Here are three term papers from a previous semester that were quite good. They illustrate the format for the term paper, and the kind of material that should be included in each section. Some content from longer sections (especially from Section 3, Review of Literature) has been omitted.
Sample paper 1
Sample paper 2
Sample paper 3
Restoration of Facial Processing after Early Visual Deprivation
Section 1: Introduction and Statement of the Topic
The ability to process faces is a fundamental skill for human survival. Faces
are perhaps the most important items we look at on a daily basis. By evaluating
them, we can differentiate friends from foes, identify others' emotions, and
recognize individual qualities that make one unique. Our bodies even show signs
of an unconscious emotional response to faces (Bauer, 1984). Fortunately, aside
from a small percentage of people with specific disorders, the majority of human
beings are experts at recognizing faces. This amazing skill may be facilitated
by a specialized mechanism in the brain that predisposes humans for the capacity
for face recognition. Without early visual exposure though, the inborn ability
to process faces might be lost.
Section 2: Problem to be Addressed
Jerry Fodor suggests that face recognition is a modular process. It is highly specialized, works quickly, and demonstrates mandatory application (Bermudez, J.L., 2010). Like language, the ability to recognize faces is essential in social interactions. Many psychologists have done research to determine how face recognition develops in children, and how brain damage and disorders can affect that development. Are we born with specific neural mechanisms that have the sole purpose of processing faces? What happens to those neural mechanisms if they do not receive proper stimuli early in development? Scientists have hypothesized the presence of a Language Acquisition Device with a critical period, which gives humans the ability to easily and quickly learn language at a young age. Some evidence points to a similar device involved with face recognition (Maurer, Mondloch, & Lewis, 2007). It is unclear whether or not facial processing can develop after visual deprivation during the critical period.
The more we learn about how facial processing occurs and develops, the better
equipped we become in replicating the process. Facial recognition software can
be used in a variety of applications such as authentication, surveillance and
security systems. Information on facial processing may also be able to help
make advancements in therapy and treatment for individuals who have disorders
that limit their ability to process faces.
Section 3: Review of Existing Literature
The neural structure for face processing in the normal adult has been located in the fusiform face area of the temporal lobe. It is stimulated when people look at faces, and people with damaged fusiform face areas suffer from prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia patients have a very difficult time recognizing faces, but do not struggle to a great degree when recognizing other objects. All of this supports the idea that there are neural networks in the brain specialized for face recognition (Bower, 2001). However, this same cortical area is stimulated when experts look at their object of interest. For instance, the fusiform area is activated when car experts look at cars. This suggests that there is not an area of the brain specifically designed to deal with faces, but rather, it is designed to aid in recognizing and distinguishing between whatever object one has a vast amount of experience with.
A study conducted by Olivier Pascalis, Michelle de Haan and Mark Johnson found that adults are sensitive to the orientation of a face while infants are not.
...
Section 4: Hypothesis or Hypotheses to be Tested
Like the language acquisition device, a facial processing acquisition device requires early exposure to faces in order to take effect. Congenital cataract removal patients are as naive to the visual world as infants are. Within six months of the removal of the cataract, the area of the brain that is activated by facial stimuli will be different in the cataract patients than in infants. The infants will utilize the fusiform face area when viewing faces, while the cataract patients will use another region, possibly the object recognition area. Without training, cataract patients struggle with recognizing second order properties of faces (Maurer, Mondloch, & Lewis, 2007). I predict that their neural architecture for facial recognition remains in tact though, and can be developed with sufficient training.
Section 5: Proposed Research
I will test infants less than six months old and compare them with adult patients who have gotten congenital cataracts removed within the last six months. When choosing participants for the cataract group, I will use the same criteria used by Mauer, Mondloch and Lewis in their 2007 study. ...
In the experiment, both groups will be shown a face and given sufficient time to focus on it. The faces will be in black and white to remove any variability in coloring. Neuroimaging will show which areas of the brain are activated when viewing faces. Since most methods of neuroimaging are not suitable for use with infants, I will use the newly developed "Baby Magnetoencephalography" device on them (Fliesler, 2011). After being presented with the first face, the subjects will then be shown the face again, with a new face next to it. The eye tracking software will be used to time how long the infants look at each face. Infants typically spend more time looking at items that are new or surprising. Therefore, if the baby looks at the new face for a longer period of time, we have evidence that he recognized the original face as something he had previously seen. We can simply ask the cataract removal patients if they recognize either of the two faces.
