Cognitive Psychology Topic Paper

• Choose a specific topic within cognitive psychology. Discuss what interests you about this
topic, and describe at least one research study on this topic in detail.
o The topic of your paper should relate directly to a major cognitive process (perception, attention, imagery, memory, language, decision-making, intelligence, creativity, etc.)
o Keep your topic relatively narrow (in other words: your topic should not be ‘memory’ or ‘long-term memory’; but some specific phenomenon related to memory–e.g., the effect of REM sleep on memory; context-dependent memory; the cognitive interview; etc.)
o Your topic should relate to, but go beyond, something we learned about in class. The idea is to choose a concept that interested you, and explore the research in that area further. (You may also choose to explore how cognitive psychology relates to some outside interest. For more on choosing a topic, see the ‘Searching for articles’ document.)
• Introduction: Briefly describe / define the cognitive topic you chose.
• Some subjective elements (optional) that you might include, in the body paragraphs: o What about this topic resonates with you? (Why did you choose it?)
o What is its application to your life, and/or popular culture?
• Discuss some of the experimental evidence / theories on the topic you’re discussing.
o Summarize the basic methods/results/inference of your peer-reviewed article. (If you only use one peer-reviewed article, it must be a research study- e.g., an experiment- not a review article that summarizes many studies.)
o You can use the other articles to provide context or additional support for the inferences from that study, and/or to offer competing or additional perspectives.
o To find peer-reviewed articles, you can use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com.)
• Conclusion: Bring the paper to a clear ending point. You shouldn’t be introducing any new ideas in the conclusion; but rather wrapping up and emphasizing the main ‘take-away’ you’d like to leave the reader with. (Both introductions and conclusions should take a ‘bigger picture’ perspective, while the body paragraphs should go into more detail.)
• This is not a formal research paper; the tone can be conversational, but appropriate. (You can use the word ‘I,’ and can discuss your personal opinion/observations; but it should be clear when you’re stating your own thoughts vs. info from research articles.)
• Cite at least 3 outside sources: one peer-reviewed research article that was not discussed in class or readings; and two additional sources (which can, but don’t have to be peer-reviewed- ie, a book / newspaper / magazine / reputable website / TED talk / etc.) You can cite sources from class, but these should not be included as one of your 3 outside sources.
• Cite your sources in APA format (internally, and with a References page at the end.) The rest of the paper does not have to be APA format (you don’t need a cover page, etc.)

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