482I/382I Paper Assignment

Your final paper assignment allows you to research a topic of your own choosing.  Part of the goal of this assignment is to help you develop the skills necessary to independently research topics within the academic cognitive science literature.

Paper Development Requirements:

1.) You must submit a proposal outlining your proposed topics for my approval.  The due date for this proposal is given in the syllabus.
            Your paper proposal must fall squarely within cognitive science.  That is, it must focus upon a scientific attempt to understand some aspect of cognition. 

2.) After you have had your proposal approved, you must submit a list of preliminary sources.   The due date for this list of preliminary sources is given in the syllabus.
            You must have at least 5 sources that are from academic journals or books.  You may also include other sources, but they should not be your primary sources.

3.)  You will be assigned to a group for the paper fair.  You must have a complete draft of your paper and exchange it with the members of your paper fair group by the deadline given in the syllabus.  

4.) On the paper fair day given in the syllabus you will meet with your group in class.  You must give each member of your group a completed paper fair review sheet on their paper.  You should spend the paper fair time discussing one another's papers and how best to improve them during the paper fair.

General Paper Requirements:

Your papers can range in length from 10-17 pages.  Graduate student papers should range from 14-17 pages.  Your papers must have at least five academic sources (such as journal articles or books) listed in a bibliography.  You must follow proper academic citation practices.  Plagiarism will result in your paper receiving an F.

Your paper need not, and likely will not, constitute original, groundbreaking research.  However, your paper should have an original thesis expressing your understanding of the material that you have read.  For some general suggestions of how you might frame such a thesis, see the examples below.   The goal of your paper is to present the information you have learned in a concise, well-organized and well-written format so that anyone could pick-up your paper and read it with comprehension.  

Examples of Possible Papers

Comparisons between two candidate theories for some cognitive capacity:

            Comparison between Biederman's Recognition By Components and Feature Integration Theory of object recognition

            Comparison Between Dual-Process Views of Human Reasoning and Heuristics and Biases Theories

Discussion of a class of cognitive phenomena and how a particular theory seeks to explain those phenomena:

            Face-based human empathetic responses and their underlying neural mechanisms

            Stages of procedural memory and their corresponding neuronal mechanisms

Effects on Cognition of Diseases or Drugs:

            Preprogrammed neuronal cell death and Schizophrenia

            Mechanisms inducing hallucinations during LSD use