Sensation and Perception - Department of Psychology

conduct such an experiment and are following the procedures as a recipe. 3) Discussion: here you writeabout possible outcomes and their interpretations. As you will not run the experiment, there will be noactual results; but you should entertain possible results, and discuss the meaning of each outcome, withrespect to the studies you read, and with respect to the overall topic of your interest (i.e., the big picture).More guidelines1. It is critical to find a number of related papers on a particular topic. A good place to start couldbe the textbook reference section, and feel free to use examples from the reading list at the end ofeach chapter. You should also make use of the wonderful electronic search engines availabletoday. A few commonly used ones are: PubMed (www.pubmed.gov), Google scholar(scholar.google.com), and PsychInfo/PsychLit (the first two are freely accessible; the last one isavailable through the MSU library website).2. Any topic in the board area of sensation and perception is acceptable. But there are some topicsthat you should avoid. Do not use topics that are focusing on clinical questions such as"Treatments for Parkinson's Disease" or "Biological Basis of Schizophrenia".3. Because the importance of topic selection, I require you to contact me about your choice oftopics. You should start your group discussion early in the semester and settle down on aparticular topic. Then email me your topic and brief summary of your readings. I am also happyto meet with any team to discuss the topics.4. Each person is to write a paper in the APA style (consult your experimental method course orhere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style), with the following specifications: max 8 pages(main text, excluding title page, abstracts, references), double-spaced, 12 point font, reasonablemargin. The paper should be a cohesive body of work of what you read (literature review) andwhat you think should be done (experimental proposal). Each person is to work on his/her paperindependently. Although the content will be the same for all members of a team, the particularapproaches to convey ideas will not be identical and will reflect your own thinking.5. I expect every group member will all contribute meaningfully in this process. Team work is apervasive fact of modern society and you will likely work with your peers in the future. I trustthe team members will work out each individual’s duty and achieve a genuine collaboration. Ihope this will be a fun, in addition to educational, experience. I do not intend to intervene onhow each team works, but if there is a concern/complaint about the behavior of a particular teammember, do let me know and I will take note.6. The following is a guideline for how we will grade the final paper with the percentagesindicating the relative importance of each aspect of the paper (out of 100%). Do not write yourpaper as a line by line answer to this guideline. This guideline is intended to give a sense of thedifferent components your paper should include. The final product should be an integrated,cohesive paper.5% Describe the big question. Why is it interesting?30% Summarize the research articles.10% Discuss the relationship among the articles10% Rationale of your experiment25% Procedure of your experiment15% Possible outcome and interpretation of your experiment5% Overall writing4