This task will be done again with pictures of objects instead of faces. I predict that when looking at objects, the infants will not recognize either object, and thus spend the same amount of time looking at each one. The object recognition region of the brain will be activated. The cataract patients will use the object recognition part of the brain for both real faces and objects, representing the loss of their specialized ability to recognize faces.
After initial testing, some of the cataract patients will undergo training in an attempt to help them learn to recognize faces. They will be given a packet of pictures and instructed to spend time each day studying the pictures of faces. Once a month for the next twelve months, they will undergo the same testing done at the beginning of the experiment. The other cataract patients will serve as a control group and will not receive any special training. The degree of improvement in both groups will be documented and any changes in brain activity will be monitored.
Section 6: Expected Results and Significance
If the bilateral congenital cataract patients are able to learn how to recognize faces, we have more hope that people can learn to distinguish a variety of faces, even if they are not exposed to them as babies. For instance, the "Other Race Effect" has been shown in both babies and adults who more easily recognize and remember faces within their own race (Meissner, & Brigham, 2001). Methods could be set up to help expose people to a variety of faces from different races, thus eliminating the "Other Race Effect." A more widespread aptitude for recognizing and remembering faces of all types would be particularly important to avoid mistaken eyewitness accounts of crimes.
The neuroimaging results will be beneficial in helping to gain a better idea of how facial processing works. If training helps the cataract patients develop their fusiform face area, we have evidence that humans are born with a specialized neural mechanism for facial processing. Despite the general plasticity of the brain, such results would imply that the innate modular device is so specialized for facial recognition that it is not able to take on any other role. Once facial processing is more fully understood, computer models can be created and utilized in a variety of applications such as security and authentication systems.
...
Regardless of the results from this experiment, the issue will not be completely resolved, and many more tests will have to be conducted before there is confirmation or denial of a specialized innate neural mechanism that predisposes humans for facial processing. More studies should be conducted to determine how long the critical period lasts and if there is a point beyond which face recognition cannot be restored. Research should also be done on autistic children to identify what causes them to struggle with face recognition. Is something preventing visual stimuli from reaching the innate device for processing, or are they not born with the innate mechanism at all?
Can selective attention and consciousness oppose each other?
A proposed study using the attentional blink paradigm
Section 1: Introduction and Statement of the Topic
What is consciousness? This question has puzzled philosophers and scientists from different disciplines for a long time. As Edelman (Edelman, 2004) has said, "we all know what consciousness is: it is what you lose when you fall into a deep dreamless sleep and what you regain when you wake up." However, our intuitive understanding of consciousness does not bring us any closer to a scientific understanding of consciousness. Consciousness remains to be a subject on which much has been written and studied but little is known.
Consciousness, along with other mentalistic concepts were banished from psychology
after behaviorism became the dominant discipline of psychology. Memory came
back in the 1960s; mental imagery in the 1970s; and consciousness, in the 1990s.
Currently, one of the most influential models of consciousness is Baars's global
workspace theory. Baars (1997) makes the analogy between consciousness and a
working theater.
Section 2: Problem to be Addressed
The theatre of consciousness, like any other theater, has a stage, a spotlight shining on the stage, actors, an audience, a few invisible people behind the stage, and a director. We can imagine working memory (WM) as the stage of the theater. Without the attentional spotlight, WM is mostly in the dark, out of our awareness. Yet, with the help of the selective spotlight of attention, the contents of consciousness can be guided, both voluntarily and spontaneously on the stage of WM. Thus, only events in the bright spot on stage are strictly conscious, and attention is necessary for consciousness. The theater has other parts, such as the actors (representing different sensory systems) vying to get into the bright spot, invisible people (unconscious contexts) behind the scene, the director, or executive functions that make decisions guided by goals, and finally an audience consisting of all the unconscious routines and knowledge sources that we use to adapt to the world.
Based on Baars's account of consciousness, selective attention is a component of the theater of consciousness and that selective attention is necessary for conscious awareness. Similarly, Dehaene and colleagues (2006) argue that without top-down attention, an event cannot be consciously perceived. Thus, dissociating attention from consciousness might not be possible. However, recent studies suggest that the role of attention is more complicated than that.
...
Most remarkably, studies using the attentional blink paradigm imply that attention
and consciousness can oppose each other (Christian N. L. Olivers & Meeter,
2008; Christian N. L. Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2005; Slagter, et al., 2007).
