Writing Up Assignment
Notes to help you with writing up Assignment 1: The effect of disfluency on memory for novel material.
Essential materials:
1. This assignment is based on the following paper which you will find on the VLE:
Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M. and Vaughan, E. B. (2011) Fortune favors the bold (and the italicised): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118, pp. 111–115.
2. ‘Writing up practical reports’ document from the VLE. 3. Practical reports markscheme from the module handbook. 4. Guidance from the module handbook on submission of assignments
Please note that the 2,000 ± 10% word-count excludes the abstract, graphs, data tables, references and the Appendix.
Abstract.
This section tends to be the last one that you write. There is a good model of an abstract in ‘Writing up practical reports’ on which you should base yours. Be sure to include named key research, succinct statements of statistical results (not just p values) and your conclusions and implications of the findings.
Introduction.
In this section you set the scene for the reader and make a case for your research question(s) based on existing research. Try to avoid a chatty, journalistic style; instead you should imagine yourself giving evidence which you can back up with respectable publications i.e. peer-reviewed journals, respected academic authors, university websites. Some references are given at the end of this document out of which you should pick relevant material. They are obtainable via links and on the VLE but do try to find some additional sources of your own. Avoid Wikipedia or other websites in which the trustworthiness of the content cannot be verified. The argument for the research question should flow naturally from your chosen material e.g. you might argue for testing the reliability of the original findings or doing a replication with an important change to the original design or testing the findings’ validity with new
Essential materials:
1. This assignment is based on the following paper which you will find on the VLE:
Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M. and Vaughan, E. B. (2011) Fortune favors the bold (and the italicised): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118, pp. 111–115.
2. ‘Writing up practical reports’ document from the VLE. 3. Practical reports markscheme from the module handbook. 4. Guidance from the module handbook on submission of assignments
Please note that the 2,000 ± 10% word-count excludes the abstract, graphs, data tables, references and the Appendix.
Abstract.
This section tends to be the last one that you write. There is a good model of an abstract in ‘Writing up practical reports’ on which you should base yours. Be sure to include named key research, succinct statements of statistical results (not just p values) and your conclusions and implications of the findings.
Introduction.
In this section you set the scene for the reader and make a case for your research question(s) based on existing research. Try to avoid a chatty, journalistic style; instead you should imagine yourself giving evidence which you can back up with respectable publications i.e. peer-reviewed journals, respected academic authors, university websites. Some references are given at the end of this document out of which you should pick relevant material. They are obtainable via links and on the VLE but do try to find some additional sources of your own. Avoid Wikipedia or other websites in which the trustworthiness of the content cannot be verified. The argument for the research question should flow naturally from your chosen material e.g. you might argue for testing the reliability of the original findings or doing a replication with an important change to the original design or testing the findings’ validity with new
References: You are unlikely to be able to access full text versions of Craik and Lockhart (1972) and Craik and Tulving (1975) but a summary by Craik appears in this paper on pp. 306-7: Craik, F Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008) ‘The secret life of fluency’. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12 (6), pp. 237–241. Alter, A. L. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009) ‘Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation’. Personality & Social Psychology Review, 13 (3), pp. 219–235.