Media Production Project

--Original published at WilliamsCollegeBlog

One of the big topics surrounding the generations today is the attention span of everyone in daily lives. A large issue comes with children diagnosed with the attention problem Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which affect about 1 in every 20 children. It is scary how easily our attention can flip from one serious matter to the latest email popping up on the screen. Cell phones and any other mobile device has become part of a person’s life and will not go anywhere without it. This idea of having multiple screens in front of a person became a study too good not to dive deeper into. A group of researchers from Cambridge University, led by Barbara Sahakian, decided to look into how we could use mobile devices to enhance one’s attention span and keep them on task.

The main method for looking at such a study was designing an application where players would have to remember certain patterns or look for sequences in a list of numbers. The game, Decoder, was invented by the research team and requires concentration in order to complete a level. As people grow, the part of the brain responsible for concentration and attention is meant to grow and help people be adults. Decoder is supposed to help sustain such attention and allow for motivation amongst players.

For the researchers to get accurate results, they went out and setup an experiment. Seventy-five young adults were recruited from the local Cambridge area based on what the researchers defined as healthy and young. They were considered healthy based on psychiatric and ADHD tests. The experiment was carried out by randomly assigning the participants to three different groups, allowing twenty-five people per group. One group was given the task of playing the Decoder game, another to play the game Bingo, and the last group played no game at all and carried their lives out normally. The last group was considered the control group and was used as a baseline for the results of the other two groups. Bingo was used because of its similar stimulus but does not give the same training for attention. The perimeters for the two groups playing a game was allotted to eight 1-hour sessions of gameplay over a 4-week span.

After each session of gameplay those two groups were asked to rate their experiences based on four levels of criteria. Those being alertness, enjoyment, motivation, and positive mood. At the end of the 4 weeks, all seventy-five participants were given a test to measure the outcomes. Over the eight sessions there was a significant difference between the Decoder and Bingo group in terms of all four groups. Two other tests, the CANTAB Rapid Visual Information Processing Test (RVP) and Trail Making Test (TMT), were given to assess sustained attention by completing a task requiring a certain level of awareness and concentration. The RVP test tested a participant’s ability to react to a certain sequence while the TMT looked at the response time and completion of test.

The experiment came out as a success, with the results concluding the original thought. While playing the game Decoder, attention and concentration showed improvement in comparison to the other two groups. The experiment used participants considered to be healthy, but now there is possibilities to achieve improvement for children and adults that suffer from ADHD. People who already have poor attention abilities and get easily distracted have shown improvement when using the game Decoder.

The future for these studies is endless. The success of the first experiment showed good improvement and the research behind ADHD patients shows promising results. People who suffer from concussions and traumatic brain injuries are also able to benefit from games like Decoder because they have impaired sustained attention. The cognitive training is huge and will be able to allow large advancements in this field.

Reflection:

One of the biggest challenges I found while writing this article was keeping the information concise and not adding too much detail to a subject when details were not necessary. Most of research article brought up terminology from neuroscience and the normal reader would not understand. Keeping this in mind, determining what I needed in the article itself was not difficult. I believe that the original article did a good job describing the experiment without using all the terminology and it helped keep me in line when writing. While writing, I knew I had to keep the 5 critical questions in the back of my mind and consider what the original did. The purpose is to make the paper make sense to whoever is reading, eve though would not be looking to make sure those questions are included.

In the original article, not all the 5 critical questions were addressed, and it made for a little bit of confusion on my part. The one they missed was talking about how they operationalized their variable. I would believe that is one of the most important questions to answer in the beginning. As I was referencing the original, I made sure to include the important details that they forgot to include. Writers are known for adding a bunch of extra words to make themselves sound better and it was obvious. There was a lot of generalization and assumptions about the research that should not happened. After reading the research, I made sure to make those distinct differences. Since the original article used many of the critical questions, it was rather simple finding a way to incorporate the same ones into my article. Questions involving the selection of participants and how they were assigned were straight forward and clear questions to answer in the article. The use of causal claims is important since it secures a sense of validity for the research itself. Keeping all those questions in the back of my mind, made for an easy time writing this article.

After finishing this project, there was a lot to learn about journalism. A main takeaway for me was how generalizing is a large part of making an article sound well written. Obviously not all readers are going to be as skilled as noticing when a piece of information is missing so generalizing is the key for most writers. Once we got the scholarly article that the pop culture article was written from, the level of writing had gone down. It is once again a key factor of generalizing. Journalism is great for creating a new story based on original concepts. Audiences do not want to read about statistics relating to a study; rather they want to hear the story behind it and why they should be reading anyways. If the audience is captivated by the information, writers know it is a good piece of work.

Citations

Avramova, Nina. “This brain training app may help you stay focused.” CNN. Cable News Network, 21 Jan. 2019. Web. Accessed on 28 Jan. 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/health/brain-training-app-focus-attention-study-intl/index.html

Savulich, George, et al. “Improvements in Attention Following Cognitive Training With the   Novel ‘Decoder’ Game on an iPad.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 13, no.   2, doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00002. file:///C:/Users/wscho/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/For%20Will%20S%20(3).pdf


Impact of Facebook on Body Image

--Original published at Ariana's Blog

Is using Facebook affecting how you see yourself? The short answer is yes. Many people today have a Facebook account and spend countless hours scrolling through their feed. Young teens and even adults now post many selfies either as a profile picture or just as a post. This raises the question if it affects how people view their body or face. To answer this question, we turn to the results of a recent study on this issue. 

