Psychology coursework help.?

Question

For my psychology coursework i need to base my study on 2 previous studies of which disagree.
I want to do my study om whether font size and style affect memory or wether pictures help you study better. If any one knows of any study partly like this. Help would be greatly appreicated.

Answer 1

You've thought of some very interesting ideas for your coursework! I wish some of my students had your imagination! The only problem with your topic that I can see (and your teacher may have already told you this) is that if your college is with the AQA A exam board for Psychology, you need to do a topic which is mentioned on the spec (or syllabus) and I don't think your area of research is. However, the areas of the spec that you could link your topic to are:

1. Unit 4- Attention/pattern recognition- The stroop effect (people took longer to recognise colour words if they were presented in a different colour font to the colour names in the word. E.g. The word 'black' written in black would be recognised more quickly than the word 'black' written in blue).

2. Unit 1-Memory-LOP Model (Craik & Lockhardt, 1972)- This model would state that people remember things better if they mean something to them (semantic-deepest level of processing), whereas people who use pictures would do worse. However, Morris et al suggested that memory for pictures (appearance), rhyme (accoustic) & meaning (semantic) depends on what type of information you were learning in the first place. e.g. if you gave people nursery rhymes to remember, people would remember them better if they learned it by singing it, rather than looking at pictures of what happened in it.

MSM model-using pictures/different fonts to learn something would be an example of elaborative rehearsal. i.e. you're doing something with the information that you want to learn, rather than just repeating the words over and over in your head which they say leads to better memories.

Unit 1-Characteristics of LTM. Other researchers have found that we are more likely to remember something if it stands out or if we link it to something else (association), so again pictures/mnemonics would be an excellent example. e.g. when learning a list of words, you'd give each word a number and associate it with a word which rhymes with a number and then form a picture of the word you need to learn and the word which rhymes with your number. E.g. If you're learning a list of 10 words and the number one is a shoe, you would imagaine yourself eating a bun with a shoe in it, or a shoe eating a bun or a bun eating a shoe. The funnier, the better! Research suggests that people do better using this method, compared to people who just learn lists of words.

Hope I've given you a few ideas! For further information, I suggest that you consult one of the following books:

Psychology For AS/A2 Level-Eysenck, M

Psychology for AS/A2 Level-Cardwell, M et al

These books are slightly more advanced than the previous ones but are still very readable and excellent for the purposes of background research into cognitive Psychology:

Cognitive Psychology: A Student's handbook (4th/5th Editions are best)- Eysenck, M and Keane, M.

Memory in the real world-Cohen, G (this book dates back to 1989 but still contains a lot of relevant research into memory and again, is very readable).

For access to the abstracts (sumamry) of journals (research papers), try the following link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed

This link will give you free access to the American national library of medicine database. A lot of the articles are related to Psychology! Some are a bit tehnical, but again, others are very readable and if you can refer to some of the abstracts on here, you'll get extra marks in your introduction and/ or discussion, especially if you can link the stuff to your chosen topic.

By the way, it doesn't matter if the 2 studies you found disagree, as this is a good rationale for carrying out your coursework (i.e. to investigate this topic further as they disagree). To resolve this issue, all you have to do is use a non-directional Hypothesis and state that this mixed evidence is the reason why you have chosen this type of Hypothesis. Also, after carrying out your study, you could then comment on which study your results fit in with the best when discussing the implications of your results and suggesting areas for further research!

NB. I apologise profusely if everything I've told you so far is completely irrelevant to the exam board you're with or has already been explained to you by your teacher!

If you need any further help(apart from that offerered by your teacher), my (free, non-commercial, non-profit) teaching resource website address is:

www.freewebs.com/psychedout

To e-mail me, click on the e-mail/contact me link.

Good luck with your coursework!

Answer 2

pictures are generally for children's educational improvement,as age matures memory and learning is based on physical interaction!

Answer 3

I thought a grasp of english came in handy for Pyscollegy.
Do CSE English first.

Answer 4

http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtpsy.htm
I suggest you to visit this web site. Think you will find something

Answer 5

do your bloody own!!
lol..