That is, withdrawing top-down attention from a stimulus might facilitate participants
detecting the stimulus. In the section below, I will summarize the results of
studies on the phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB).
Section 3: Review of Existing Literature
Attentional blink is a phenomenon that refers to participants' impaired ability to detect the second of two targets presented in succession (200-500 ms apart) in a stream of distractors. Attentional blink is a robust phenomenon that has been replicated numerous times and the traditional explanations stress limited-capacity resources as their major cause (Christian N.L. Olivers, Hulleman, Spalek, Kawahara, & Lollo, 2011; Christian N. L. Olivers & Meeter, 2008). For instance, according to the two-stage theory, targets along with distractors are first processed in parallel to the level of representation that allows viewers to distinguish between them. Later, targets are then selected for second-stage processing, which is limited to about one object at a time. The second stage processing involves higher cognitive processes such as memory consolidation, awareness, and response selection.
...
Section 4: Hypothesis or Hypotheses to be Tested
At the highest level, I attempt to show that selective attention and conscious awareness are dissociable by using the AB paradigm. In particular, I am interested in whether withdrawing attentional resources, in some circumstances, could counter-intuitively facilitate stimuli's access to conscious awareness. Furthermore, I hypothesize that AB results from the need to inhibit distractors, rather than limited attention capacity. In addition, I hypothesize that practices that induce a distributed state of attention can ameliorate AB and extensive meditation is not necessary to achieve the benefit. Finally, I attempt to show that whether meditation training ameliorates AB depends on the nature of meditation practice.
Section 5: Proposed Research
Participants
The study will need 75 participants in total, and 15 participants will be randomly assigned to one of five conditions listed below, respectively: a) one week of OM meditation training b) one week of FA meditation training c) one week of relaxation training d) listen-to-music condition e) control. All participants will be compensated for their participation. They are paid $10/hour.
Procedure
My proposed research will utilize the AB paradigm used in Olivers and Nieuwenhuis's (2005) study. All participants will complete an attentional blink task on the first day of the experiment. The task requires participants to identify two target digits, T1 and T2. On each trial, participants will be shown 13 to 21 to letters (English alphabets, with the exception of I, O, Q, and S due to their resemblance to digits). ... Similar to Slagter and others'(2007) study, participants will not engage in formal meditation or relaxation during task performance. Nevertheless, the listen-to-music group will listen to a continuous rhythmic tune running at 120 beats per minute as described in Olivers and Nieuwenhuis's (2005) study.
Data Analysis
I will conduct a group lag day (before and after training) mixed design Anova
to assess the effect of condition, temporal lag and training on the accuracy
on identifying T1 and T2 and the sizes of AB (measured by the accuracy of identifying
T1 minus the accuracy of identifying T2). Further post-hoc Bonferroni pairwise
t-tests corrected for multiple comparisons will be run to compare the difference
between groups, temporal lags, and days. Further paired t-tests corrected for
multiple comparisons will be run to assess interaction.
Section 6: Expected Results and Significance
For the performance on the first day's AB task, I expect the detection of T1 to be similarly high across all groups and all lags, with the exception when T2 is at lag 1(only one distractor between T1 and T2). When T2 was at lag 1, participants in Olivers and Nieuwehnuis's study (2005) could no longer distinguish between T1 and T2, and they often reported them in the wrong order. Note, however, the detection of T2 at lag 1 did not suffer, as the feedback made them realize that they reversed the order. Thus, I expect the accuracy of identifying T2 at lag 1 to be similarly high across all conditions as well. One explanation of this "Lag 1 sparing" is that inhibitory mechanisms described in the boost and bounce theory (Christian N. L. Olivers & Meeter, 2008) most likely have not had time to take action to inhibit incoming stimuli yet. Nevertheless, I expect the detection of T2 at all the other lags (2 through 5) to suffer. In other words, I expect to see AB for all of the groups at lag 2 through lag 5.
...
In addition, my study will support the boost and bounce theory and serve as evidence against the limited capacity account of AB by showing that inducing a more distributed state of attention (through music, relaxation, and OM meditation) can reduce AB, at least when the lag between the two targets is from 200 ms to 500 ms. This does not mean, however, that our attention is not limited. Rather, our attention's capacity is certainly limited. For instance, when the two targets in the AB paradigm are less than 200 ms apart, participants typically could not tell which one came earlier (Christian N. L. Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2005).