Researchers Jasmine Fardouly, Phillippa Diedrichs, and Emma Halliwell hypothesized that Facebook increases body dissatisfaction, negative mood, and weight discrepancy. In their study they tested 2 different impacts—increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction. There had been correlational studies that found Facebook did increase body concerns; however, the researchers wanted to conduct their own experimental study. 112 voluntary participants were selected based on the criteria that they were female between seventeen and twenty-five years old. The researchers believed that this was an appropriate sample because they were testing the effect of Facebook on only women. They all completed a pre-exposure state measure of mood and body dissatisfaction. The participants were randomly assigned to 3 different groups. They either scrolled through Facebook, a fashion magazine website, or an appearance neutral website. All websites were checked to make sure each was equal in appeal and comparison opportunity.

Each participant was told to browse the feed of the assigned website for ten minutes a day for a week. After the week, the women were asked to rate their mood on a scale of 1-100 and to rate how different they would like their appearance to be on a scale of 1-5; one being a little different and five being extremely different. Responses were categorized into 3 groups: weight, body, or facial discrepancies. 

The results were unexpected. Women who browsed Facebook for a short time reported being in a more negative mood and had increased facial dissatisfaction. It turns out that women compare their facial features instead of body features. This could be due to the type of posts that are uploaded—up-close selfies! There needs to be further experimental research on this issue to determine whether Facebook is the cause of facial and body dissatisfaction as well as mood. 

Through this experiment the researchers hope to encourage women to follow positive, inspirational accounts to decrease body image concerns. They want to bring attention to the impact that Facebook may have on a person’s view of themselves. 

Reflection:

This project has made me realize that not everything we see on the news or in articles is accurate and further reading should be done in order to find the truth. To make sure that my readers knew the importance of the study, I explained the issue and gave a bit of background information on previous correlational studies. In this article, I chose to include important information so that the audience was able to answer each of the five critical questions. This is significant because it makes the article credible and reliable. I also chose to state that additional research is required to verify the article’s findings so that the audience is aware that there may be errors in the study. I chose to leave out information that I didn’t believe was necessary and was too scientifically based, such as the scientific terms for the specific scales used to operationalize their variables, so that the article was easy to read and understand.

The original article had a bit of important information that was also put in my article; however, it left out some critical information that it should have contained. The summary I wrote is more fact based and portrays the relevant points of the research instead of giving facts about Facebook to appeal to the audience. I recognize that the data may have made my summary less compelling to read, but I felt it was critical information that needed to be included. The original article failed to present the information needed to answer any of the five critical questions, such as how they selected participants and how they operationalized their variables etc., so I made sure to clearly state the information needed in my summary.

I understand that journalists writing pop culture articles have word limits, but I also noticed that they use that space to appeal to the audience instead of giving the facts that would make their article credible and important. It is important for journalists to answer the five critical questions of the scientific study, so the audience can determine its reliability. I also learned that being a journalist of a psychological study comes with the responsibility of interpreting the research so that the audience is able to understand the outcomes. It is difficult to write an article that appeals to a large group of people while simultaneously containing enough factual evidence, especially with the regulations placed upon journalists.

Media Production Project

--Original published at AlexisPattersonBlog

When you get ready to go out to eat with someone, the first thing that pops into your head is the first impression you want to make on that person. You don’t want someone to judge you, or think that you talk too much, eat too fast, etc. Yet if you have a diet restriction, does that change the atmosphere? Would you feel more pressured if you were the one with the restriction? Lots of people would say they feel a certain way when having to present themselves as different in today’s society, especially when meeting someone new. This is even more stressful when people are going to eat with someone they just met for the first time. This pressure is best explained as consumption stereotypes. For example, this is where someone will judge someone else based off what they order or eat, depending on how picky they are, etc. A study was conducted by psychology students from Western Connecticut State University and University of Toledo who also wondered this. These students came together to present the question of whether people that a dietary restriction have such as gluten, would face conflict when it comes to dating or choosing a dating partner.

To conduct the study, students hung up flyers and sent out emails with incentives to obtain the test objectives. These students wanted the test to be random, to show the effects it could have on anyone, not one targeted group.  There were two rounds of this study done, both producing the same results. The first study was a series of open-ended questions about gluten free individuals and their thoughts about dating someone who would have a gluten free diet restriction. This study showed both positive and negative results. A part of the research showed that if you’re gluten-free, you’re more likely to be following a healthy diet, but unfortunately also to be picky, high-maintenance, difficult to please, demanding, concerned about your appearance, and entitled. Gluten-free individuals were perceived as complaining, critical and judgmental, and controlling and dominant

Think about this; if a boy and girl both had a dietary restriction, who do you think would be more likely to be a picky partner? Would this change your mind on your feelings towards them?  The second study was conducted to simulate it as if it was realistic dating. Students were then given certain scenarios, as if they were looking at a profile of someone with a dietary restriction. The reactions to those profiles were recorded and analyzed. Just like the first study, they were asked to reflect on the profile based off a list of traits to describe them. Regarding gender perceptions, gluten-free individuals were more feminine and less masculine than others (Whitbourne 2019). The results led to show that there is a balance between if people do think one would be considered picky or not, leaving room for further research.

