment simple, you are most likely comparing the mean of two groups using a t-test.

c. E.g., “The mean reaction times for students in the caffeine condition were 1.25 sec (SD = 0.25 sec), and reaction times for students in the placebo condition were 1.5 sec (SD = 0.10 sec). Our results indicate that students in the caffeine condition were faster than students in the placebo condition (t-test, p < 0.05).”

5. Create figures or tables to describe your data

a. When possible use figures instead of tables. A picture is worth a 1000 words.

b. You can create figures in PowerPoint. Double click the figure in the Project Guidelines to see how. Refer to the Course Documents for materials on making figures as well.

c. For a paper, figures go at the end of the paper and you refer to them in the text like this (Figure 1).

Discussion (5 points)

Instructions: Please draft an outline of your Discussion. Refer to the Individual Project Rubric and the Project Guidelines slideshow for guidance. Whereas the Introduction starts with general descriptions to motivate a specific thesis statement, the Discussion goes from a specific conclusion and relates that conclusion to more general ideas. It is important to place your experiment within context of current theories. Yours is just one of many experiments in history that may address a topic. You are participating in a conversation with other scientists in your publication. It is important to address the following in order:

1. Restate the thesis as a conclusion

2. Briefly explain how your results support the thesis

3. Explain how your experiment solves a major problem in the field

a. Explicitly relate this work to the studies cited in your Intro.

4. Explain how solving this problem further advances the field

a. Highlight the social relevance of this work.

5. In subsequent sections you should

a. Relate your work to other studies in the field

b. Address potential problems with the study

c. Discuss implications of your study on the field

d. Describe potential future experiments or problems remaining to be solved