Fall 2003
MW 2-3:50
Classroom: 2019 BSB
Course Call Number 96326
Instructor: Jennifer Wiley
Office: 1054D BSB
Phone: (312) 355-2501
Email: jwiley@uic.edu
Office Hours: Tues 1-2pm or by appointment
TA: Ben Jee
Office: 1079 BSB
Email: bendj@uic.edu
Office Hours: 2-3 Thursday or by appointment
Purpose of Course
The purpose of this course is to give students first-hand experience with
research methods in developmental psychology. For the first part of the course,
students will gain experience in running planned studies on developmental
topics. For each experiment, students will collect or code data, then
enter the data into SPSS and analyze and interpret it, reporting experimental
results in APA format.
Students will learn background for each study by reading original research articles, discussing the articles in terms the ideas that they use to predict results, and how those predictions relate to our own results.
For the second half of the semester, each student and a partner will be responsible for designing an experiment or study, based on a previous research article, collecting or coding data, entering and analyzing the data and presenting results in the form of a poster.
This class is designed to be of interest to students who may be considering graduate school in psychology, but will be useful to any student who enjoys the topics of development, and wants to better understand the nature of psychological research. More generally, a background in developmental research methods is good experience for students who are considering a wide range of careers including education, medicine, and neuroscience.
Readings
Journal Articles:
Assigned readings will be posted as PDF files on the web page after students
have participated in each experiment.
Strongly Recommended Text:
American Psychological Association. (2000). Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Grading
Grades will be determined by the following breakdown
20% Lab Participation
20% Quizzes on Readings
and Exercises
5% Assignment 1
10% Assignment 2
10% Assignment 3
10% Assignment 4
5% Assignment
5/Summarization Exercise
20% Presentation,
Paper and Poster of Final Project (Paper Due Dec. 12 by 5p, can email)
No make-up quizzes will be given.
No late papers will be accepted.
Students with Disabilities: Reasonable accommodations will be made, but requests must be made during the first week of class. Students with disabilities who require accommodations for access and participation in this course must be registered with the Office of Disability Services (ODS). Please contact ODS at 312/413-2103 or 312/413-0123.
Campus Policy on Observance of Religious Holidays
The faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago shall make every
effort to avoid scheduling examinations or requiring that student projects
be turned in or completed on religious holidays. Students who wish to observe
their religious holidays shall notify the faculty member by the tenth day
of the semester of the date when they will be absent unless the religious
holiday is observed on or before the tenth day of the semester. In such
cases, the student shall notify the faculty member at least five days in
advance of the date when he/she will be absent. The faculty member shall
make every reasonable effort to honor the request, not penalize the student
for missing the class, and if an examination or project is due during the
absence, give the student an exam or assignment equivalent to the one completed
by those students in attendance. If the student feels aggrieved, he/she may
request remedy through the campus grievance procedure.
Plagiarism is defined as the use of another author's words or thoughts without due credit. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
Course Schedule
Aug 25
Introductory remarks
Assignment: Get Network (Email) Accounts before next class
Aug 27
Participate in Experiment 1: Stories
Initial Coding of Recalls
Reading Assignment 1: Hayes
Sep 01 Labor Day -- no class
Sep 03
Quiz on Reading Assignment 1
Discussion on Article and Coding
Sep 08
Class in 4133 BSB
Intro to SPSS and EXCEL, Descriptive & Inferential Statistics
Enter data and analyze
Sep 10
Short Lecture on APA Style
Title
Page & Abstract
Writing Assignment 1: Title Page and Abstract for Study 1
Grading Sheet for Writing Assignment
Sep 15
Class in 4133 BSB
Writing Assignment Due
Participate in Experiment 2: Children's Discourse
Corpus
Data
Short lecture on APA method and reference section
Take notes on
method
Reading Assignment 2: Gentner
(Read pages 305-316)
Sep 17 Quiz
on reading
Walk through article, background, and predictions for study
In this study we used 5 transcripts from the CHILDES corpora.
You should cite the references for those corpora:
For the 11-month-old child, we used two files from Higginson (1985):
may01.cha & may02.cha
Reference these with:
Higginson, R.P. (1985). Fixing-assimilation in language acquisition.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Washington State University.
For the 18, 19 & 24-month-old children, we used three files from Warren-Leubecker
(1982, Warren-Leubecker & Bohannon 1984):
scott.cha (18), megan.cha (19)& wendy.cha (24)
Reference these with BOTH:
Warren-Leubecker, A. (1982). Sex differences in speech to children.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Georgia Institute of Technology.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J.N. (1984). Intonation patterns
in child-directed speech: Mother-father speech. Child Development, 55,
1379-1385.
In addition, articles based on the use of the CHILDES database should
cite:
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Third
Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sep 22
Class in 4133 BSB
Analyze data from Study 2 in SPSS
Writing Assignment 2 -- Abstract, Title, Method (and references since we
have citations!)
Participate in Study 3: OverviewObservation
Movie Stimulus File
that Child Saw
Initial Coding
Reading Assignment 3: Fantz
Sep 24
Full Writing Assignment 2 Due
Quiz on reading
Walk through article, background, predictions
Assignment: Recode Observations
Sep 30
Class in 4133 BSB
Short lecture on APA results
section
Observation
Data
Analyze data
Making graphs of results in Excel
Observation
Data Graph
Writing assignment 3: Title, Abstract & Results (and references if
you cited anything)
Oct 1
Writing Assignment Due
Plagiarism Examples
Oct 6
Class in 4133 BSB
Participate in Experiment 4
How to run an experiment
Assignment: Run Experiment on others
Reading Assignment 4: Carey article
Oct 8
Quiz on reading
Walk through article, background, predictions
Oct 13
Class in 4133 BSB CategorizationData
Code and Analyze data
How
to find papers on PSYCINFO/ERIC
How to write
an Introduction and Discussion
Reading Assignment 5: Find an article related to this study.
Send reference to TA. If approved, you will be responsible for
presenting this article to the class.
Oct 15 Reference
exercise: summarize an article for the class
(5 minutes or less per student)
Tell us in four or five sentences:
what the main question of the study was, how they studied it,
what they found, what they think it means.
Writing Assignment 4: title, abstract, intro, discussion & reference
section.
Oct 20
Writing Assignment 4 Due
Finish Presentations
How to pick a project - Project
worksheet
How to labsamp.html
write a proposal
Assignment: Find a lab partner, pick a project, complete worksheet
When worksheet complete email to instructor (jwiley@uic.edu)
or hand in to TA
and schedule a meeting with Instructor
Oct 22-29 CALENDAR for Meetings with Instructor on Projects
Nov 3-5 Meetings
with Instructor/TA on Experiment Materials
Full written proposal due NOVEMBER 6th.
Proposal including FINAL COPIES OF MATERIALS must be submitted.
Nov 10,12 Collect Data (Participate in group data collection)
Nov 17,19 Analyze data (2057 available)
Use these worksheets
to work through analyses on your own.
Nov 24 How to make
a poster
Applying to Grad School and Letters
of Recommendation; Sample Vita
How to present
your poster
Nov 26 Poster preparation (2057 available)
Dec 1 Final poster preparation (2057 available)
Dec 3 Undergraduate
Research Poster Fair, 1075/1077 BSB 2-3pm