Psychology IA

How to choose your IA topicStep by step

This powerpoint will take you through the process of choosing the topic for your internally-assessed psychology experiment.1The moment has come to choose your topicLaura Swash Pamoja, August 20122

Ethical see p41 of the Psychology guide. Lots of help here on how to make sure that you choose the correct topic that may be studied in an ethical manner.Replication - SL students are required to do a simple experiment by undertaking a replication of a published experimentalstudy. (p45)True experiment - involving the manipulation of one independent variable while other variables are kept constant and the measurement of the effect of the independent variable on one dependent variable (p42).Simple - Characteristics of the SL simple experimental study are as follows. Limited in scope Involves the manipulation of only one independent variable Involves the measurement of only one dependent variable Requires the use and interpretation of descriptive statistics Many published research studies are quite complex in nature. For the purposes of the internal assessment,the scope of the original study may be deliberately limited in order to fulfil the requirements.(p45)2Ethical?Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20123NameLink (or use your texts)DescriptionAsch, S. (1950s)Conformity (See Course Companion, p119-121)Several studies into conformity.Bandura, A., Ross D. and Ross, S.A. (1961) Social Learning (See Course Companion, p 111-114)Research into the transmission of aggression through children imitating aggressive adult role models. Peterson, L.R. and Peterson, M.J. (1959) Memory (See slide 8 for a summary)Memory and meaning, exploring the levels of processing theory.

Stroop, J.R. (1935)Cognitive Processing(See slide 9 for a summary)Automatic cognitive processing, and interference in verbal reactions.

Read the guidelines from p41 on the Psychology guide, and then make up your mind. Is the study ethical? Why/why not?3True Experiment?Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20124There is either one experimental group and one control group, or two experimental groups, each under different conditions. Other variables are controlled.

This means that many studies that we have looked at are not actually true experiments under the IB definition: Bartlett, Festinger et al., Hofstede, Kasamatsu and Hirai, Davidson, etc.

Cognitive psychology yields the most replicable experiments, into attitudes and into memory. The SCLOA also gives us some, but not Milgram or Zimbardo!4Its Simple!Some ideas for you. You do not have to do any one of these, but they are a good starting point for your thinking. (See the Psychology Guide, p 46-47 for more details):

Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20125Central traits in impression formationForming impressions of personality, Asch (1946) How adjectives used in a description of a fictional person affect the persons likeability rating.

Social facilitationThe dynamogenic factors in pace-making and competition, Triplett (1898) How the presence of others affects the speed of performance on a task.

Memory and levels of processing, Craik and Tulving (1975). How the level at which we process a word affects our memory.

Word and letter recognition. Context effects and effects of position in visual search, Neisser (1964)How the task of finding a letter amongst others is affected by the shape of the contextual letters.

5Here we go!My IATopicStudy replicatedAimVariables - IVVariables DVVariables - ControlledLaura Swash Pamoja, August 20126

If you cannot complete this chart then you cannot do this experiment!.6

And remember to Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20127Ask if you need helpMeet deadlinesChoose something that interests youRead the IA section in the guide

Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20128

Laura Swash Pamoja, August 20129Attention: J.R.Stroop (1935) Stroop (1935) noted that observers were slower to properly identify the colour of ink when the ink was used to produce colour names different from the ink. That is, observers were slower to identify red ink when it spelled the word blue. This is an interesting finding because observers are told to not pay any attention to the word names and simply report the colour of the ink. However, this seems to be a nearly impossible task, as the name of the word seems to interfere with the observer's ability to report the colour of the ink. Abstract: In this study pairs of conflicting stimuli, both being inherent aspects of the same symbols, were presented simultaneously (a name of one colour printed in the ink of another colour--a word stimulus and a colour stimulus). The difference in time for reading the words printed in colours and the same words printed in black is the measure of the interference of colour stimuli upon reading words. The difference in the time for naming the colours in which the words are printed and the same colours printed in squares is the measure of the interference of conflicting word stimuli upon naming colours.

Reference: Stroop, J.R., 1935. Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 643-662.