Term paper

Your research question should be about how human language processing works regarding prediction. For example, in the past, a student asked whether people update general knowledge representations of entities (like peanuts in general) or discourse-specific representations of entities (like one specific peanut in the discourse) given contexts based on Nieuwland & Van Berkum (2006) and proposed an experiment to address the question. The research question can be the same as one of the papers we read in the class, but in that case you have to be clear about why the paper is not sufficient and the question is still worth asking.

Your research question needs to be specific. That is, you shouldn’t be asking ”How are kids different from adults in terms of prediction?” because that is too broad. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be too specific like ”Do kids predict a word X in sentence Y?” A better research question would be something between those in terms of specificity. (e.g. Do kids make weaker prediction compared to adults due to their limited knowledge and experience?) 

You should reconsider questions like ”What if we take this paper and use stimuli X instead of stimuli Y?” The idea itself may be good as a starting point, but you should go one step further and think about what you can learn by that modification in the design. You have to turn it into a question about how the human mind works.

Propose an experiment that can address your research question. The idea is to write up a paper just like ones we read in the class, but without actual data.

• Design an experiment including some details: What kind of measures will you use? (e.g. EEG, eye tracking in Visual World Paradigm, the cloze task, etc.) Which population will you look at? (e.g. Speakers of Language X, Y years old kids and adults, etc.) What kind of stimuli will you use?
  You don't need to describe the full details of the experiments, but you should describe at least minimal details to explain what the experiment is like. For example, you don't need to provide the full set of stimuli, but you should provide one set for each condition.

• Discuss the results with possible outcomes. Explain how the results help you answer the research question. 

• Of course you don't need to run the experiment, because this is just a proposal. However, it is OK to write the paper as if you have actually run the experiment or even report fake data. When you write possible outcomes, you can either deeply discuss one pattern of results or cover multiple possibilities and respective implications.

• Refer to at least one paper as a background of the experiment. Your experiment should be addressing something that is not answered by that prior paper. The prior paper(s) can either be from the class or outside of the class, but if you only refer to papers that we did not read in the class, please contact me about it before you start writing your paper. Reading additional papers is optional. 

Provide an answer to the research question (i.e. your argument) and refer to at least 2 papers to support your argument. You don't need to refer to 2 papers that both support your argument, and for example you can discuss why your argument is valid even though one paper is going against it.  At least 1 paper must be from the class and at least 1 paper must be from outside of the class that are relevant to your research question. (Please consult with me if you want to solely refer to papers we didn't read in the class.)

I am expecting a critical review with your own thoughts rather than a mere summary of multiple papers (like "This paper says this and that paper says that"). That is, your paper should go beyond what is already written in each prior paper or one of them. For example, if the papers both support your argument, how do they differently contribute to it? If the papers apparently conflict with each other, what does the conflict tell you and how can you reconcile them? What are overarching conclusion considering all those studies? What are remaining questions / new directions given those studies?

Note: you don't need to interpret the paper in the way the original authors did. We read the peanut paper by Nieuwland & Van Berkum (2006) and interpreted their experiment in light of prediction.

• 8-10 pages

• Double-spaced

• Justified

• Put the title and your name at the top of the first page

• Put a page number at the bottom center of each page

• Use headings for section titles, and subheadings for subsections

You should expect average masters student in LST who haven’t taken this or a similar course (or you yourself before taking this course) as readers of your paper. Therefore you should explain some jargon that those people might not know (e.g. N400).

It is a good idea to include tables and figures from the preceding studies (especially in a literature review) or fake ones for your experiment (if you have). All tables and figures should be accompanied by a figure/table number and should be referred to with the number.

e.g., Figure 1 illustrates the EEG data of ...

Refer to the relevant work in-text. Make sure you have a section for references at the very bottom of your paper. All papers should be cited using the APA citation format, which is frequently used in the psycholinguistics literature. The website below provides useful examples for both in-text citation and the reference list: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/apa-citation-guide/