PSY 200 Cognitive Psychology. Fall 2017

PSY 200 Cognitive Psychology. Fall 2017 Purdue University Instructor: Dr. Greg Francis Writing assignment #1

Brain asymmetry

Find an article from a serious source that discusses brain asymmetries for a general audience. By a “serious source” I mean an online news source or a web site that presents what it believes to be useful and true information (e.g. not The Onion, or other satire site; some blog posts might be acceptable, but a Facebook discussion is not). By a “general audience” I mean do not use a scientific article in an academic journal. Check with the TA or Dr. Francis if you are not sure whether your source is appropriate.

Your task is to summarize the discussion in the article about brain asymmetries and evaluate whether the information is true and the conclusions are appropriate, given what we have discussed in class and what you discover from other readings.

Hint: To find appropriate sources, do a google search for terms like “right brain thinking”, “right brain creativity”, “left brain math”, “right brain dog”, or similar terms. You should be able to find an article for some topic you are interested in. Personally, I think this assignment is more fun if you find an article that does a poor job discussing the ideas of brain asymmetry.

To make your discussion complete, you probably need more material than just what we discussed in lecture. Use reputable sources (e.g., scientific journal articles or textbooks). Check with the TA or Dr. Francis if you are not sure your additional source is appropriate or correct.

Format: Your report should be 3-5 pages long, single-spaced typed, one-inch margins, with 11 or 12-point font in Times New Roman, Arial, or a similar font. Your name should be on the front page. You should reference the source of your article, and include a URL (copy and past from your web browser) so that we can find the article for ourselves. A graphic should only be included if it is absolutely necessary. Appropriate document formats include MS Word (or something similar) and PDF.

Submission: Email your report to the TA ([email protected]) by 7:30 am on September 1. A late submission (even by one second) receives a score of 0.

Grading: Your report will be graded on a scale of 0-10. A score of 10 requires that the report be free of error (typos, grammar problems, satisfies the format), properly describes the article, and provides coherent and reasonable arguments about whether the article provides good information and conclusions. You will lose points if you try to “trick” the grader by, for example, using a larger font for periods or spaces that modify the line spacing.

Advice: Take advantage of the spell checker in your word processor. Proof your paper multiple times. Swap your paper with someone else so that you each proof each other’s paper. Reading your paper out loud is a good way to catch sentences that do not make sense. Be sure to fully discuss all aspects of the assignment and you should be struggling to keep the document below the maximum allowed length.