h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

well, I think I've just stuffed my course average.
The assignment was an experiment write up. We didn't design it, just took part and then had to do the data analysis and write up. It is trying to teach us how to write a proper experiment write up - and clearly this is because the course is BPS accredited. And if you want to go into psychology it is important that you understand this so you can produce and read them.

But I don't intend to go into a psychology career. I'm doing it out of personal interest. Ah well. We'll see. It is a learning experience either way. I just hope the feedback is better than the last one, which I think the tutor just didn't care for. The subject matter was interesting though. And quite convoluted - how the brain processes written words to obtain meaning from them.

One surprising finding is that even when we read silently, the brain still uses the pronunciation of the word to obtain meaning. The theory is that language is primarily spoken and that this spoken ability is nigh on an innate ability. So we have basic systems to cope with processing the sound of a word and then using that sound to find out the meaning. It seems that for some words the reading processes decides to work out the pronunciation of the word and then chuck that at the spoken word processing module and use the output of that to find the meaning. Somewhat inefficient in terms of throughput and speed, but very efficient in terms of reuse of modules. Ho hum, we'll see in 5 days time or so.

Hey I just stumbled across this. I am a first year Psychology student, and happy to help with the Lab report. Passes both of mine this semsester Your meaning of words sounds a little like one we had to do on "Frequency effects on word recognition" which was basically about how we recognise words we know more quickly than me recognise words that are unfarmiliar to us.

Good Luck with the Psychology.

mini

What kind of psychology do you want to work in?

I planned to do psychology, but was persuaded to do A3213127 (I guess they neede to get the course numbers up) - which still had a major psychology component. At my oh-so-supportive school, I was told that psychology was what you applied for if you couldn't get anything else.

On the written-word-as-spoken...you may have noticed that many of my typos are transliterations. I know full well the difference between there, their and they're - but my fingers type what I hear in my head. (or is it...what my head is priming my vocal apparatus to say).

>>What kind of psychology do you want to work in?

Silly me. You said it was personal interest.

Hi mini, yep " "Frequency effects on word recognition" which was basically about how we recognise words we know more quickly than me recognise words that are unfarmiliar to us." sounds exactly like what I have been doing! I understand the science and the various theories, its just the hoop jumping write up exercise. Plus they are trying to encourage us to write precisely and sparsly so the word limit for the whole thing was 1700 words! They further split that by the sections - so methods/results had only 350 words - impossible to write up the procedure and results in so few words. Then the discussion was 650 words - again, nigh on impossible to fully explore the results, their meaning as well as doing a methodological aanalysis. Oh well, it is in, it is done.

EtB - I initially wanted to do psychology purely from a perspective of better understanding how we humans think and work mentally. I was also interested in the cross over between artificial intelligence research and psychology - there's quite a lot of cross pollination of ideas in specific areas and some of the ideas about how we work seem to link in nicely with things like object oriented concepts and some of the more innovative data design methods.
But as I did more I kinda moved away from the AI end of things and more concentrating on the hard science (not the sociology) side of things - fascinating stuff.
Another reason for not having any major ambitions to swap career into psychology is my age! There are very limited numbers of positions for research and there are a lot of early twenty something students with first class degrees from very well respected universities. My age, my lack of a first class degree and the fact I'm doing it at the OU (well respected, but not in the Russell group league for psychology) kinda count against me I feel. Would be nice to perhaps use it in a related field though.

I've an old friend who's an OU Psych Prof. I'll name drop her if you want - by e-mail.

Lab reports are a pain in the rear I agree, both of ours have had word limits of 2000 plus or minus 200 They don't make us write specific numbers of words in each section though, thats just nasty. My lab reports tend to be a little on the short side, which is worrying as the course I am moving to in September requires five sides of A4 each for the introduction and the discussion!

mini

5 sides each? Blimey - even I'd struggle to waffle for that long!
Course, it helps if you were the one who designed and carried out the experiment and if it is a real one rather than a lightweight 'teach-em-how-to' one I guess. What's the course you're doing in Sept? And are you aiming to go into psychology as a profession?

im restarting my BSc in Psychology. I kinda bombed out this year. well im going to a different university (hopefully) and doing a slightly different degree. I dont really know where i am going with it, but I do have four years to decide.