Finally, my study will show that a distributed state of attention explains the relationship between meditation training and the size of AB. OM meditation emphasizes a more distributed focus of attention and thus leads to reduced AB. FA, on the other hand, stresses sustained focus on an object, directing attentional resources to inhibit distractors and thus results in a larger AB. Three months of extensive training is not necessary for the reduced AB.
If, however, that my predictions are wrong such that short-term effects of OA meditation are not enough to reduce AB and that the short-term effects of FA are not enough to induce a larger AB, I might want to specifically instruct participants to take advantage of what they learn in their training and apply them to the task. Alternatively, I can select components from each meditation method (such as focusing on the breath or focusing on the central task) and examine the effect of each component on AB, separating components that lead to a more distributed stae of attention focus. No psychologists give up their theories easily!
The factor of bilingualism in people with specific language impairment
Section 1: Introduction and Statement of the Topic
Specific language impairment (SLI) has been a "hot" topic for many researchers interested in language and cognition over the last ten years. SLI is found in approximately 7% of the general population and can be a fairly debilitating disorder causing a range of deficits primarily in language ability and memory (especially verbal memory) (Baird et al. 2010). Although some research points to possible genetic factors, little is known as to the neurological causes of the disorder. What is interesting about this disorder, is that although children and adults with SLI show below average language abilities, they do not show abnormal IQ or hearing development (Paradis, 2010). This is an important fact for researchers studying mental architecture because it reveals that there may be a separate module that could control language processing.
One theory used to explain the deficits encountered in people with SLI, called the limited processing capacity theory, states that SLI limits the ability to process domain specific language information (Paradis, 2010). This theory is supported by various studies that have shown that children with SLI tend to have deficits in working memory and speed of processing or reaction time (Paradis, 2010). This theory assumes that children with SLI need to have more exposure to language and be exposed for longer periods of time then children without SLI to attain the same level of ability in a language (Paradis, 2010). One would assume that if this were the case, bilingual children would be severely affected by a SLI disorder because they would have double the amount of information to process and would require a much longer exposure time to attain the same language level as monolingual children with SLI.
However some recent research has revealed that this is not the case (Paradis, 2010). For example, Paradis (2010) looked at the data from Steenge (2006) and controlled for amount of exposure to the language to make sure that both groups would be exposed to the language for the same amount of time. She found that the effect size between monolingual children with and without SLI was similar to the effect size between bilingual children with and without SLI. This shows that bilingual children with SLI do not in fact require longer exposure to language than monolingual children with SLI and puts into question our understanding of SLI.
The current understanding the functioning of SLI disorders and its affect on cognition supports Baddeley's (2007) model of working memory. SLI seems to be a disorder that affects the central executive and the phonological loop which explains the memory and language impairments found in people with SLI. It is interesting to note the impaired language processing capacity caused by SLI seems to affect both memory and language ability. This supports Baddeley's (2007) hypothesis that the central executive system "supervised" both memory and language ability and also that these three processes are all interconnected.
... If the processing advantages of bilingual children come from having to
process twice as much information how is it possible for bilingual children
with SLI (who supposedly have a deficit in processing information) to show
similar results as monolingual children on verbal?
Section 2: Problem to be Addressed
Paradis (2010) came up with two explanations for these results. The first proposes that processing capacity may not in fact be the main factor affecting children with SLI, and that there may be another factor that affects the language disability seen in children with SLI. The second explanation looks at the possible advantage of bilingualism in children with SLI. Perhaps the constantly needing to use the executive processing to inhibit one of the languages somehow increases the processing ability of bilingual children with SLI which would compensate for some of the impairments associated with SLI. In this research we will focus on this second hypothesis since it seems to go along with research on bilingualism (Bialystok, 2007).
With this knowledge in mind, this research will look for executive function advantages in bilingual children with SLI compared to their monolingual equivalents. We will do this by looking at how these children perform on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task, a method used by Okanda (2010) in his study comparing monolingual and bilingual executive function ability. Higher performance on this task has been shown to correlate with higher executive function (Okanda, 2010). Furthermore, we would like to look at the development of bilingual and monolingual children with SLI over 4 years to see if the development of executive functioning is different between bilingual and monolingual children with SLI. Since verbal memory has also been shown to correlate with executive function, we will also look at verbal memory and compare it to the participant's performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task to see if verbal ability in our sample does correlates with higher executive functioning.
