SS 1401: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

General Information

Background Information & Idea Generation

Web Searching

Evaluate...

Evaluating Web Resources Checklist (PDF)

According to a study at Stanford, nearly half of all web site evaluators (46.1%) used visual cues, to assess a site's credibility. Move beyond what a site looks like...

Your textbook is a great starting place, and the online support materials. To explore beyond this, check out topics in the following sources, or browse table of contents of journals listed below.

The free web: try Jux2 search engine
You may want to gather some information from news or statistical sources to introduce your hypothesis: for news try LexisNexis Academic or magazines Gale PowerSearch and follow up on data sources mentioned
Gather data, keywords, theories, and authors related to your topic.
Encyclopedia of Psychology. 4 vols. Reference Collection BF31 E52 1994
Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science. [Electronic book]
Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence. Reference Collection BF431 E59 1994
The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Reference Collection BF31 O94 1987

Information Choices: Choosing Scholarly Sources

First, understand different types of periodical literature by reviewing SearchPath: Starting Smart
Scholarly Journals, Popular Magazines, Trade Journals and Newspapers: What's the Difference?

Cycle of Scientific Literature

Psychology Today (popular magazine) vs. Cognitive Psychology (scholarly/refereed/academic journal)
Review article examples : Annual Review of Psychology: Attention and Performance or Mobile (cellular) phone use and driving: A critical review of research methodology

Meta-analysis: uses quantitative methods to summarise the results of many studies on a single topic
Literature review: survey of key publications in a specific field or topic area. Comprehensive reviews can be published as a single article. All research studies begin with a brief literature review as well.

Research/Empirical study example : or Driven to Distraction: Dual-Task Studies of Simulated Driving and Conversing on a Cellular Telephone

Glean keywords & authors during your research travels…

Search Example

(attention OR distract* OR Signal Detection) AND (driver OR driving OR automobile OR traffic) AND (Telephone Systems OR cell* phone* OR mobile phone*)

Find Scholarly Research that Support or Negate Your Idea

All databases are WPI subscriptions except Cogprints & Google Scholar. Be aware that Google Scholar links to WPI subscribed resources, it's not all "free web."

PsycINFO: Premier databases of journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations and reports on psychology and related fields. Includes PsycARTICLES. Use CitedRef to track down other articles that cite a good one that you find. In class activity
ScienceDirect: Collection of online journals, many of which you may end up linking to from PsycINFO, but well worth searching for psychology topics.
CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences EPrint Archives: An electronic archive of papers in Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, Computer Science, Philosophy, Biology, Medicine, and Anthropology.
Google Scholar: A focused search on scholarly literature, use but be aware of the pitfalls of searching the free web. They also have a cited by link, which displays all of the other items within google scholar that cites that particular source.
Web of Knowledge - Social Sciences Citation Index: References and cited references to the literature of the social sciences - type in a topic and use Analyze to find key journals, authors, institutions, in a specific field. 1990 to the present.
Find books by scholars: Gordon Library Catalog | Beyond WPI: WorldCat

Only Finding a Citation? Getting the Full Text

Is the journal online or here in the library? Search our Journals, Magazines, & Newspapers
Visit another library: Search WorldCat to find one
Request delivery from another library: Interlibrary Loan.

Give Credit! Cite Your Sources

Cognitive Psychology - Core Journals

Filtering Tips

Scan results: look at Subject headings/descriptors and use them to expand search

Scruntinize article titles, number of pages, and journal title

Browse promising abstract and conclusion sections of long studies

Bibliographies can clue you in on the value of the article as well

Find an interesting author? Search for more articles by him/her or web search for his/her web site

All journals listed are WPI subscriptions .

Cognitive Psychology via ScienceDirect: 1993 to present
Cognition via ScienceDirect: 1997 to present
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition via APA PsycARTICLES 1985 to present
Cognitive Science via ScienceDirect 1995 to present
Applied Cognitive Psychology via Wiley Interscience 1997 to present
Memory and Cognition no full text access at WPI, visit Clark and Holy Cross or request via Interlibrary Loan

Questions?

Stop by the reference desk or set up a research consultation.

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Last modified: Mar 12, 2008, 08:35 EDT