Reflection

When writing my own scholarly article, determining what to include was one of the easier things to do. You wanted to include information that allowed the reader to understand what was going on in the study, so the more information the better off they are of being able to understand. Yet determining what was relevant was also crucial as you do not want to add information that is not needed. Starting the article was one of my struggles when writing as you want to hook the reader and give them more of a reason to want to read more. Another struggle was trying not to be repetitive from the first article. It is hard when you already have a summarized article that was published and already looked over. Everyone is human, so out of habit they will want to look at that one to help guide for this one. You want to find a balance of information that is relevant but concise.

When reading the research, I used the five questions as a base line for what should be included in my article. You want all aspects to be answered for the study to be reliable and easy to understand. Some similarities with my summary and the article are that they both started off situational, where the reader was put into a situation and asked their opinion on the information provided. Yet the pop culture article is more like a story and my article focuses more on questioning your own personal opinions. One difference I found present between the two articles that helped me when writing my summary was the lack of explanation of the effect of gender roles on the outcome of the study. It mentions gender roles in a sentence or two towards the end of the article, yet it is only mentioned briefly, assuming the reader would already know.

When writing each of the different pieces, I was able to observe the level of detail that goes into each. For a pop culture, you want to appeal more to an audience, stating factual information but keeping the tone of the writing easier to understand. The scholarly article is more study- based. It goes more into depth about the study, how it was performed, and the data that was obtained by it. The scholarly article reflected to be more of a scientific paper rather than an article to put in the media. The media production is similar to the pop culture as it is more summary based and not as detailed as the study. For example, the article was broad in the sense that it did not show statistical data that could support the findings. In the study, the open-ended response questions were analyzed, and percentages were given to explain the most common answers that were given.

sources

Aloni, Maya, Geers Andrew L., Coleman Mykelle, Milano Karissa. “Too picky for my taste? The effect of the gluten-free dietary restriction on impressions of romantic partners.” Appetite. Elsevier, 15 September 2018.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201901/is-picky-eater-also-picky-partner

https://www.elsevier.com/locate/appet

The Rise of Fake News and What Can Be Done

--Original published at Alex's Thoughts

In the recent tumult of national politics and partisan ideologies gaining traction in the United States, one must ask the question, why do people not bother to look at the other side’s viewpoints? Are they simply intellectually lazy, or do they attempt to rationalize their own partisan beliefs, even at the cost of the unabashed truth? Political scholars have been debating which one makes more sense in the context of modern society, especially after the 2016 election cycle. According to a recent study conducted by psychologists Dr. Gordon Pennycook and David Rand, the first theory is the most likely one.

The study in question relied on a convenience sample of Mechanical Turk workers. They were given a well-respected psychology test to determine political affiliation while avoiding the personal bias of the researchers. After being given the test, they were assigned tabloid and actual news headlines and asked to determine which ones were true and which ones were false. Generally speaking, neither side of the political spectrum was better or worse than the other at detecting false headlines. People who were more inclined towards critical thinking were more likely to detect false headlines, instead of attempting to rationalize them like the second theory would claim. This was true whether or not the headlines aligned with their own political views. After controlling for factors like level of education and political leaning, this was still found to be the case. Overall, the results of this study seem to coincide with the idea that people will not attempt to rationalize fake news for their own sense of entitlement, they simply do not care to research the topic in question.

While this study is merely a small sample and demographic relative to the United States population, it would seem to indicate that the question is still worth being researched. Increased samples with the same test administered would most likely corroborate with the findings of this study, adding more evidence to the idea that people will not rationalize false headlines, especially if they are adept at critical thinking.

This study and the topic as a whole are meant to address the question, what can be done about the proliferation of fake news? If the results of this study are found to be repeated a repeated pattern in further studies with much better samples and more diverse sampling options, then the answer would seem to be quite simple. Think before speaking, as thinking about the implications of the news versus the reality of the situation will give one a much better sense of what is occurring in the world. The American people do not need to be reminded about the partisanship in the nation, they need to be reminded about the innumerable benefits of being an informed, alert, and vocal citizen of the United States of America. Questioning news sources, reading literature and informing oneself about current events, and simply maintaining an open mind to the viewpoints of others would go a long way towards resolving both the ills of the media and the nation as a whole.

Original Article:

Bibliography

Pennycook, Gordon and David Rand. “Why Do People Fall for Fake News?” 19 January 2019. The New York Times. Website. 13 February 2019.

Original Research Article:
file:///C:/Users/koont/Downloads/For%20Alex%20K.pdf

Reflection:

I learned a lot about how the media chooses to portray psychological research in order to sell a particular viewpoint to the public in the hopes that “new research” buzzwords will cause them to immediately and unquestioningly believe whatever is espoused in the article. I understand that it is done to garner interest in the publication and ultimately sell ads, but the sensationalism that is originally innocent could prove poisonous if proper research is not cited to back up the claims of the article. For example, the original article goes into great depth about how the original variables in the study were operationalized, but skimmed over how their participants were selected and grouped. If they mentioned this up front, it would have confounded any conclusions they were trying to draw with the data, as the participants were not randomly selected or grouped at all. Additionally, they attempted to generalize the findings to the American population. However, the convenience sample of Mechanical Turk workers do not come anywhere close to allowing the results to be generalized to the population of the United States. To be fair, the authors of the original article attempt to assert that they have other studies in the works that corroborate the results further, but the studies have not been published or peer-reviewed as of yet. As such, I attempted to remedy the ills of the original authors in my reinterpretation.