Oh apparently its only three sides of A4 in first year. The five sides isnt till second year. Im not sure if we get to design out own experiments before third year, but I will check with my third year friends when we start back in September.

mini

that's the approach I took to uni (although i did computer science) and reasoned that the worst that could happen is I'd spend 4yrs having fun and come out no worse than I went in! Not actually that good an approach, I wish I'd been more aware back then of myself and I'd have worked a darn site harder at a-levels and gone on to do physics or something. still, it felt like the right decision at the time - getting out of my home town was a major motivator!

I was thinking about the implications of common or high frequency words being quicker to process and thus speeding up written sentence comprehension. Especially as linked to the plain english campaigns and how they provide a scientific rationale for them. But of course the frequency referred to is actually subjective as it is the mind of the reader that is doing the processing. So it doesn;t fully back such campaigns. Someone whose common reading is full of academic terms and unusual 9to the general population) might actually take longer to read so called 'simple' english.

Perhaps one for another study with a two groups set according to their usual reading material. Be a bit difficult to set the groups up properly though. Should have put that in the discussion!

hmmmm, just got it back.

Comments like "I though that this was a very good piece of work which maintains your progress on the course."

basically lost marks on the 'procedure ' section ("the procedure was not well explained in the form that you chose to use her.(sic)")and on lack of methodological analysis in the discussion. Results, abstract and introduction all described as good or very good.

Got 82%

so basically I was right in the bits I thought I didn't do well, but wasn't nearly as bad as I thought - I was mentally preparing for a 40something% grade.



I'm rather chuffed and now in a good mood for beers in Nodnol tomorrow!

You seem to suffer from the same delusion as I do then - that which says your work is shite when in fact it's brilliant. Well done.

well, perhaps not 'brilliant'! But cheers
Lack of self confidence is a b*gg*r ain't it?

It certainly is! I remember reeling for shock when I came top of university class lists. I still do it. At w*rk I'm always assuming that I'm producing rubbish and wil be found out - forgetting that *nobody* knows my stuff better than I do. And I secretly think that anyone who admires my work must be some kind of fool.



Hey ho!

Ah, but do you also find that when you do discuss your successes and acheivements because you do so in a matter of fact manner (since you don't really believe it so you have to be objective) it can come across as the total opposite and a bit arrogant?

cpmgrats on the uni class thing btw - I've never liked jumping through hoops like that and often they don't test me on what I was interested in. And if I ain't interested I don't seem to have the same ability to absorb and process the information. Hence my 2.2 - got a low first for the modules I liked but a 3rd for the ones I didn't hence 2.2 on average. If only my degree had been in AI!

Well if you really want te full psychological backstory...scholarship boy at a posh school (or, at least, a school with pretensions). Never given positive feedback at school. Never encouraged in stuff I was good at. Suddenly discoversd at university...actually...I'm quite clever. Did exceptionally well without breaking a sweat. But the damage was done - I never *really* believed it. Course must be too easy.

To my constant amazement, there seems to be a handful of friends/ex-colleagues out there who seem to really rate me! Recently I even got a glowing recommendation on LinkedIn from my industrial supervisor of mumblemumble years ago. Such validation really isn't good for me.

What have I learnt from this? There are a lot of undervalued and unconfident people out there. Learn to identify them. And take the time to tell them nice things about themselves!

Do you think we sometimes get confused with effort, achievement & ability? If something seems hard to do, do we assume we haven't done well?
If we achieve something without much effort, are we surprised at being praised, or that others find the same task difficult?

I'm impressed at anyone tackling further study while holding down a full time job.

probably, yes. I think there is also a question of understanding as well. Sometimes we think we have understood and merrily sail through the tests and exams only to find out we haven't. Other times (such as mine above) we think we haven't understood and rework and rework and get less and less confident and then find out that somehow we have understood.

I guess the difficult thing is to know when something is easy because we haven't understood it and when something is easy because we have understood it!

*phew*
3rd assignment in and marked. You had to write up a proposal form for an experiment based on 1 of about 12 different case studies/previous experiments. The idea being then that you perform the experiment during the 1 week residential school and write it up for the 5th assignment (got an essay in before that).

I did mine in the 'thinking' subject area on how we compare numbers. Basically we use different methods to compare single digit numbers, double digit numbers and larger numbers (with themselves that is) and I chose what I thought was an uncontrolled confounding variable in the original study. Only once I had it all written up I reread the study to check. They had covered what I had spotted so I had 48hrs (somewhat less actually!) to redo the whole thing.

Apparently I didn't do as badly as I thought - 70%. If the original had gone in I'd have expected high 80s. Still, keeps me with a respectable average and will have to make sure I do well in the remaining 3 assignments and the exam.

Still better than I expected for a rush job!