Psych 368 - Autobiographical Memory: Term Project
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In this class, we will read a lot about other people's scientific work. For your term project, I would like to give you the opportunity to explore a question of your choosing. As you can see from the course schedule, we will work on this project bit-by-bit as the semester unfolds. First, we will select a question. Then, we will do some background research related to that question. The next steps will depend on whether we choose to work in teams or individually. We will vote on the approach. Either way, you will present your experiment/literature review to the rest of the class during the last two weeks of the semester. You will also write an APA-style report of your final project. It seems like a big undertaking, and it is, but we will walk through step-by-step, week-by-week throughout the semester. We will also probably have occasion to meet outside of class to make sure your project remains on track.
Assignment Description Length Due Date
Topic Selection

Although you have a great deal of input about what we talk about in class, I am still the one who chooses which articles we discuss. The term project is meant to give you more freedom to pursue a topic of your interest related to autobiographical memory (AM). It's still early days, so your exposure to the field is somewhat limited, but I want you to try to think about a broad kind of question that you might like to build a semester-long project around. You will have the opportunity to collect a little data if you are interested in doing so (and you select a project where data collection is feasible), but I would rather you think about a BIG question that interests you rather than a smaller question that might allow you to collect some data.

In short, this project is designed to allow you to study autobiographical memory using whatever approach you find interesting. Here are some broad suggestions to provide a rough kind of ballpark: 

  • How does our memory for the past influence our understanding of ourselves or others?
  • What purposes do memories serve?
  • Do memories influence healing from injuries, illness, or emotional experiences?
  • How might you define a good memory? Is it all about accuracy?
  • What do individual differences in autobiographical memory tell us about memory and/or individuals?
  • How is our knowledge of the past organized?
  • How do psychological phenomena - depression, anxiety, dementia - affect memory for the past?

This assignment should be short.  You should identify a topic, explain the rationale for your choice, and float at least one experimental hypothesis.  That hypothesis should speculate as to some effect or influence or relationship between AM:

  • Vivid memories are more likely to be accurate than fuzzy memories.
  • Reflecting on the past in positive ways will allevaite negative mood and promote physical healing.
  • Extraverts' memories will be more _______ than intoverts' memories.
Short paragraph Sept 12th
Background Literature Personal observations are valuable, but they are only the first step in a scientific investigation.  You need data, of course, but you also need to consider the perspectives of people who have been thinking about your question for a long time.  The fact that others have been thinking about a question for a long time does not mean that their views are ‘right’.  It does not mean that their insights have more value than your own.  It does mean that you need to consider their ideas carefully: retain what is valuable and critique what is not.  For this assignment, I need you to locate 3-5 articles relevant to your topic.  Summarize each article in a few sentences:
  • What was the main research question?
  • How did the researchers design an experiment to address that question?
  • What conclusions did the researchers draw?

In addition, you will need to produce one paragraph that synthesizes the literature you located.  How do the articles fit together?  What questions do they raise?  How have they influenced your thinking about your topic moving forward; that is, do the literature point you towards a specific hypothesis?

3-5 paper summaries + 1 paragraph Sept 26th
Research Statement The next step in the process is to formulate a question that you will organize the project around.  For example, if you are interested in how personality influences AM, your research statement might be something like: ‘Extraverts' memories will be more _______ than intoverts' memories’.  Whether phrased as a question or a statement, you need to create some ‘tension’ in this part of the assignment.  The view/hypothesis that you are presenting has to be balanced by some (plausible) alternate view.  Your job in this assignment is to present both your view and the alternative and to explain the rationale for both.  The alternate view has to make sense at some level; there has to be two sides that you are choosing between.  The rationale can (should?) include references to specific papers, perhaps the ones that you identified for the Background Literature assignment. 1-2 paragraphs Oct 24th
Resolution

The penultimate step in the process will be to expand the Research Statement into a full-blown outline.  Rather than merely presenting the alternatives/describing the tension in the literature, you will present an outline of the literature supporting the alternate views, providing more detail about the supporting literature on both sides.  This part of the assignment will require you to provide more detail about the arguments you alluded to in the Research Statement assignment.  In addition, you will have to propose some kind of resolution to solve the tension.  For example you could argue that:

  • one view is more compelling than the other on the basis of available or forthcoming evidence (see below). 
  • the two views are complimentary rather than mutually exclusive.
  • the two views are both valid but apply to different subpopulations, contexts, and so forth.

Finally, you will have to provide the overview of an experimental methodology that could provide data to support your resolution of the tension.   Some of you will opt to conduct this experiment, others will not.  But, I want every project to include an idea for an experiment that will address the main research question.

 3-4 paragraphs Nov 7th

Final Assignments

Two of the primary skills that this course is meant to foster are talking about (in class) and writing about (thought papers) experimental research. The final assignments for the semester will give you a chance to exercise both of these skills.

      
Oral Presentation Your presentation will draw on all of the work you have done for the term project all semester long. That is, you will weave the previous assignments into an oral presentation that teaches the class what you have learned. Your presentation should describe the basic question(s) that motivated your research, the different approaches that have been used to address that question and your synthesis of research in the field. You should present at least two hypothetical answers to your research question and the method that you have chosen to choose amongst your hypotheses. The results section will provide a rationale for what experimental outcome you think would be most likely. Finally, you should end with a take-home message that highlights what would be learned from your experiment. This take-home message should touch on at least one of the major questions that we have addressed throughout the semester. 10 minutes (practice!!!) Dec 8th  or Dec 10th
Final Paper

Your final paper will be much like your oral presentation, but in written form. That is, you will draw on the work you have done for the term project assignments all semester long to create an integrated presentation of your research question and the expeirment that you have proposed to address that question. The written version will follow APA style; here are some helpful tips on APA style, but I'll help you with any questions that you have.

I view this assignment as a literature review that culminates in an experiment proposal. As such, you do not HAVE to include an Abstract, Method, Results, and/or Discussion sections. But you may do so if you wish. Whatever makes sense to you and will make the writing process easiest. All that is required is a title page, and one 'section', essentially an introduction, that lays out the work that you have done all semester.  Specifically, your paper should include:

  • the question that motivated your paper
  • the relevant background literature
  • the tension or conflict or unanswered question that is the focus of your literature review and proposed experiment.  One way to think about this is that there should be at least two plausible hypotheses regarding the outcome of  your experiment.  There has to be a question with more than one potential answer at the heart of the project 
  • the proposed experiment; again, you can present a formal method section with subsections describe the Participants, Stimuli, and Procedure if you wish.  But, you can just provide a narrative description of your experiment if that is what you prefer.   
  • a clear rationale for what you would expect the results of your experiment to be.  Because you are not collecting any data, you can choose which of your two hypotheses is more likely to occur, but you have to present a clear explanation for WHY you are choosing that hypothetical outcome.       
  • finally, what is your take-home message?  What we learn about autobiograhpical memory from your experiment?  Ideally, this would relate both to the specific question that motivated your experiment, but also to a larger issue that we have been discussing all semester long.  For example: What is the relationship between identity and autobiographical memory?  What kinds of information do we store about the past?  What factors explain whether autobiographical memory is stable or malleable?
To repeat, because no data were collected, you may, but are not required to adopt a formal Intro/Method/Results/Discussion structure. Sometimes students think that this kind of freedom implies that there is a right way and a wrong way and the professor is holding out on you. Maybe that is true with other professors, but that is not how I roll.

The final product should be in the neighborhood of 8-10 pages.

8-10 pages Dec 18th