I was up front about the sampling methods and stated that it was a convenience sample of Mechanical Turk workers. I praised the method of operationalizing variables, and went into detail about how the test was conducted. I later stated that while the sample and demographic were small when compared with the population of the United States, the question was still worth looking into. Larger samples with more diverse sampling options would do much to bolster the assertions of the original article and the findings of the researchers.

Overall, the quality of the assertions of the original article were quite poor, as no deductions can be drawn from data that is derived from such a lacking sample. The way I finished my article was all based under the assumption that if further studies with better sampling methods were conducted and found to have the same results as the one conducted by the authors, then perhaps something can be done about the widespread proliferation of fake news. Until then, nothing has been distinctly proven or disproven about the topic, and the American people will have to draw their own conclusions as thinking citizens.

Media Production Project

--Original published at Zach Nawrocki's Blog

The age of technology has been taking over humans lives for decades now. One such branch of technology is photography. Have you ever gone on vacation and find an amazing view or monument and the first thing you do is take out a phone or camera and take a picture of it? An interesting new study in the journal, Psychological Science, suggests that taking a photo of an object may actually reduce how much you remember about the object later. Linda Henkel, author of the study and researcher in the Department of Psychology at Fairfield University states, “Taking a photograph is as easy as pointing and shooting, providing an external memory of one’s experiences.”

The first experiment in the study was comprised of a group of 27 undergraduates (6 men and 21 women) who were taken to a museum to observe objects. They were randomly split into two groups, with one set of students asked to read the name of an object, observe it for 20 seconds and then they were to take a picture of it. The second set of students was asked to read the name of the object and then to only observe it for 30 seconds.

 The next day the students where asked what they remembered from the previous day about the objects by participating in a free-recall test.  This test is a name-recognition test which consisted of the 30 objects including 10 names that were randomly intermixed among the objects and also a visual-recognition test with 10 pictures of objects that were not on the tour. From these tests the students were asked to recognize which objects where on the tour and other details about the objects, such as, “What did the warrior have in his hands?”. From the data it was found the recognition accuracy was lower for photographed objects than for observed objects and was higher when participants saw photos of the objects in the visual-recognition test.

               The second experiment conducted in the study was fairly similar to the first one with a few minor additions to make the experiment more accurate. In this experiment, a group of 46 undergraduates (10 men, 36 women) were taken to the museum and asked to observe 27 objects. This time however, they were given 25 seconds to observe the object, then an additional 5 seconds to either take a picture of the whole object or were asked to zoom in on a specific part of the object. They were also asked to only observe some objects without taking a picture of the object. Out of the 27 objects, each participate was asked to take a picture of a whole object 9 times, take a picture of a specific part of an object 9 times and to only observe an object 9 times for a total of 27 objects.

The next day the participates were asked to remember the various pieces of art (the 27 old objects and 10 objects randomly intermixed which were not on the tour). They were also asked to indicate whether they had taken a photo of the object or just observed the object. The participates were asked to rate their confidence about the details that they remembered from the objects that were observed. This experiment had some interesting results however. From the data obtained it shows that participants remembered fewer details about the objects when photos of the whole object were taken, however, participants remembered a similar amount of detail about objects when zoomed in on it compared to objects that were just observed with no photo taken. This data shows that if a person zooms in on an object, they not only remember more detail about the zoomed in part but also the object as a whole since a person has to focus more when zooming in on a picture.

This study shows several interesting facts that were concluded from the data. There is more to either taking a picture or not taking a picture that can affect your memory about an object. Thousands of photos are taken each day and many different factors go into photos including different angles, zooming in and how long you have to take a photo. All these factors can have an impact on how well a person will remember the object in the future. While this study seems professionally done it does not explain how the participants were selected so it cannot be generalized to a population. Nevertheless, remember when taking your next photo to always take another look at the view after you take a picture!

Reflection:

               Throughout the process I started to realize how difficult it can actually be to summarize a study with a limited about of space. Most studies (including mine) are pages long talking about how the study was performed and the results from the study. It proved difficult to pick out only the important information that can be used to explain the whole study with limited space. One item that I did leave out was the p-values that were obtained from the study. I decided to leave this out because since this is for the general population I feel as though it is not common knowledge to know what a p-value is or what they are used to show. I was still able to explain the results from the study however without the use of the p-values. Another piece that I left out except for a small part were the five critical questions of research. I decided to leave this out because the five critical questions are not common knowledge to know and some of the questions use words that not everyone might know what they mean. Nevertheless, I did include one critical question which was that since the study did not explain how they selected their participants it cannot be generalized to the population. When comparing my summary to the original news article there are several similarities and differences. Both my summary and the news article describe how the study was performed and how the data from the study was obtained and what the data meant. There are some differences as well. In my summary I go more into the detail of what tests were performed on the participants to obtain the concluding data. I also go into more detail about what that data means and the conclusions they got from the data. The news article never mentions anything about the five critical questions. Knowing that it can be difficult to include the questions into the summary, in my summary I still mentioned the one question which was that the study was not able to be generalized. Overall, while writing this summary I had to remember that it is for a general population to read which made my job of selecting what information to include and what not to include harder since some information that is used in the study is not common knowledge for most people.

