Assignment

The assignment is a psycholinguistic experiment culminating in a report. It will be conducted in five stages:

• Designing and developing the experiment in PsychoPy
• Development of the experimental stimuli
• Data collection
• Statistical analysis of the data
• Final report

The assignment will consist of four deadlines:

1. Form groups – (5%)

Form into groups of 10 members and email me the group member’s names and TIDs by the deadline. Develop the stimuli

2. Develop the stimuli – (15%)

Develop the stimuli for the experiment using the CELEX database as a group.

3. Data collection – (20%)

Collect data with appropriate ethical guidelines from at least 3 participants for each member of the group. The collected data should be combined into one MS Excel sheet and shared with all members of the group.

4. Final report – (60%)

An individually written report describing the experiment and the results. Provide clear introduction to the topic with research question, aims, objectives and hypothesis, a brief literature review, method (participants, materials, procedure, analysis), results and discussion. A minimum of five academic references are expected in the literature review.

Academic integrity policy will be strictly applied (see Policy ED 5-0).

If you must miss a term test due to illness or death of a family member, obtain the appropriate documentation and contact me prior to the scheduled exam time to arrange a make-up exam. Makeup exams must be written within 7 days of the original exam date. If appropriate documentation is not provided then you will not be able to write a make-up exam.

Grading Scheme: A+ = 90-100%; A = 85-89%; A- = 80-84%; B+ = 77-79%; B = 73-76%; B- = 70-72%; C+ = 65-69%; C = 60-64%; C- = 55-59%; D = 50-54%; F = 0-49%.

Report Structure

• General description of the areas of concern
• Significance of the Problem
  • What is specifically significant about this study?
  • Why is it important to explore this area?
  • What theoretical or practical reasons exist for needing such answers?
• Analysis of the Theoretical Basis for the Study
  • Provide some theoretical foundation for the study based on current literature.
  • Define the basic terms where appropriate.
  • Use at least five peer-reviewed sources
• Critical analysis: Make an argument for the study based on existing literature.
• Research Question: Clearly state your research question
• Aims and Objectives: Derive the aims and objectives based on the research question
• Hypotheses: Clearly define the null and alternative hypotheses

Method

• Participants
  • Human subject’s consideration and clearance from ethics committee. Copies of ethics documents should be included in an appendix.
  • Describe subjects in enough detail so the reader can visualize the subjects. Important characteristics should be delineated (often not available until after data collection, these data should be presented here rather than in the results section).
  • Describe methods for sample selection in detail. For example, if a sample of convenience is used, this should be explicitly stated. Specific inclusion and exclusion criteria should be noted in this section.
  • If there was attrition, state the number of subjects who dropped out (or with unusable data), the reasons for attrition, and information about the dropouts.
  • Discuss handling of missing data.
  • Materials: Describe the equipment and software used for data collection and analysis
• Research Design:
  • List independent and dependent variables and their operational definitions.
  • It is often useful to include a diagram/figure of the design.
• Procedures: Procedures should be described in sufficient detail, that a reader could replicate the study if so desired.

• Restate each research question and hypothesis.
• State alpha levels used to determine statistical significance.
• Describe the data (with tables and figures if possible)

Discussion

• Discuss the findings in detail with comparisons to the literature
• Limitations of the study
• Main conclusions

Criteria	%	Exemplary A	Accomplished B	Developing C	Beginning D
Structure	5%	Good organization; points are logically ordered; sharp sense of beginning and end Use of appropriate APA style	Organized; points are somewhat jumpy; sense of beginning and ending. A good attempt at using APA style with some minor errors	Some organization; points jump around; beginning and ending are unclear APA style used but with major errors	Poorly organized; no logical progression; beginning and ending are vague. Poor use or absence of APA style
Abstract	10%	Clear and succinct summary of the aims, methods, results and conclusions of the study. Includes all the necessary information and well written.	Written correctly, but has missed out something, e.g. the implications of the results	The material is mostly relevant, but has been set out in a confused or disorganized way	An inappropriate abstract (e.g. far too long or fails completely to adequately and accurately summarize the study).
Introduction	10%	Identifies the main aims, and ends with a clear outline of the study’s hypotheses. Also has something novel in it, compared to the handouts that were supplied, and includes the rationale for performing the study.	Has included everything that was relevant, but the structure is not very clear and appears disjointed. OR It is well written, but shows no evidence of any extra reading.	Has included everything that was relevant, but elements are missing e.g. no justification for the study, no extra reading, poor structure, no hypotheses.	Very short with no clear understanding of the research question, aims and objectives.
Literature Review	20%	Clearly written, well structured, with evidence of relevant extra reading, flows well. At least five academic references that are relevant to the topic	Some evidence of extra reading. At least five academic references, though some of these are not relevant to the topic	Some evidence of understanding the background literatureFewer than five academic references	no attempt to include any references to relevant theoretical and empirical work.
Method	20%	Contains all of the relevant information about the methods used; clearly and systematically described in such a way that a naive reader could replicate the study from this description. Correctly describes the formal design of the study, including an accurate specification of the independent variable(s) and dependent variable(s) usedClear structure of the section including: participants, ethics, material, procedure	Good structure, but some relevant information has been omitted. Some parts missing in the structure	Somewhat confused and bits are missing within subsections. Parts have been included under the wrong headings. Unclear structure	One or more sub-sections (e.g. participants, design, apparatus or procedure) are missing, confused, or parts are included under the wrong sub-section.No real structure
Results	20%	Clear description of the data. Appropriate use of statistical methods to analyse the results	Description of the data is clear. Some evidence of using statistics to understand the data	Somewhat clear description of the data. No evidence of using the appropriate statistics to analyse the data	No clear description of the data. No evidence of using any statistics to analyse the data
Discussion	10%	Clear understanding of the resultsCritical analysis of the findings in relation to the research questions. Comparison of the findings with past literature	Clear understanding of the results. Critical analysis of the findings in relation to the research questions	Some understanding of the results. No clear analysis of the findings	No clear understanding of the results. No critical analysis
Timelines	5%	Report on time	Report one class period late	Report two class periods late	Report two class periods late