Advising (graduate)

What courses should I take?

• Remember that the heart of your education will come from doing research--not taking courses. Still, coursework can help you develop as a researcher, and prepare you to teach various courses in various areas of psychology. Suggested courses include: Cognitive Psychology, Perception, Psychobiology or Basic Neuroscience & Cognition, Developmental Psychology (especially one that emphasizes aging), and Theories of Social Psychology. Of course, you should also take advantage of specialized seminars.

How do I come up with a thesis topic?

1. In psychology, "basic research" is research that produces (or evaluates) explanations (that is, "theories") of why a particular psychological phenomenon occurs.

2. Regardless of whether you conceptualize your main interest as "basic research" or "applied research," each of your projects should have a major "basic research" component. Otherwise, it will be difficult to publish.

3. Pick a topic that is compatible with your advisor's areas of expertise. This will maximize your advisor's ability to help you with your project.

Given 1, 2, and 3, above:

4. The stated goals of your thesis and dissertation must be to advance theory--that is, to refine scientists' understanding of why and how something occurs. Such refinement can take the form expanding the depth or breadth of current explanations, or increasing our confidence in particular aspects of current explanations. If there are also interesting applied issues involved, they must be secondary to the theoretical issues.

5. To maximize the chances of success, the stated goal must be incremental advancement that clearly builds on what's already known. (This is in contrast to a leap from what's known, to something radically new. )

6. Do not propose to study a phenomenon about which little has been published. There may be a reason why more people have not already studied such a phenomenon (It may not be real, or it may be too difficulty to reproduce, or there may be too many reviewers who have deemed it not sufficiently interesting to warrant publication).

7. The focus of a proposal needs to be on experimental manipulation rather than mere observation of relationships (e.g., correlations) among non-manipulated variables. Experiment design is difficult. But dealing with correlational, non-experimental results could be even more difficult and could easily go beyond your level of statistical expertise. Additionally, in experimental psychology (and and in particular, for your thesis and dissertation), you will need to be able to draw strong causal conclusions from your results. This requires a focus on experimental manipulation rather than correlation.

8. An abstract for a proposal should include answers to the following questions:

   • What current theoretical account (what current explanation) will the project examine?

   • In what way is this explanation limited or uncertain?

   • How is the proposal designed to expand the explanation beyond the stated limit, or to decrease uncertainty about the explanation?

9. The major references for your proposal must come from journals focusing on cognitive experimental psychology. Social aspects of cognition are OK, but the majority of citations should come from cognitive journals, such as:

   • Memory & Cognition

   • Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

   • Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

   • Experimental Psychology

   • Cognitive Psychology

10. Here are some detailed guides for writing a proposal or report.

What will happen during my thesis proposal and defense?

• Proposal: Your major goal will be to convince the committee that you know the literature well enough, that your rational and methodology are strong enough, and that your writing is clear enough so that your project has a good chance of succeeding--ideally, resulting in publication. Consequently, you'll need to make a strong written case for your project, and you'll need to orally defend your project in a way that displays your mastery of the literature.

• Defense: Your major goal is to convince the committee that you are a scholar whose knowledge and ability merits the title, "Master of Arts." Thus, you'll need to show mastery of the entire project (not just the results and discussion), as well as display your ability to provide clear, logical, oral responses to questions that relate either directly or indirectly to the thesis project. You want to leave the committee with a good impression that, later on, may become the basis for good letters of recommendation, invitations to assist in research projects, etc.

What do I have to do to be a co-author on a paper?

• A co-author should play a substantial role in coming up with the idea for the research project, or should make substantial contributions to designing the study, collecting the data and analyzing/interpreting the results. Subject-running and straightforward data analysis alone, will not ordinarily earn a student co-authorship, but will merit recognition in the acknowledgments section of a paper.

What else should I be doing while I'm here?

• You should be going to conferences and presenting research. This will help you develop good research ideas. It will also expose you and your work to future manuscript-reviewers and hiring committees.