While writing this summary I came to realize that we shouldn’t be so harsh on journalists because it is very difficult to include all the data that you want to include to make an article. A lot of information must be left out if you are to make the article understandable for the general public. I also realized that it is very difficult to make an article “attention grabbing”, when you read an article, journalist find ways to make even the most boring topic interesting. I find this very difficult to do being that you are talking about a study which a lot of people don’t want to read about. After writing my news article I have come to find a new appreciation for journalists and the struggles they have to go through to write an article for the public to be able to understand and find interesting.  

Links:

Original News Article – https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/health/memory-photos-psychology/index.html

Scholarly Article – https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797613504438

Media Production Project

--Original published at Emily's college blog

Many Americans believe their pets play a significant role by being part of their family, but perhaps large numbers of people do not realize their pets can also play a role in positively affecting their sleep quality and sleep routines. Researchers from the Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation at Canisius College conducted a survey to explore the impacts pets have on human sleep quality. They restricted their online survey to female participants who resided in the United States and sent the survey to previous participants who had volunteered for their other experiments while also posting the survey on their Facebook page.

The researchers collected data from 962 adult women who were living in the United States and found 55% of participants shared their bed with at least one dog, while 31% of participants shared their bed with at least one cat, and 57% of participants shared their bed with a human partner.

Through the survey questions, the researchers were able to measure the sleep components tied to sleep quality deficits, the components that show signs of sleep deprivation. If the participant’s score exceeded five of the twenty-one components, an indication of sleep quality deficits was noted. Measurements of the average wake times and bedtimes, as well as the levels of comfort, security, and disturbance from pets were also noted.

In the results, the researchers found women who shared their bed with dogs had fewer sleep disturbances, as well as stronger feelings of comfort throughout the night than women who did not share their bed with their dog. It was also found that having a dog bed partner strengthens circadian rhythms, the 24-hour sleep-wake cycle which influences important bodily functions. The researchers explained that this could be due to dogs getting up and going to bed at roughly the same time every day.

Although dogs were found to have positive effects on pet owners who allowed them to sleep in their bed, there was no correlation between cats and a good night’s sleep or stronger circadian rhythms. In fact, cats actually had negative results for being equivalent or even more disturbing than human partners during the night. Cats also do not go to bed or wake up at the same time each day, thus they have no effect on their owner’s circadian rhythms.

A few cautions should be warned when discussing the results of this survey. First, 58% of the people who participated in the survey resided in the state of New York (where the researchers had conducted the survey). Since over half of their participants resided where the researchers were doing their research, the experiment could potentially be seen as biased to outsiders, since the results are supposed to represent all the women in the United States. Secondly, the researchers for this survey announced that more research is needed in order to show a stronger relationship between the sleep quality of pet owners and their dogs.  Lastly, the researchers did not take into account the breeds of dogs that could be more likely to cause a better night’s sleep than another type of breed. For example, one breed could be known for snoring, kicking legs in their sleep, barking at noises in the middle of the night, etc.

Overall, this survey suggested an improved quality of sleep and comfort for women who shared their beds with their dogs, however, their findings did not support a strong enough relationship between dogs and sleep quality, so therefore more research is needed to better support the findings.

Reflection

In my summary, I made sure to include information that would be important for answering all five critical questions for reading research. I wanted to make the research summary straightforward and easy to comprehend. This way, a non-psychologist would be able to understand the results and findings that were discussed. I did not include any p-values or the specific types of studies and methods that would be needed in order to find a stronger relationship between pets and sleep quality of humans. I did not want the reader to be confused by p-values or the numbers they represent. I also did not want to go into too much detail about what the future studies and methods would entail since it would be off topic from the summary findings.

 The news article and my summary both discussed the percentages of participants in each group, the results from pet owners who slept with dogs versus those who slept with cats, the caution of not knowing which breeds would be a better sleep partner, and who conducted the survey. The news article, however, did not include information describing the selection of participants for the study, information describing the weak relationships in the results, or information describing the 58% of participants who resided where the research took place. They also excluded how the researchers measured the sleep and comfort quality of participants. I chose to include the information that was not in the pop culture article because I think excluding those points would establish assumptions and leave some unanswered questions about the research. Specifically, the information including how the researchers measured the women’s sleep quality, how they chose the participants, and how they assigned the participants into groups allows the reader to answer the five critical questions. From knowing those details of the experiment, the reader will know the participants were not randomly assigned to the experiment and were not randomly assigned into groups.

Writing about psychology research through these three assignments, has taught me that authors have the power to influence reader conclusions by choosing to exclude relevant information. By leaving out important information or being purposely biased towards an experiment, an author is able to potentially persuade a reader to his or her point of view. Also, in order to generate more readers, an author could also exaggerate the findings from an experiment or make generalized statements. I also learned about the difficulties associated with writing pop culture news articles. If a study is complex and requires some background knowledge in the field, it can be challenging for the author to write a short, engaging article for the reader to understand. Lastly, I learned to look for the critical questions in news articles discussing research experiments. If the article is missing adequate information to answer the questions, perhaps it is not a reliable source. Writing my own pop culture article demonstrated the power authors have in order to persuade viewpoints and generate readers, while also showing me the hard work in selecting information for the article as well as being aware of information a common reader will not understand.

Citations

Coren, Stanley. “Do Women Get Better Sleep Next to a Person or a Dog?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 24 Jan. 2019, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201901/do-women-get-better-sleep-next-person-or-dog, 27 January 2019.