In this study we hope to find out if Paradis'(2010) hypothesis is supported
by research. This is important because if Paradis'(2010) hypothesis is true,
then this could open new treatment possibilities to help children with SLI
gain higher processing skills. Also we hope that this study will allow us
to better understand how bilingualism and SLI fit into Baddeley's (2007) model
of working memory.
Section 3: Review of Existing Literature
This section will go over some of the main studies related to the topics of SLI and bilingualism.
Studies on Specific Language Impairment
A lot of the research on SLI disorder points to an impairment of the central executive and the phonological loop in Baddeley's (2007) model of working memory. The study by Baird et al. (2009), for example, revealed that the severity of language impairment was correlated with verbal memory ability...
...
Section 4: Hypothesis or Hypotheses to be Tested
My hypothesis is that bilingual children with SLI will have higher functioning
executive processes than monolingual children with SLI. My second hypothesis
is that verbal ability will correlate with performance on the executive functioning
task except for bilingual children who will show a much higher performance than
expected form their verbal ability. My third hypothesis is that bilingual children
with SLI will develop better language skills over 4 years than monolingual children
with SLI.
Section 5: Proposed Research
The study will use similar methods as the study by Okanda (2010) who compared monolingual and bilingual children's performance on executive tasks. As Okanda's (2010) study, we will look at 75 preschool children (children between 40 to 60 months old). All of our participants will be diagnosed with SLI disorder. Twenty five of our participants will be bilingual (speaking both English and French) while the other fifty will be monolingual (speaking only English). This study will be conducted in Canada where both French and English are majority languages and where there are no additional social forces which may affect the bilingual group. All parents of the bilingual children will be asked to complete a questionnaire to confirm that the children fit our characteristics for bilingualism (must have been exposed to both languages their whole life and must be able to speak both languages with similar ability). All the children will conduct an assessment of verbal ability through the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test which has been shown to correlate with general language skills (Okanda, 2010). The bilingual children will then be matched to 25 monolingual children (MM - matched monolingual group) in terms of their verbal ability. The other 25 monolingual children will be children with a higher verbal ability (HVM- high verbal monolingual group). We will also make sure that all children come from similar class backgrounds as a control. The study will look at the same group of children for four years and will assess them once a year using the same test. This will be done to see to assess the development of the children's executive function and see if the children improve on the task over the years.
The task we will use to assess performance on executive function will be the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task which was also used by Okanda (2010). ...
Performance on these tasks will be ranked in accordance to how many trials
the children are able to complete accurately for each of the two phases in the
task. It is assumed that children will complete more trials in the first phase
correctly since they receive feedback.
Section 6: Expected Results and Significance
In this research we expect the bilingual children to perform better on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task then the MM group. We also expect the HVM group to have similar scores to the bilingual group on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task. Both of these groups would have either higher verbal ability or higher processing ability associated with bilingualism and would therefore be more likely to perform better than the MM group. We also expect the verbal ability of the participants to correlate with their performance on the task except for the bilingual group which will show a higher effect size between their verbal ability and their performance on the task compared to the other two groups. Also we expect that throughout the 4 years all groups will increase in their task performances, however, we expect to see bilingual children have a greater increase in their task performance compared to the MM and the HVM groups. We expect this because bilingual children are more likely to be exposed to processing information task in their day to day life and therefore there is a high chance that their ability to perform on these tasks will increase much faster than monolingual children.
The results of this study will be quite significant. If bilingual children with SLI do show higher performance on the executive task compared to the matched monolingual children then this means that there may be some cognitive advantages to bilingualism that could help children with SLI perform higher on certain tasks. If on the other hand bilingual children do not show a higher performance on the executive task than we will know that SLI somehow inhibits the higher executive function abilities found in bilinguals and this will help us better understand the effects this disorder has on processing information.
In terms of mental architecture the results of this study will show where multiple
languages may fit in our understanding of cognition. If bilingualism does seem
to make a difference on performance of the executive task for children with
SLI than Baddeley's (2007) model might have to be restudied since this would
mean that bilingualism could bypass impairments of the central executive. If
the results reveal that bilingualism does not affect performance on executive
task in children with SLI than we can assume that impairment in the central
executive cannot be altered (at least not by having multiple languages). The
fact that children with SLI are able to process two languages as well as monolingual
children with SLI may then be because there is either another factor involved
in the disorder besides limited processing capacity or because the central executive
in Baddeley's (2007) model should be divided into different categories. For
example: one category for processing information and one for inhibiting information.
In this case the SLI disorder would reflect an impairment in processing information
but not in inhibiting information.