Assignment #5: Article Critique
Due December 9th
Using the skills you have acquired in experimental design and analysis, write a brief one-page critique of a paper that presents a simple behavioral experiment and quantitative analysis. Discuss any potential threats to internal/external validity, construct validity, and statistical conclusion validity. Identify any design flaws with the experiment or analysis, potential confounds, and any alternative interpretations for the authors’ conclusions. Here is the link to the cribsheet on threats to validity from class.
You can choose a short paper from any area of interest to you; if you go this route, please enclose a copy of the paper with your critique. Alternatively (and preferably, so I don’t have to read a bunch of different papers), you can write a critique of one of the papers posted below. Any of mine are old papers that I no longer care about, so you’re free to attack at will. If you want to search for very short experimental articles in your area, try the Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, or Psychological Science.
Jones, M. N., Sabbagh, M. A., & Lee, K. Searching the eyes to see the soul: Decoding mental states from eye gaze displays.
Jones, M. N., & Mewhort, D. J. K. (2004). Tracking attention with the focus-window technique: The information filter must be calibrated.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 270-276.
Steyvers, Mark, and Kenneth J. Malmberg. "The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29.5 (2003): 760.
Zeithamova, D., & Maddox, W. T. (2006). Dual-task interference in perceptual category learning. Memory & Cognition, 34(2), 387-398.
Johns, B. T., Dye, M. W., & Jones, M. N. (2015). The influence of contextual diversity on word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
Using the skills you have acquired in experimental design and analysis, write a brief one-page critique of a paper that presents a simple behavioral experiment and quantitative analysis. Discuss any potential threats to internal/external validity, construct validity, and statistical conclusion validity. Identify any design flaws with the experiment or analysis, potential confounds, and any alternative interpretations for the authors’ conclusions. Here is the link to the cribsheet on threats to validity from class.
You can choose a short paper from any area of interest to you; if you go this route, please enclose a copy of the paper with your critique. Alternatively (and preferably, so I don’t have to read a bunch of different papers), you can write a critique of one of the papers posted below. Any of mine are old papers that I no longer care about, so you’re free to attack at will. If you want to search for very short experimental articles in your area, try the Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, or Psychological Science.
Jones, M. N., Sabbagh, M. A., & Lee, K. Searching the eyes to see the soul: Decoding mental states from eye gaze displays.
Jones, M. N., & Mewhort, D. J. K. (2004). Tracking attention with the focus-window technique: The information filter must be calibrated.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 270-276.
Steyvers, Mark, and Kenneth J. Malmberg. "The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29.5 (2003): 760.
Zeithamova, D., & Maddox, W. T. (2006). Dual-task interference in perceptual category learning. Memory & Cognition, 34(2), 387-398.
Johns, B. T., Dye, M. W., & Jones, M. N. (2015). The influence of contextual diversity on word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.