Literature Research Objectives

1. Understand the value of literature reviews

2. Determine how to use it to generate ideas
3. Learn general sources for literature
4. Describe general approach to literature review
5. Describe use of Psych Info abstracting services
6. Describe use of Scientific Citation Index
7. Describe use of Reference retrieval systems (EndNote/Ref Manager)

Study Questions

1. What can be gained from searching the literature?

2. Outline a literature search
3. What information can be gained by Psych Info
4. What are the advantages of using Scientific Citation Index over subject
indexes?
5. How do you use a reference management tool to keep references?
6. How do you read an article critically?
7 How to maintain your reference material?

Literature Review
I. Importance
A. Draw of history (very large)

1. by Psych Info 60k new records per year, 1.9 million Sept 2002
http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/products/psycinfo.html
2. ~50k research psychology scientists

B. What can be gained from history

1. experimental ideas (what seems interesting)

2. techniques (how to run a memory experiment; do ?????
for time of day or type of word)
3. Data (what are the empirical relationships known,
what primary results
(don't reinvent the wheel); what variables tend to affect typing
4. Theoretical interpretations of phenomenon
(example psychological physics of weight 0 detection)
5. Learn the names of interested colleagues
(someone else to talk with)
two heads are better than one

C. Giving credit where it is due

1. leads to cooperation
 2. fairness
3. allows readers to draw on their knowledge in
understanding your work

II. General approach to literature review

A. Find general reference and vocabulary to describe

1. Talk with faculty with expertise in the area

2. Books in the area

a. check books in print subject index

b. check general textbooks available
c. try card catalogue - general topic (see card
classification book)

2. Articles of a review nature in specific journals

a. Psychology Review - theories and consideration

of theories
b. Psychological Bulletin - reviews in area (look
at cumulative indexes
10 yrs - take 1 hr)
c. Annual Review of Psychology long, very detailed
articles
d. Scientific American - basic statements of ideas

B. Finding specific references and researchers

1. Utilize the reference of the general references

2. Search abstract services

a. Psychological Abstracts/Silver Platter (discussed later)

b. Biological Abstracts
c. Index Medicus (Medline)
d. ERIC files ed. research info. center
e. Government Publications Index

3. Check bibliographies (SilverPlatter)

a. check with reference librarian

b. ask researchers

C. Read (often only skim) specific references

1. determine which ones are relevant

2. determine which articles are consistently referenced
(look for classic)
3. delete irrelevant group from starting references
4. prioritize the reference for inclusion in current search
 Literature Search
Consult General
Select Topic
Sources
Of Interest
(Books, review articles, faculty)
Formal Vocabulary,
Main Results

Consult Abstract Index,

Academic Indexes,
Search Engines (Psych Info)

Pool Of Specific References

Use Reference manager program Organize and note pdf

Skim/read references
Determine which are relevant and
what references are often referenced
Other References of
Citing authors
Pool of useful references

Reference to
Cited authors Read carefully for
Check Science
Research information,
Citation Index
Code for retrieval
D. Find articles citing your starting references

1. Use SCI to find citing articles

2. check other articles by that author
3. add these to specific reference list and go to 2
4. end result a branching