Hoffman, Christy L., Stutz, Kaylee, and Vasilopoulos, Terri. “An Examination of Adult Women’s Sleep Quality and Sleep Routines in Relation to Pet Ownership and Bedsharing.” Anthrozoös, Routledge, 13 November 2018, DOI: 10.1080/08927936.2018.1529354, 15 March 2019.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201901/do-women-get-better-sleep-next-person-or-dog

https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2018.1529354

Does Social Media Cause Depression in Young Adults?

--Original published at Ally'sCollegeBlog

Social media, and its affects on students, have been studied over the years. Does screen time increase the probability of depression? Is social media a good or bad thing? as well as thousands of other questions have been asked. A research team of five psychologists, have dipped their toes into the unknown waters. The team consists of Taylor Heffer, Owen Daly, and Elliott MacDonell of Brock University as well as Marie Good of Redeemer University College. Using longitudinal studies, or data collected over a period of time, the researchers were able to study a group of people for the course of two years. They took students from sixth grade to freshmen in college in Ontario, Canada, and asked them a series of questions about their social media use. The researchers used two categories for these questions. One was weekend usage and the other, weekday. They then did a mental health assessment. They studied After studying the data, the team concluded that social media does not cause depression overtime in young adults or children. Some students might have a different outcome than this because of their environment or preexisting mental health. Of course this is a new field of research so this data may be contradicted in the future. It can be very difficult to examine any unknown factors and variables.

Reflection

I always like diving deep into the subjects I research and that can be very beneficial in the long run. You can see both sides of an argument and get a more scientific outlook. Many news sites, such as buzzfeed, have short articles and the pages are filled with advertisements rather than factual information. I respect journalists because their job is so rigorous. Between having to sift through the information and trying to formulate an article in simple terms, it can be extremely difficult to come to correct conclusions and have an unbiased stance. I found the same hardship when writing my story. I tried to keep my article short and sweet because there was so much complex psychology terms and subjects that are difficult to but into simpler words. I never thought it would be that difficult but because of the word minimum, I was torn with what to include. Some information was too hard to explain, it was too scientific to understand.

I did not include specific information about the study such as how they obtained their participants. I had to excluded their search for the participants because it was too lengthy to include. I also excluded their full findings. There was a lot of mathematics and correlation studies that I left out because I thought it was too complex and not easily understandable. There were so many numbers, variables, and schematics that I did not even really understand. Other than those few pieces, I did not leave out anything super important. Of course the original study was fifteen pages I had a paragraph, but the majority of that paper is what I said I left out.

I found that this was a very difficult assignment because I like including details and expanding on things I have wrote about. I have a lot of more sympathy for journalists because it is their job to dive into the information and sift through it. I have taken a lot from this assignment. My mindset has shifted and I know understand what journalists, editors, and anyone who has to write about a lengthy subject. I am very happy that this assignment is included in our curriculum because it can shift someone’s mindset and help open the door to journalism. Without this blog post and the other previous writing assignments, I would not understand what journalists go through.

Citations-

Mikulak, Anna. Data Shows No Evidence That Teens’ Social Media Use Predicts Depression Over Time, January 30, 2019, https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-01/afps-dsn013019.php

Heffer, Taylor, et al. “The Longitudinal Association Between Social-Media Use and Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents and Young Adults: An Empirical Reply to Twenge Et Al. (2018).” Clinical Psychological Science, 2019, pp. 1-9., doi:10.1177/2167702618812727

Media Production Project

--Original published at Voltage Blog

A group of researchers took part in a study to figure out if rocking while sleeping helps make for a better night of sleep. Eighteen participants in their 20s were randomly selected to perform in this study. They were asked to take part in a night of stationary sleep and a night of continuous rocking with very similar environments. The study observed changes in the sleep patterns such as spindles and how quickly they were able to transition into each stage of sleep. The study found that the rocking at a 0.42hz increased the time in the deepest part of sleep and also helped with their memory. The participants were asked to complete a memory test before they fell asleep and again after they woke up. They were also asked complete a questionnaire about their sleep quality for that night. Most people will believe that having just a small little motion during their sleep will have practically no impact. The participants thought so as well until after the night of rocking. After spending a night in a stationary bed and a night in the rocking bed, the participants said they thought being in the rocking bed was one of the best nights of sleep they ever had.

By being rocked in your sleep, you will have few micro arousals. These small arousals disrupt continuous sleep and force the brain to break away from sleep even if it is just for a brief moment. Arousal density was 60% lower during the deepest part of sleep on the rocking night compared to the stationary night. These disruptions are able to add up over the whole night which disturbs your sleep cycle. The rocking also helped contribute to a shorter time transitioning into the different stages of the sleep cycle. It takes about six minutes less overall to transition into the deeper sleep while on the rocking bed. The rocking also contributed to an increase in sleep spindles. These spindles represent a particular type of brain wave that occurs during sleep, specifically during stage two of the sleep cycle. This difference between stationary and rocking may appear to be small, but this can occur multiple times a night making for a better night of sleep. Most participants woke up after the night of rocking and performed better on the written memory test than they did after the stationary night.

