Library Research Exercises
Listed below are a number of exercises designed to sharpen your
skills in library research. The exercises start with tracking down
specific information in situations in which quite a bit is known,
progress to tracking down specific information in situations in
which little is known, and then finish with tracking down
general background information on a specific topic. By the time you
get to the end of these exercises, you should have sufficient skills
to research and plan a study of your own.
- You are working on a paper for class and you remember
reading a relevant article on imagery and its impact on
classical conditioning for another class. You do not remember
the title, the authors, or the journal, but you do remember that
it was a review article and that it was relatively recent (2006
or later).
- You want to do a paper on learned taste aversion. You know
that this phenomenon is known by another name, but you cannot
remember the name.
- You read about some interesting work on brain mechanisms
behind psychological disorders, such as depression. The author
whose name kept coming up in this discussion was Richard
Davidson. Find some other articles written by this psychologist
on related topics.
- In your developmental course, you read about the early work
of Jean Piaget. You want to know how his ideas are influencing
modern research on cognitive development. Identify a set of
recent studies of cognitive development that have been shaped by
Piaget's ideas.
- There is a considerable controversy about the heritability
of IQ. It came up in your personality class, and this is the
third time is was covered in classes you have taken. But
different textbooks have made different claims, and your
instructors do not always agree with the textbook authors. You
decide to find out for yourself, so you search for recent work
on this issue.
- In a course on physiological psychology, the text discusses
the corpus callosum and its role in brain functioning. It
mentions in passing that this brain structure has been
implicated in some forms of psychopathology. You decide that
this would make a good topic for a paper in your abnormal
psychology class, so you search for papers on this topic.
- You want to do a paper on connectionist models of learning
and memory, but you know little about the topic. Do a general
search to find good background reading to help you understand
the topic well enough to zero in on a good idea for a course
paper.
- Your instructor demonstrated an illusion in class. You think
it was called "line movement," although you are not sure. It
involved looking at a square block while a thick black line
appeared to the right of the block. Even though the line
appeared all at once, most of the people in the class, including
you, saw the line appear as if it started at the block and moved
away from the block. You found this demonstration interesting
and were disappointed that your instructor did not tell you more
about it. You decide to find out more by searching in the
library.
- In your social psychology class, you read about the work are
Darley and Latane on bystander apathy. This work was inspired by
the tragic death of Kitty Genovese several decades ago while
dozens of people watched and no one helped or called the police.
But most of the research talked about in class and in the text
was done 20 years ago or more. You want to know if anyone is
still doing work in this area and what questions they are
addressing.
- You are considering doing a paper, perhaps even a study, on
factors that may predispose someone to develop a panic disorder.
Find the available information on this topic.
- You are interested in doing a paper on language acquisition.
You know very little about the topic. Do a general search of the
area to find information to help you narrow the topic to a more
manageable size.
- You have become fascinated with the topic of reconstructive
memory and you want to know what is known about the neurological
mechanisms behind this phenomenon.
- You are required to design a study for your research methods
class. It can be on any topic in psychology. You do not have to
run the study, so you can plan things that would be
prohibitively expensive to do by yourself. However, the study
should make good theoretical sense and answer a question that
has yet to be answered by researchers. Choose a topic, identify
appropriate background reading, narrow the topic to a manageable
size, and then identify the "must read" literature on this
topic.