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Research Assignment for HDP 1
Immense resources are available to assist in scholarly research. Some available resources include textbooks, information publicly available on the Web, professors, librarians, TAs, and thousands of high quality, peer-reviewed scientific journals. Yet finding the answer to a specific question can be a daunting task. The purpose of this assignment is to make finding scientific information a little bit less daunting. To achieve this goal, the current assignment will entail finding, critically thinking-about, and writing-up how scientific research relates to a question in human development. It is a good idea to read this assignment in its entirety, before you begin working on it. For this assignment you will identify a research question from topics in Infancy and Evolution or Brain Development. Let your question motivate your use of Psych Info and Pub Med, as you search for and read articles. You will write up a short (max 500 words) summary of results concerning this research question, based on several bibliographic references, as described below. Finally, you will identify 3 new research questions that arose during the course of this assignment. The assignment in brief.Due: Week 4, October 21-25,
in section, or at the latest Thursday, October 24, to your TA at lecture. Value: 5% of course grade The assignment.You may include items A-C,
below, on a single page, if you wish. A.
Please
include your name and student number, the title of your project, your section
number, day and time, and the name of your TA. B.
Summary
of your question, why it's interesting, and your main findings. Introduce your summary by stating in a
single sentence what your initial research question is. Summarize your findings, and explain how
this question is relevant to evolution or brain development. This summary
should be not more than 500 words in length, or about one single-spaced page. Use APA style when you refer to papers,
websites, and conversations (http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html). What questions are available?
Pick a topic in human development that interests you, relating to the
lectures on evolution and brain development.
To help you brainstorm, here are some possibilities: -What primate societies are matriarchal? Is patriarchy the norm? -Is adolescence a recent phenomenon in cultural
history? Has it become lengthier than
it used to be? -What influence does maternal alcohol use have on
prenatal neural development? (or tobacco, methamphetamine, or another drug, or a particular
environmental pollutant or chemical) -How does congenital blindness affect neural organization? (or late-onset blindness, or
deafness) Try to make your question specific enough to answer. For example, if you address the influence of
congenital blindness on neural organization, it probably would not be feasible
to also discuss late-onset blindness, and deafness. But within the broad constraints of infancy and evolution, and
neural development, just pick a question that interests you. Read relevant research, and summarize your
findings. Make your prose clear—have a
friend check it—and clearly delineate specialized terms and concepts. C.
You
will no doubt think of other related, perhaps better thought-through or more
exciting questions, as you work on this assignment. List three questions that would be interesting for future
research. D.
Include
a “Sources Cited” page that lists your references. We expect four journal articles, one website, and one personal communication. For the personal communication, discuss your
assignment with at least one other person-- a librarian, professor, or TA, or a
friend in the class-- ideally someone with knowledge of your topic. You may be able to find most of your journal
articles online. But please get at
least one article from a printed journal in a library, as described below. E.
Include
a copy of the first page of one article you cited. Please write the call letters and physical location of the
journal on the copy of the article's first page, e.g. “BF 180 P82, in Social Science
and Humanities library, 5th floor.”l This means that the assignment can't be completed entirely in CLICS or
in your apartment. We ask you to do
this because a great deal of published research is not yet available on line. For several years into the future, paper
journals will be an integral part of the research process. What sources should you use? How should you cite them?All new science is built on existing science. Scientific careers are built by bringing novel ideas and methods together with existing theory and research findings. People deserve credit for their ideas, and for the fruit of their research. Careers are broken by a failure to give others appropriate credit. Academic dishonesty on this assignment results in zero credit for the assignment, and likely academic probation. A second incidence of academic dishonesty can result in suspension from the university. So give credit where it's due, whether from a journal, Web site, magazine or newspaper article, or a personal conversation with someone. Include a list of sources you've cited, in a "Sources Cited" page, and also include shorter citations (Name, year) within the text. In the text, an article is cited with all last names, if it has three or fewer authors (Graham, Leavitt, & Strock, 1978), and with the first author, et al., if it has more than three authors (Everson et al., 1998). A conversation can be cited in the text as (J Williams, personal communication, October 2, 2002). Personal communications are not included in the list of sources cited. Websites (http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html) are included in the text, as well as in the list of sources cited, along with the date of retrieval. Use a hanging indent, in which successive lines of a citation are indented a few characters from the left. Here are example citations, as they would appear on the Sources Cited page: APA Style (2002). Retrieved September 24, 2002, from Everson, R. M., Prashanth, A. K., Gabbay, M.,
Knight, B. W., Sirovich, L., Kaplan, E. (1998). Representation of spatial frequency and orientation in the visual
cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(14), 8334-8338. Graham, F. K., Leavitt, L. A., & Strock,
B. D. (1978). Precocious cardiac
orienting in a human anencephalic infant. Science,
199(4326), 322-324. Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a
conceptual task. Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129-140. |