Reflection

While writing this blog post, I felt that it was considerably more difficult trying to translate the research document into a more suitable form for the general public. I thought that it was hard to not write every little detail about the research that I could. I did not write about all the values of everything they found in their data. At first I thought this was very needed information for a research article, but now I find it pretty irrelevant when trying to explain a whole research study to a general audience. If I had included these values all over my post, I think that the reader would have gotten lost very quickly and not have known what I was talking about. I kept in mind the five critical questions about a research study while I wrote this post. My thoughts about authors writing about research studies has changed after having to write one myself. I have more empathy towards them now then when I first read the article. Having to read through the study and trying to understand everything they were talking about was hard enough. Having to translate it into simpler terms was even harder. The most difficult part was trying to pick out the most relevant information about the study without it being too specific. Trying to keep it simple and understandable was a challenging, but if I did not, then the audience would lose interest in reading the rest of the article very quickly. When I first read through the article and critiqued on it earlier in the year, I felt that the article was lacking in a lot of crucial data. I was questioning the authenticity of the whole article and was wondering where all the actual data was. By not including any values, it makes it easier to understand and easier to get hooked into the article. Most, if not all journalists, have to stick to a specific format and have only a small space to work with when writing any type of article. After reading through the source material though, I discovered that the author had to make a lot of tough choices and be very concise on what words they used for the article. Understanding what journalists have to deal with on a daily basis will be very helpful when reading articles in the future. I will think more about the study that they are writing about and look for the five critical questions of a study.

Media Production Project

--Original published at Ben's PSY105 Blog

New Study Finds Possible Link Between Blood Pressure Treatment and Preventing Dementia

In today’s world, almost everyone has had their life impacted by dementia. Dementia is the severe mental decline lots of people experience as they get older. Whether it be a parent, grandparent, friend, or neighbor dementia has touched almost everyone in one way or another. Watching someone you know slowly fade away and become a shell of themselves is devastating. About 9.9 million people develop dementia every year. As of now, there is no cure for dementia. For the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, there is no treatment to even slow the development. This new study has given a glimmer of hope of finding a possible preventative treatment for dementia.

The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) study aimed to see how lowering a patient’s systolic blood pressure (the top number) to a more intensive target of 120 mm Hg rather than the standard 140 mm Hg affected the patient’s cardiovascular health as well as mental health. The study involved over 9,300 patients over 50 with hypertension, which is defined as systolic blood pressure over 130 mm Hg, and no history of stroke or diabetes. According to the American Heart Association, over 100 million Americans have high blood pressure. The patients were randomly assigned to the treatment groups. The study took place over five years from 2010 to 2015. The study found the more intensive treatment lowered the risk of cardiovascular events by 25% and the risk of death by 27%.

The cognitive portion of the study, SPRINT Memory and Cognition IN Decreased Hypertension (SPRINT MIND), looked at how the intensive treatment affected patients’ cognitive functioning after the treatment ended. Over 8,500 of the patients participated in at least one cognitive follow-up assessment. The study aimed primarily to see if the intensive treatment had any impact on the development of “probable dementia” in the patients. Of the 4,278 patients treated with the intense treatment, 149 had developed probable dementia. In the group treated with the standard treatment, 176 out of 4,285 had developed probable dementia. While there were fewer in the intensive group, it was not a statistically significant amount.

The secondary outcome of the SPRINT MIND study looked at the development of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in patients. While MCI is not considered to impact the daily life of someone who has it, it often leads to dementia later in life. Up to 60% of patients diagnosed MCI went on to develop dementia within ten years, and everyone who has dementia had MCI first. The researchers used a series of progressive tests to determine whether the patient had MCI. The results of the study showed 287 patients in the intensive treatment group had developed MCI while 353 patients in the standard treatment group developed MCI.  Based on these results, the researchers concluded the patients treated with the intensive treatment were 19% less likely to develop MCI. While this was only applicable to the patients over 50 with hypertension and no history of stroke or diabetes, it is still promising since preventing MCI is effectively preventing dementia.

The study showed the results the researchers were after in the cardiovascular portion of the study but not the cognitive portion. Despite not having significant results in the cognitive portion, they were still able to find hope of reducing dementia. Dr. Jeff Williamson, the lead researcher, has begun offering intensive treatment to his patients because of the cardiovascular benefits and the 19% decrease in the likelihood of MCI. Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a neurology professor at the University of California, on the other hand, is not ready to replace the standard treatment with then intensive method yet. She acknowledged the hope it gives to one day find an effective treatment or prevention method for dementia, but she wants to see more research done on the cognitive impact of intensive blood pressure treatment.  Thanks to funding from the Alzheimer’s Association, the SPRINT MIND study will continue for two more years. The researchers hope the results will be more significant by the end since dementia takes a long time to develop.

Reflection

In writing this article, the most difficult part was simplifying the terminology into a vocabulary which could be more easily understood by the general public. The medical jargon used in the academic paper made sense but only with background knowledge of the terms being used. For example, most people wouldn’t be able to tell you what their systolic blood pressure is, but if you ask them for the top number of their blood pressure, they would be more likely to be able to give an answer. Lots of people have a general knowledge of their personal health, but not many people have the experience to understand what their numbers mean. Along with simplifying the language, I also had to decide which information was the most necessary to include. To do so I looked for information that pertained directly to how the results of the study matter. The scientific paper featured a lot of the logistics of the study. I had to put enough information to satisfy the critical questions in reading research but not too much to overwhelm the reader with nothing but numbers. Even trying to make the research more accessible, I still had to try to make sure to answer the five critical questions for reading research studies.

