Instructions for Article Summary
Purpose: The purpose is to expose you to research conducted in the field of learning and behavior.
Article Topics: The articles may be on any topic either in the field of animal learning and behavior, or human learning and behavior.
Article Types: You must choose an article that describes an actual experiment (i.e., the researchers manipulated at least one variable). Refrain from summarizing summary-type articles (e.g., meta-analyses summarizing lots and lots of research other people have done, but no experiments of their own), survey papers (e.g., articles using questionnaires), and/or opinion pieces.
Summary Length: Your summary should be approximately 1-2 pages in length, double-spaced with 12- point font (please use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Calibri). If you need more than 2 pages to write your summary, that is fine; but please try to limit your summary to at most 3 pages. Learning to summarize effectively and write concisely is a good skill to practice!
Content of Summary:
Note: You can answer these questions in any order within your summary, but I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND using this as your outline. You can even use these numbers (1-6) and simply answer each question for your summary (e.g., “1. The authors were interested in XYZ…â€).
Point values:
1 – Main research question(s) (1 points)
2 – Background literature summary (1 point)
3 – Main predictions (1 points)
4 – Methodology and Procedure (1 points)
5 – Main findings and conclusions (1 points)
6 – Writing Quality (5 points)
Writing Quality:
Learning to write well is extremely important. Your success as a student depends upon it. Even more importantly, all employers want someone who has strong communication skills. If I were to rank the most valuable skills a student can possess, strong communication skills would be at the top of the list.
Writing takes time and patience to develop. It does not happen overnight. Nor does it happen by just passively writing a lot. No, the only way that you can make progress at anything is to study it carefully. You need to analyze your own writing and look for ways to improve. Some areas offer easy improvement. For instance, no one should submit an assignment with spelling errors. Other areas take lots of concentrated effort to improve. These are things like writing unambiguous sentences, optimizing your word choices, avoiding fluff, writing in a more direct tone, and so on. These all take time to develop! But to reiterate my earlier message: It is time well spent.
There are lots of excellent books on learning to write well. You can visit the library to find such books. There are also plenty of resources available online. I will give constructive feedback when I can, but ultimately, this is a pursuit that you must follow on your own. Independent study of a topic is not only productive but rewarding. To set out with a mission, gather resources and interpret them to accomplish your mission, will provide you with much joy and fulfillment.
Things to avoid:
Things to do:
Places to find articles:
ProQuest (PsycINFO): http://www.proquest.com/products-services/psycinfo…
Click on the LOGIN button. Select NKU on the next page and enter your login credentials. This resource is great for finding research articles by searching for the author information, topic you are interested in, year range, etc.
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
This resource is also very good for finding research articles, but lacks some of the features available in PsycINFO One benefit is that you can forward-cite articles. If you find Article A, you can then click a button to find all the other researchers who have cited Article A since it was published. This can be useful to find newer research on a particular topic of interest to you.