the FUF transition
Psy 417 Full Lab 4
Psy 417 Full Lab Report
Due: TBD at 11:59 p.m. Worth: 100 points
You need to submit a complete copy of your paper via Safe Assign on Blackboard by 11:59 p.m. on the due date (unless you are using your late break(s) or there are extenuating circumstances – email or talk to me, please, at least 24 hr before the paper is due – see your syllabus). You also must submit your Excel file(s) and the pdfs of the articles (you do not need to submit the Mazur (1983), Lowe et al. (1983), or Perone & Courtney (1992) papers) by the due date. You will submit the lab report (Word file), data (Excel file), and articles (pdfs) through separate assignments on Blackboard. All aspects (final lab report, Excel file, and articles) must be submitted on time for your report to be considered complete and on time. Failure to turn in your Excel file or articles will mean that certain sections cannot be graded (see those individual assignments).
You will lose 10% of your overall grade per day that the paper is late
Please consult your APA manual (6th edition). If you are unsure about formatting or how to write your paper, please ask. Please consult the lab manual for instructions about general APA format and what I require for your papers with respect to format. Also consult the lab manual about suggestions for each section.
These are the required sections and corresponding grades.
| Section | Points |
| Title Page | 1 |
| Abstract | 2
*APA Grade You will receive a grade out of 5 for APA format. I will be looking at the entire paper and “counting” the number of different APA errors. Your grade out of 5 will be based on the number of errors. An error will be counted only once, even if you make it several times. Errors could occur in spacing, margins, title page, headings, use of abbreviations, use of units of measurement, numbers, references, etc. Please check your previous submissions for yellow highlighting. Usually, I have highlighted or commented on the first instance of a mistake. Please correct all instances in your paper. If you have any questions, please ask. |
| Introduction | |
| Intro paragraph | 3 |
| Mazur (1983) | 3 |
| Perone et al. (1987) | 3 |
| Perone and Courtney (1992) | 4 |
| Article 4 | 4 |
| Article 5 | 4 |
| Article 6 | 4 |
| Summary/Your Study/Predictions | 3 |
| Method | |
| Subject | 3 |
| Apparatus | 3 |
| Procedure | 8 |
| Data Analysis | 3 |
| Results | |
| PRP | 10 |
| Run rate | 8 |
| Discussion | |
| Summarization of your results | 2 |
| Comparison to past research | 3 |
| Explanation of data and discussion of PRP and FI schedules/transitions | 3 |
| Future directions | 2 |
| Summary/conclusion | 2 |
| References | 3 |
| Figures with Captions | 10 |
| APA Grade* | 5 |
| Articles and Excel File (2 pt each) | 4 |
| TOTAL | 100 |
***PLEASE NOTE ***
If you do not revise the relevant sections from previous submissions, you will not get the same points that you received for the first submission. That is, if you don’t revise a section, you will receive a lower grade. It is expected that you will revise the sections and add the additional required information.
Sections
Title page (page 1)
See your APA manual. Please note that the title page in the 6th edition is different than in the 5th edition – the running head is now the page header and should appear, along with the page number, on all pages. Please think about your title and make sure it is a good description of what we did this semester. Read titles of other articles that you are using. In a title, it’s often good to mention the independent and dependent variables – for example, “Effects of Fixed-interval Length on…”
Abstract
(on page 2)
This is a 200-word (maximum) paragraph in which you summarize the purpose (0.5 pt), method (0.5 pt), results (0.5 pt), and conclusions (0.5 pt) of your study. This paragraph is NOT indented; it is aligned left only (as is the rest of the paper). You don’t need lots of details here – but make sure to summarize the actual results. Your abstract should be similar to those in the articles.
Introduction
(starts on page 3; see table above for points for individual parts of this section)
The title of this section is the title of your paper – NOT the word “Introduction”.
Your introduction should be organized like an inverted triangle. You should start with introductory sentences/paragraph in which you describe schedules, pausing, etc. generally – definition, pattern of behavior, etc. You don’t talk about your study in this paragraph. You could talk about both FR and FI schedules here or just FR – it’s up to you. But you do need to describe pausing and run rate with FI schedules (Lowe et al., 1983) somewhere in your introduction.
Then you should describe each of your six studies. The order in which you describe the articles is up to you. The degree of depth to your descriptions depends on the study, but you should at least describe the subjects, the basic procedure, and the results. You don’t need to describe every experiment or all phases of an experiment in the article; describe what is most relevant to our study and to the point you want to make. You need to tie these descriptions together – you shouldn’t just have a list of paragraphs. Think about how they are related and point that out. If you include more articles, then the points per article summary will be adjusted.
Make sure to cite the articles appropriately. If you are unsure about citations, please talk to me. If you don’t cite appropriately, then you might plagiarize.
Your last one or two paragraphs will be a description of your study. You need to briefly describe the purpose, your methods (but not a lot of details), and your predictions based on the literature that you have just described. Remember, all the previous rich-to-lean studies tend to use FR schedules, but we used FI schedules. So it isn’t work load or difficulty or reinforcer magnitude that is controlling the pauses. What is in FI schedules?
