Tips for writing your Cognitive paper

 

 

1.  Choosing a topic.

 

The biggest mistake students make is choosing a topic that is too broad.  They probably do this in order to ensure they’ll be able to find enough information, but then they get overwhelmed with information and have a difficult time narrowing it down to a good, focused paper.  For example, if you decide to do your paper on autism, and search Psych. Info. for “autism” you’ll get back thousands of articles.  How are you going to choose from all those?  You need to narrow it down to something more specific, such as “theory of mind in autism” or “selective attention in autism”.

 

The topic must be related to cognitive psychology.  That doesn’t necessarily limit you to things covered in the text book, but if you want to choose something that’s not covered in the textbook, or not listed in the possible paper topics on the assignment, you should check with the professor about the appropriateness of your topic.  You need to be especially careful if you choose some type of disorder, such as autism, dyslexia, or attention deficit disorder.  That’s because most of the articles on those topics are very clinically and/or physiologically oriented, which is not appropriate.  If you choose to write on a disorder, you need to focus on the cognitive aspects of that disorder.

 

The best topics can be worded as a question (see examples on the Paper Assignment).  This makes it easy to write your paper, because you can focus the entire paper around answering the question.  You won’t necessarily come to a conclusive answer – many things in cognitive psychology are still unknown or controversial.

 

 

2.  Writing your outline.

 

After identifying your topic, you should do a search of Psych. Info. and read the abstracts of the articles, and hopefully get some of the actual articles, in order to get a good idea of what kinds of things you be discussing in your paper.  This should be done before writing the outline.

 

The first thing you should list in your outline is the question that you’ll be asking.

 

After posing the question, it’s generally best to start at a relatively broad level, and work down to narrower, more specific topics.  Start with a brief outline of the background of the question.  Then proceed to discuss specific studies, using an organization that makes the most sense.

 

If you decide to make substantial changes in your paper after turning in your outline, you’ll have to turn in a new outline.

 

 

3.  Writing your paper.

 

You should start writing your paper at least a few weeks before it’s due, because often once you start writing you will come to realize that you need more articles.

 

Stick to your outline, if possible.  But once you start writing you may realize that it makes more sense to organize your paper a different way from outline.  That’s OK.  But if you decide to cover new topics that you didn’t mention in your outline, you should turn in a new outline (at least in draft form) to the professor.

 

As in the outline, start the paper by stating the question that you’ll be attempting to answer.  Follow this with a brief (1-2 pages) summary of the background.

 

Since most things in cognitive psychology are controversial, you’ll probably find that different articles give you different answers or different viewpoints.  For example, some studies suggest that implicit memory is spared in Alzheimer’s disease, but other studies have found deficits in implicit memory in Alzheimer’s patients.  That’s actually good, because it gives you something to talk about.  The best papers will describe more than one viewpoint.

 

After describing the most important and / or most interesting studies that have been done, you need to draw your own conclusions.  You should devote the last 1-2 pages to your conclusions.  This is where you make sense out of what you have just described – rather than just telling me what other people have said, you add some of your own thoughts.  What is the answer to the question you have posed?  Is there a definite answer, or is it controversial?  If it’s controversial, how strong is the argument on each side?  What is not yet known?  What needs to be determined in future studies?

 

Notes on references:

 

·        Any time you make a statement that is based on something you read, include a reference.  If you don’t cite it, you are claiming it is your idea, and that is plagiarism.

·        Don’t make unsupported statements.  For example, don’t say something like “Children need love and understanding” without evidence in the form of scientific studies to back it up.  No matter how obvious it may seem to you, scientists must be skeptical and will not believe anything is true without scientific evidence to back  it up.

·        You should almost never use a direct quote.  Instead, paraphrase what the author said in your own words.  A direct quote (i.e. using their exact words with quotation marks) should be used only if the exact wording is important.

·        Make sure everything you cite in the text is listed in your Reference list at the end (using APA style), and that everything listed at the end is cited somewhere in the text.