• You should be taking some initiative in starting research projects: If you wait for your adviser to do it, or if you limit yourself to just the thesis, prelim, and dissertation, you may find it hard to generate sufficient numbers of publications.

• It's sometimes a good idea to work on more than one project, with more than one faculty member--especially during your 1st two semesters. This will help expose you to a wide range of possibilities for future research. But you should not spread your efforts so thinly that your progress is slowed.

• There are fellowship grants you can apply for, including those offered by the National Science Foundation

• Conferences. The Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society usually takes place in November. It is a good conference for graduate students to go to. However, the meeting rules don't make it easy for graduate students to give presentations (but if you can afford to, you should attend whether or not you're presenting). One good option for you would be to join the Society for Judgment and Decision Making [ http//www.sjdm.org/ ] (if your research fits into that genre) and try to give a presentation at that meeting which is always held right after the Psychonomic Society meeting, often in the same hotel, with one day overlap between the two meetings. The paper submission deadlines for the Psychonomic Society and JDM meetings are usually in early June. The Department usually provides some travel money for graduate students who make presentations--especially if the student is listed as first author on the presentation. Also, I find that the Cognitive Science Society meeting can sometimes be interesting. It's usually geared toward formal modeling, but not exclusively so.

How do I know if I'm doing a good job on my research assistantship?

• Your assistantship sponsor will assign you specific duties. However, in most cases you will be expected to take initiative in expanding upon your sponsor's research project, or even starting a new research project. If you've gone a week without spending at least a few hours on your research assistantship then you're not doing enough--regardless of whether your sponsor has given you a specific task to complete. If you're averaging less than 15 to 20 hours per week, you need to do more.

Do I have to hang around much, in the Psyc Building?

• Yes. As a research assistant or teaching assistant, you're most useful if you're easily accessible on short notice--which, for you, means spending a couple of hours daily in the Psych Building (above and beyond the time spent in class). [During a pandemic, however, you should try not to hang around the Psyc building.]

The importance of clear, unambiguous writing.

• Good, unambiguous, well-organized writing is essential to making swift progress through the program. Unfortunately, writing skills take lots of time to develop, and if yours are lacking you'll have an up-hill battle. I've found that my own writing skills have improved tremendously as a result of reading and critiquing other people's writing.

What if I don't have many research ideas?

• To be a successful academic researcher, you will need to have a strong and steady flow of research ideas. This is less true for industry researchers and for non-researching teachers. At some point, you will have to decide which career path is right for you.

How long will all of this take, and what will I do after receiving my PhD?

• Shrinking budgets have made it difficult for departments to extend Masters/Dissertation-level funding beyond four years. So do your best to be done by the end of your 4th year. However, it has become commonplace for job applicants to have had a couple of years of post-doctoral experience (with a corresponding record of additional publications).

• If you want an academic job that involves both teaching and research, you might be able to get a job straight out of grad school. But more likely, you'll end up spending two or more years as a postdoctoral student.

• If you want a teaching-only job, then perhaps four years will do it--as long as you've had successful and varied experience in teaching your own courses (not just TA-ing).

• Four years may also do it for a job in industry, but you will need to have gotten lots of statistics training (probably more than what our program requires) and/or chosen research projects with clear potential for practical application in a thriving industry. Also note that the requirements, for the three career paths, are not 100% compatible. For example, doing applied research can make it difficult to get an academic job, and getting sufficient experience for a "teaching only" job can leave you with insufficient publications.

• Finally, the job market has been tight, and there's no guarantee that you'll be able to follow your first-choice career path. Thus, it's important to keep your options reasonably open, if you can.

I'm thinking about buying my own computer. What kind should I buy?

There is an increasing expectation that you purchase your own laptop computer. However, you should check with your adviser to verify that your computer will be compatible with the kinds of tasks you'll need to perform. (Students working with Dr. Anderson should buy a Windows computer--not a Mac, and not Linux.)