Competencies
In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competencies:
- Evaluate approaches to cognitive research
- Apply concepts of cognitive science to innovation and technology
Supporting Materials
The following resources support your work on the project:
- Reading: Tips for Writing Popular Blog Posts
Review this Shapiro Library resource for useful tips about creating blog posts.
- Reading: Categorization Is Cognition
Review this blog-style article as an example of what your finished blog might look like. Notice the tips from the Shapiro Library article above that are present: a catchy title, an image, and well-written body text organized by headers.
Scenario
As technology evolves, members of the cognitive science community seek to better characterize the potential impacts that technology might have on our cognitive skills. There have been exciting benefits to the advances over the past 20 years, but have these same tools also changed the way we think? Have they changed our capacity to attend and process information? As you have learned in previous courses, such as PSY 222 (Research Methods) and PSY 260 (Statistical Literacy in Psychology), these sparks of curiosity can turn into research questions, and soon a body of work is produced—in this case, one that examines the effects of innovation and technology on the cognition of specific populations. To successfully complete this assignment, you will need to use your data literacy skills and analyze the research for what it is and for what it isn’t.
For this project, due in Module Seven, you will create a technology and cognition blog post with the goal of educating a general audience, as well as healthcare providers, who are educated but not necessarily familiar with your topic of research. Do your best to summarize your sources in your own words with a scientific and formal but not overly technical tone. As such, do not use quotations in your blog, but be sure to use in-text citations and references appropriately. Building this type of communication skill will exercise your ability to consume information and will benefit you in any career path you choose.
In your Project Two Milestone, which was due in Module Five, you selected a topic and completed an annotated bibliography of current research related to your topic. Be sure to incorporate any instructor feedback on the analysis of your sources before beginning work on this project. You will use all of the primary sources from your milestone to complete this project. You must address each of the rubric criteria listed below in about 600 to 900 words total.
Directions
Based on your topic selection and research in your Project Two milestone, create a technology and cognition blog post using the Project Two Template. You must address the rubric criteria listed below in about 600 to 900 words total:
- Topic Summary and Theory Background
- Describe why research is being done on your selected topic.
- Summarize how technology affects cognition for your selected topic.
- Describe how a classic theory or concept in cognitive psychology applies to your selected topic. Examples include encoding specificity, levels of processing, late or early selection models, the multiple resources approach to attention, automaticity, and the dual-route model of language.
- Compare and Contrast Primary Research Articles: To answer each of the questions below, compare and contrast two of the three primary sources you identified in your Project Two milestone. Incorporate all three primary sources in your responses.
- Compare the use of participants in two primary sources of your choice. Consider how the choice of participants is relevant to the research or how comparing the participants could inform future research or different conclusions.
- Compare the measures, tests, and research designs used in two primary sources and compare how these measures relate to the specific domains of cognition mentioned in the articles. Consider how the research methods used are relevant to the research and how they can inform future research or different conclusions.
- Compare the limitations identified in two primary sources of your choice. Consider how the limitations are relevant to the research methodology implemented or conclusions drawn. For example, does the methodology in one article use procedures that can be used to infer causation more precisely and accurately? Does one source have a more representative sample than the other?
- Conclusions
- Describe your conclusions about your selected topic based on the research you have analyzed.
What to Submit
To complete this project, you must submit the following:
Technology and Cognition Blog Post
Submit your completed Project Two Template. Sources should be cited according to APA style.