a. note each link has partner

E. Note, cover current journals - go to those journals that

appeared in previous searches

III. Use of Psychology Abstracts/Silver Platter

A. Location

B. Example reference
TI: Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless
spreading activation and limited-capacity attention.
AU: Neely,-James-H.
IN: Yale U
JN: Journal-of-Experimental-Psychology-General; 1977 Sep Vol 106(3) 226-254
IS: 00963445
LA: English
PY: 1977
AB: Prior to each target letter string presented visually to 120 university students in a
speeded word-nonword classification task, either bird, body, building, or xxx
appeared as a priming event. Five types of word-prime/word-target trials were used:
bird-robin, bird-arm, body-door, body-sparrow, and body-heart. The stimulus onset
asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target letter string varied between 250 and
2,000 msec. At 2,000-msec SOA, reaction times (RTs) on bird-robin type trials were
faster than on xxx-prime trials (facilitation), whereas RTs on bird-arm type trials were
slower than on xxx-prime (inhibition). As SOA decreased, the facilitation effect on bird-
robin trials remained constant, but the inhibition effect on bird-arm decreased until, at
250-msec SOA, there was no inhibition. For Shift conditions at 2,000-msec SOA,
facilitation was obtained on body-door type trials and inhibition was obtained on body-
sparrow type. These effects decreased as SOA decreased until there was no facilitation
or inhibition. On body-heart type trials, there was an inhibition effect at 2,000 msec
SOA, which decreased as SOA decreased until, at 250-msec SOA, it became a
facilitation effect. Results support the theory of M. I. Posner and S. R. Snyder (1975)
that postulated 2 distinct components of attention: a fast automatic inhibitionless
spreading-activation process and a slow limited-capacity conscious-attention
mechanism. (27 ref) (PsycLIT Database Copyright 1978 American Psychological Assn,
all rights reserved)
KP: semantic priming & retrieval from lexical memory in word-nonword classification
task; inhibitionless spreading activation & limited-capacity attention; college students
DE: WORD-MEANING; HUMAN-INFORMATION-STORAGE; HUMAN-CHANNEL-CAPACITY;
MEMORY-; CLASSIFICATION-COGNITIVE-PROCESS; ATTENTION-
CC: 2343; 23
PO: Human
AG: Adult
UD: 7807
AN: 60-00309
JC: 1884

2. Good search engine bases for general search

a. search for or of related keywords for any terms for the topic
b. pull the search into a data base (e.g., Endnote)
c. use macros and/or management engine to pair down the
reference data base
d. add references to the data base labeling the key words and
source of the data
e. label and keep current the references as they are read
adding notes fields

C. Use to:

1. Get a specific reference

a. know author and approximate year

uses author index; note lag of 6 months
b. pull the reference
c. read abstracts
d. look around in given topic

IV. Use of Reference Manager (or End Note)

A. What you can do with it: keep reference, capture references, do searches,
create bibliographies
B. Data base - 65k lots of fields
C. How to use, administration, saving, capturing, key words, browse,
searching, cut and paste.
D. Do pass of references and mark references as to interest and search goal
and possibly key words
E. Edit the search terms to indicate the search
F. Mark references as delete if you want to enable them for future excusion
EndNote toolbar in word

Sample EndNote exaple of in text reference and bibliography

This is the text example in End Note in raw form raw form {Arbib, 2000 #248;Friston, 1995 #367}
and in APA style (Arbib, Billard, Iacoboni, & Oztop, 2000; Friston, Frith, Frackowiak, & Turner,
1995)
References

Arbib, M. A., Billard, A., Iacoboni, M., & Oztop, E. (2000). Synthetic brain imaging:
grasping, mirror neurons and imitation. Neural Netw, 13(8-9), 975-997.
Friston, K. J., Frith, C. D., Frackowiak, R. S., & Turner, R. (1995). Characterizing
dynamic brain responses with fMRI: a multivariate approach. Neuroimage, 2(2),
166-172.

Sample input source text to Ref Manager with {} entered Reference Manager copy/paste
The memory impairments were serious {7} though others show problems with memory retrieval
{8, 9}.

Output of the text from the Reference Manager in APA style

The memory impairments were serious (MacLeod et al., 1978) though others show problems with
memory retrieval (Navon et al., 1979; Neely, 1977).

Output of the biblography from Reference Manager APA style

Bibliography

MacLeod, C. M., Dekaban, A. S., & Hunt, E. B. (1978). Memory impairment in epileptic
patients: Selective effects of phenobarbital concentration. Science, 202(4372), 1102-1104.

