Help needed from Psychologists/Psych students

davidsonsl

I have to write a critical review for a lifespan assignment, however I have to complete it this weekend and I am only a 1st year student which means most of the journals still read a bit gobble de gook to me! can any one help by reviewing the following journal and giving me the low down on what it means? I am looking for:
1. The purpose of the study - in laymans
2. What the results show
3. Why was this any different to any of the previous studies performed?
4. Any critisisms of the study itself.

Any help will be very very very very much appreciated....

Link for review (hopefully works, if not pm me and I can email it to you) is at: http://gateway.uk.ovid.com/gw1/ovidweb.cgi?WebLinkFrameset=1&S=JOKFPDHGBEHFLEEAFNJLPGHHKIPPAA00&returnUrl=http%3a%2f%2fgateway.uk.ovid.com%2fgw1%2fovidweb.cgi%3f%26Titles%3dS.sh.16%257c1%257c10%26FORMAT%3dtitle%26FIELDS%3dTITLES%26S%3dJOKFPDHGBEHFLEEAFNJLPGHHKIPPAA00&directlink=http%3a%2f%2fgraphics.uk.ovid.com%2fovftpdfs%2fPDHFFNHHPGEABE00%2ffs046%2fovft%2flive%2fgv023%2f00063061%2f00063061-197801000-00007.pdf

melancholly

i'm happy to have a look at what you put and see if it makes sense, but i'm not happy to go as far as writing it for you! if you've done a full year of your course, you should be able to get at least some of the way there completely on your own, but it won't do you any favours for next year if you get other people to go all the leg work!

you should be able to get a good idea of the purpose of the study from the abstract, which will also give you the takehome message of the results. in their introduction they will explain why their experiment is important and therefore different to other peoples' work.

you can also look at other papers who have cited the paper and see what they wrote about it... that should help too.

(and incidentally, i doubt the link will work as ovid requires a uni/athens login).

davidsonsl

I am not looking for someone to write the paper for, merely do some laymans trasnlastions, and I have not completed my 1st year, I said I am in my 1st year and have only covered 1 module that used journals, which is why they read like arabic to me, thanks for the support!

melancholly

well type in here the particular phrases that you're struggling with....

bestpud

Is it specific terms you are struggling with or the paper in general?

In my experience (not vast, it has to be said ), the abstract, introduction and discussion are the easiest places to start and the results section can be the worst to decipher (sp?). That is especially so if it's a bit heavy on the stats!

That's just me though and everyone is different so you may get more help if you can be more specific. In fairness to melancholly, they have taken the trouble to make useful suggestions, and your original post is asking for enough info to write an assignment...

Just my thoughts!

davidsonsl

Sorry, a little tetchy, needs to be in by monday!
What does this mean then?:

Each infant was assigned a stage corresponding
to the highest task passed. Infants who failed all the
tasks were assigned to Stage 2. The correlation between
stage assignments for the two scorers was high, r(10) =
.95, p < .001.
The object-permanence items were also coded in a
behavioral checklist by the undergraduate observer and
then scored as passed or failed according to the scoring
criteria described by Uzgiris and Hunt (1975, p. 222).
Fischer's definitions of stages were used to assign the
items to Stages 3 to 7 (corresponding to the stages of
self-recognition). The criterial item for each stage was
as follows: Stage 3, Item 3; Stage 4, Item 4; Stage 5,
Item 8; Stage 6, Item 11; and Stage 7, Item 14. Stage 2
was defined as failure on all the items, but no infants

failed the lowest object-permanence item.

davidsonsl

And how would you sum this up?:

Both analyses showed that the data
closely fit the predicted sequence. Green's
(1956) index of consistency for the selfrecognition
data was .90; Green states that
any index greater than .50 indicates scalability.
The second statistic, Loevinger's (1947)
index of homogeneity, assesses not only the
scalability of all the items in the sequence
taken as a whole, but also the extent to
which each separate item measures a different
point along the same scale. The homogeneity
of the test as a whole was .93. The
homogeneities of the individual items were
1.00 for all the tasks except the toy task,
which had a homogeneity of .97, and the hat
task, which had a homogeneity of .89.
In addition to the tests of scalability, an
analysis of variance was computed to test
for age and sex differences in selfrecognition
behavior. Each infant was assigned
a score equal to the number of selfrecognition

items passed.

In addition to the tests of scalability, an
analysis of variance was computed to test
for age and sex differences in selfrecognition
behavior. Each infant was assigned
a score equal to the number of selfrecognition

items passed. The only sig-

nificant effect was for age, F(5, 36) = 36.05,

p < .001, which also demonstrated a significant
linear trend, F(\, 36) = 174.80,p <

.001.

davidsonsl

again?!?:

In the analysis of variance, age and sex
were between-subjects variables, and task
was a within-subjects variable. The dependent
measure was stage. As shown in Figure
1, self-recognition and object permanence
snowed an Age x Task interaction, F(5, 36)
= 4.59, p < .005, as well as an age main
effect, F(5, 36) = 82.57, p < .001. No other
main effects or interactions were significant.
Newman-Keuls post hoc tests (p < .05)
showed that the development of selfrecognition
was significantly behind that of
object permanence at 12 and 18 months and
showed no significant difference at the other
ages. The significant differences were produced
by infants at Stages 5, 6, and 7 of

object permanence.

melancholly

all i get from the first bit with the correlation is that intrarater reliability was high - i.e. any effects are genuine and not due to the scorer being a bit dodgy! i know very little about developmental stuff, but the general gist seems to be that different scoring methods produced the same result: i.e. the results are reliable. then older kids are better at object permanence and self recognition tasks, but they get better at object permanence earlier.

melancholly

just to add, i think the main result that i assume addresses the hypotheses in the intro is likely to be the ANOVA looking at both tasks. all the other gumpf is how they got to the point to be able to compare the two tasks against each other. the interation means that age has a different effect on the two tasks - and the figure should make these effects clear.

davidsonsl

sorry you lost me?!?