Method
(starts immediately after Intro)
Revise and finish your subject, apparatus, procedure, and data analysis sections. Remember – you need details. See table above for points for individual sections.
Results
(starts immediately after you finish Data Analysis; see table above for points for individual parts of this section)
You need to complete your figures before you write your results as you will be referring to them in your results (e.g., Figure 1 shows that…). But you don’t need to wait until you get feedback about your figures from me.
You should start with a general characterization of the effect of the independent variable (see descriptions in articles). Then describe the data quantitatively – don’t just say the PRP was high in a particular transition, describe how much longer or shorter it was compared to in the other transitions.
You should describe the PRP data first and make sure to answer the questions that we have discussed in your descriptions. But you also need to describe more of the data than just the answers to these questions – you would want to describe the differences in PRP across the transitions.
1. Did PRP increase as upcoming FI value increased?
a. You would want to compare the FI 10-s schedule with the longer FIs and also compare the unfavorable FIs – as it increased from FI 10 s to FI 15 s to FI 20 s, etc. (or whatever values you had).
2. Did the past FI value interact with the upcoming FI value? Was the PRP longer in the FUF transition than in the UFUF transition?
a. This is the important comparison, but you also want to describe the differences across the four transitions.
i. For example, were there differences in PRP in the FI 10-s schedule in the UFF and the FF transitions?
3. How much did switching levers contribute to the differences in pauses?
a. You can compare the difference in pauses between the FUF and the UFUF to the difference in pauses between the UFF and FF as both involve a switch in levers. You can’t just look at the absolute differences in this comparison – you want to look at percentage or proportion of difference – as the pauses are going to be longer overall when the FI is longer.
Then you should describe your run rate data and answer similar questions with respect to the run rate.
Discussion
(starts immediately after Results – see table above for points for individual parts of this section)
Your discussion should be organized like a triangle. It should be more than one or two paragraphs. It should take you a few pages to fully discuss your study.
You should start with a summary of your results. This should be just a paragraph, and the description is similar to what you put in your abstract – you don’t have to present all of the detail again.
Then you need to compare your results to results from past studies. Make sure to clearly describe similarities and differences.
Then explain your results. If you replicated previous research, state that, but you also have to explain your results. Why is it important and/or interesting that the rich-to-lean effect occurs in FI schedules and not just FR schedules? Read the discussions of the other articles.
If you didn’t replicate the results, you need to explain, as best you can, why you didn’t replicate the results. Here you can refer to other studies and look for procedural differences. What are the differences between FR and FI schedules that would produce the difference in results? Don’t just point to a difference in their procedure, but you need to explain why that difference would produce changes in their study but not in yours.
You should talk briefly about future directions. What other studies would follow from yours?
You should point out any problems and describe how these problems might have affected your results. And you should describe how you would address them in future studies. Again, it’s not enough to simply describe these issues; you need to explain how those issues would affect your data (if those issues weren’t there, do you think you would have seen different results?). Remember, a variable is only a confounding variable if it varies systematically with the independent variable. So to be a confounding variable, something would have to be different when one pellet was delivered than when four pellets were delivered. Extraneous noise is a problem, but can’t be a confounding variable as it was generally present throughout the various conditions.
You don’t want to say that you only had 1 subject and that was a problem. It’s not.
Finally, you need to summarize your study – make some conclusions– you want to end strong. What is the “bottom line” or the “take home message”?
References
(starts on a new page; the points for the reference are for accuracy of the list (including spelling of names, complete titles, etc.) and correspondence between citations and items in the reference list – not the APA format)
Please consult your APA manual and previous Psy 355 papers for the correct format (but don’t necessarily assume that what you did in Psy 355 was correct). Do not rely on published articles or PsycINFO; those references are not necessarily printed in APA format. Revise your reference list from the assignment. All references cited in the paper must be in the reference list, and all references in the list must be cited in the paper.
Figures and Captions
(each figure is on a new page; but you can have several graphs in one figure)
Revise your figures from the assignment and add any more data that you have collected. Make sure that if your figures have mean/medians that you have included a measure of variability. Also, make sure that your captions (use the caption feature in Word once you have copied your graphs into Word) include all the required information, including what is on the y and x-axes, the legend, error bars, etc.
THE ACADEMIC HONOR CODE APPLIES TO YOUR WRITING AND TO THE DATA.
DO NOT SHARE GRAPHS OR DATA CALCULATIONS OR WRITING. IF YOU DO, THEN YOU WILL BE REFERED TO THE DEAN OF STUDENTS.
PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN SUMMARIZING THE ARTICLES; DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. SEE YOUR LAB MANUAL. IF YOUR DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTICLE IS TOO SIMILAR TO THE ACTUAL ARTICLE (EVEN IF YOU CITE IT), THEN YOU WILL GET 0 FOR THAT ARTICLE.