Psychexchange just posted a video clip of car crashes with several crashes, 
 day and night, that you could use.  Go to 
 
* Car carsh montage may be useful for a Loftus and Palmer replication? - by 
 Mandy Wood - _http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/videos/view/20457/_ 
(http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/videos/view/20457/)  
 
Riki



In a message dated 8/23/2009 3:23:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
csta...@uwf.edu writes:

You can  implement many experiments as a Power Point presentation if you 
use the  automatic slide advance function to control timing. Requires paper 
and pencil  for responses and eliminates RT experiments, but you can still do 
a lot of  interesting projects this way.

I've implemented implicit and explicit  memory tasks. I created a LOP task 
with one word presented per slide, using  anagrammatic words as stuimuli (I 
found a list of words of 5 letters that are  anagrams for one and only one 
word).I  follow the LOP processing task  with a filler task, then give an 
implicit test (solving anagrams that map onto  the words in the lists plus some 
new anagrams that were not studied at all)  followed by an explicit test 
(free recall of all the words presented for  study. Students are biased to 
solve the anagrams with the words they studied  (I have two versions of the LOP 
task so half study words for one solution and  the other half study the 
words for other solution, the anagrams for the  non-studied words serves as a 
control), but level of processing is irrelevant  for this task. The LOP 
effect appears only in the free recall task.  

You can do an eyewitness experiment by creating a slide show in Power  
Point (a number of researchers have done their studies with this technology).  
Requires shooting a lot of digital pictures and there may be some issues in  
staging a crime (especially with a weapon!) for the stimuli. Students can  
avoid those issues and simply stage a non-violent event and look at 
eyewitness  errors in the absence of a weapon (race bias in identification of 
the  
perpetrator is possible, but creates some problems for students who need to  
find people to serve as suitable foils in a photo lineup). One group of  
students stages an automobile accident (with and without an argument between  
those involved in the accident) by taking pictures of cars places  
strategically (the "accident" simply showed the two cars as if there had been  
an 
impact - they pulled them very close together but there was no actual  damage 
to 
the cars). Then they staged mock arguments (gestures, facial  expressions). 
One enterprising group staged a 2 or 3 minute video of an event  for 
eyewitnesses. Harder to create a good manipulation with these unless the  
students 
are really good with editing and can insert a scene.

Good  luck!


Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D.           
Director, Center for University  Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
Associate Professor,  Psychology
University of West Florida
Pensacola, FL  32514 -  5751

Phone:   (850) 857-6355 or (850) 473-7435  
e-mail:  csta...@uwf.edu



-----Original  Message-----
From: Mark A. Casteel [mailto:ma...@psu.edu]
Sent: Sat  8/22/2009 3:28 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences  (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Question about research project in cognitive  psych

Every year, I have my students replicate a classic study in the  field 
in small groups of 2-3 students. Every year, I'm ecstatic with the  
amount of information they learn (as well as the experience of  
presenting their research to the campus community) but I also wish I  
could have them do research that would be more intrinsically 
appealing  to most. We don't offer a psych major at my institution, so 
few of these  students will pursue either cognitive or experimental psych.

I've often  wondered if anyone has had students try to research topics 
like (1) the  negative effects of texting while performing other 
activities or (2) the  influence of the presence/absence of a gun on 
memory for a simulated  crime, without requiring working with 

experimental software like  E-prime or PsyScope. In other words, has 
anyone thought of a fairly easy  way that students could research a 
topic like this, and collect data that  would be both meaningful and 
(to their way of thinking) more interesting?  If I could provide 
guidance with something like this, so the students  don't waste the 
entire semester simply coming up with a workable protocol,  that would 
be fabulous.

Any comments are welcome, including ideas  for other topical issues.  
Thanks!

Mark


*********************************
Mark A.  Casteel, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
Penn State York
1031  Edgecomb Ave.
York, PA  17403
(717)  771-4028
********************************* 


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