Navon, D., & Gopher, D. (1979). On the economy of the human-processing system.
Psychological Review, 86(3), 214-255.
 Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of
inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental
Psychology General, 106(3), 226-254.

I. Use of Science Citation Index

A. Advantage over looking via subject indexes

1. determine if basic concepts discussed in article can

be used elsewhere
2. has a theory been confirmed or destroyed?
3. has the person's method been improved?
4. have there been errata or corrections to published
papers?
5. not limited to one science (e.g., where psychology
ends and physiology begins)
6. does not have semantic difficulties

B. Primary divisions

1. citation index (volumes by author followed by

citation)
2. corporate index
3. source index - list of articles by author
4. subject index

C. Use of citation index

1. general list of sources

2. find author and source
3. write down cited author and reference
4. check source index for title

V. How to read a journal article

A. Parts of an article

1. Title and author

2. Abstract about 100 words
3. Background but often rewritten to conform to results
4. Methods should contain enough to allow replication
5. Results - descriptive and inferential data presented
- comment about briefness
- it is often helpful to draw graphs, tables
- be careful of graphs; check scales
7. References - used to get background and evaluate article
a. Check list for reader
1) What is author selling
2) Hypothesis
3) Determine what you would do to design test before
read
or
 4) a) is my method better than his; b) does his method
test hypothesis; c) IV, DV & CV
5) What Ss approaches and procedures
6) Did author get wrong results; all data analyzed?
how well
7) How would I interpret?
8) Summary - what is my interpretation?

VI. Keeping Notes

A. Format recommended - computer note reference in manager program, cross

reference to card /reprint photocopy; note separate paper for each reference,
File alphabetic perhaps by major areas

B. Information

1. Key words
2. Author, journal reference
3. One line summary
4. Independent variables
5. Dependent variables
6. Results - include graphs
7. Interpretation author
8. Interpretation yours
9. Mark critical information

C. Generate hierarchy of your area, e.g.,:

Attention
Selective
Practice
automaticity
switching
search
dual task

Focal
Interference
Stroop

Vigilance
Rate
Fatigue
Channels
Laboratory Research
Assignment:
Purpose - to learn, find, and follow up scientific sources you will learn to find the
references to an article, location of topic heading, location of the journal, and use of
Silver Platter, and Science Citation Index, and
Reference ManagerTM.

The Tasks:

1. Select an article to follow up from the list on the bottom of the page or references
of your choosing that is likely to be referenced.
2. Locate the abstract of the article in with silver platter (thourgh webspirs)
3. Print the complete information for the reference retrieval
4. Locate the most recent article (which can be found in this library) which cites your
article by using Social Science Citation Index. Copy/paste the reference into a
Word document. (Note the first citation listed which is available at this library).
5. Locate the citing article, abstract the article (you may use the authors abstract)
Copy/paste write down the abstract's full citation of the article.
6. Give the independent and dependent variables and the experimental hypothesis of
the first experiment of the citing article. (If the article is a theoretical article
which contains no experiments, go to the next article.)
7. Use the SCI to get all abstracts and references by the author published from 1995-
current. Copy the list of citations.
8. Use the Silver Platter to generate a mini reference data base using keywords for
your area of research, copy this to an EndNote type reference libarary
9. Create an EndNote or Reference manager data base for your file, do a search on
your selected data base
10. Create a manuscript with citation references derived from the
EndNote/REFmanager (see example in the note, include at least two sets of
citations at least one with multiple references in it.
11. Create an output APA style manuscript and bibliography for your simple
manuscript, see notes)

Possible Articles (choose one or choose one of your own that is likely to be referenced)

Anderson, J. R. (1993) Problem solving and learning. American psychologist, 48, 35-44.
Dell, G. S. ((1986). A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production.
Psychological Review, 93, 283-321.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative
review. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 163-203.
Ratcliff, R., & McKoon, G. (1988). A retrieval theory of priming in memory.
Psychological Review , 95, 385-408.