Along with simplifying the academic paper into a more accessible language, I also cut out some filler from the NYTimes article. A sizable portion of the article was commentary from Dr. Jeff Williamson, the lead researcher of the SPRINT study, and Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a neurology professor at the University of California. The pair shared an opinion on the findings offering hope for finding a treatment or preventative method for dementia. The pair disagreed, however, on how the results should impact current treatment methods. Dr. Yaffe believes there is still a lot of research to be done before making the intensive treatment the standard method of blood pressure reduction. Dr. Williamson has begun offering his patients the intensive method, telling them it lowers the chance of mild cognitive impairment by 19%. It was important to have the expert opinions, but the NYTimes article focused on the commentary almost as much as the results of the study.

This assignment made me respect journalists more. Until this, I never considered the amount of work which goes into writing an article reporting on a scientific journal. I always felt like they were easy, based on the typical brevity. I took the condensing of the information for granted. Deciding what needs to be in the articles and what should be cut is a difficult task. Adding to the work of getting expert opinions on the findings makes it even more impressive. In the future, I will make sure to keep all of this in mind when critiquing news articles.  

Sources

Belluck, P. (2019, January 28). Study Offers Hint of Hope for Staving Off Dementia in Some People. New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/health/dementia-blood-pressure-cognitive-impairment.html

The SPRINT MIND Investigators for the SPRINT Research Group. Effect of Intensive vs Standard Blood Pressure Control on Probable Dementia: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2019;321(6):553–561. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.21442

How Sleep Affect’s College Students Success

--Original published at JanellesCollegeBlog

It is known by many that a common problem among college students is the amount of sleep they get. Students are encouraged to be involved in sports, clubs, and other activities on campus, but this involvement can cause students to not get the proper amount of sleep. Involvement in activities takes time away from doing homework and studying. If students choose to be involved in activities and therefore stay up late to get school work done this can be a problem. The question is, how big of a problem is it?

According to a study done by Monica E. Hartmann and J. Roxanne Prichard, there is a 10% increase in the chance of dropping a course for each additional night per week a student experiences sleep problems. The baseline chance of dropping a course was not included in the research article. The study also showed a student’s overall GPA decreases by 0.02 for each additional night a week that they have sleep problems. This means just one night a week with sleep problems could have a tremendous effect on a college student’s overall success. Therefore, students should not spend one night a week, let alone every night, as some do, staying up late to study or get work done.

The research study obtained information from randomly selected college students at several universities who were undergraduates and under the age of twenty-five. Variables such as whether students had learning disabilities, how much time they spent working, and whether they had a psychological disorder diagnosis were controlled in the study. There were some limitations to the study, which means there were some components of the study that could have affected the results. The information used in the study was self-reported by the participants. This means some people may have reported higher amounts of sleep than they typically get, while others may have reported less. People’s definitions of sleep problems could also vary widely. Another limitation was participants in the study were heavily female, and overall academically more successful students.

The participants were asked four specific questions to get an idea about their sleep habits, and possible sleep problems. These questions included things such as when they fell asleep, how they slept throughout the night, and how they felt throughout the next day based on the amount of sleep they got the night before.

Information collected in the study showed poor sleep can have a negative effect on student’s performance in school, specifically their GPA and chances of dropping a course, but not getting enough sleep can lead to other problems as well. Examples of possible problems include an increased chance of getting sick, psychological disorders becoming noticeable, and a greater chance of partaking in possibly dangerous situations such as substance use and unprotected sex.

Many universities focus on other issues such as drug use and binge drinking, but do not focus on sleep problems. Sleep problems can have the same or greater effects on academic performance as these more publicized issues. This is a problem because student’s may be doing all they can to not engage in the dangerous activities that are focused on, while they do not know their sleep habits are having a poor effect on their performance as well. Despite students wanting the opportunity to learn about sleep problems on their campuses, many schools do not provide students with this information. It is critically important for first-year students to get this information as the chances of them dropping a course are 40% greater than other undergraduates. If universities can give students information about sleep as soon as they come to campus it could eliminate problems that these students have later in their college career due to poor sleep.

Reflection

Overall, I found it difficult to summarize the whole research article and follow the word count restriction. Although all the information in the original research article is important for readers of pop culture sources to know, I as the journalist, had to determine what was most important. I chose to include more specific details that related to the five critical questions. I left out information that seemed to be filler information which could be said in a shorter summary than was presented in the research article.

One of my main focuses when writing my summary of the research article was answering the five critical questions as these are important to readers. Regarding the first critical question, I did define what a college student was in the study, while the pop culture article did not. Although I defined this variable I did not define sleep problems very specifically, and this could lead to some confusion by readers. I think even among participants this could be a vary widely interpreted variable. Another difference between my summary and the news article was that I explained how participants were randomly selected from several colleges and the news article did not. I could have been more specific about the colleges where students were chosen from, but I felt that this was a detail that I could omit. According to the five critical questions though, I believe I should have included this detail to clarify the information for readers. The participants of the study were not assigned to groups and therefore, neither my summary nor the news article could answer the question of how participants were assigned to groups. Another similarity between my summary and the pop culture news article was that they do not allow for causal claims. It is not apparent in either article that random assignment was used because as was mentioned before, it does not seem as though participants were assigned to groups. Findings discussed in my summary could be generalized to students at the universities included in the study because I included how random selection was used in the study. Readers of the news article could not generalize conclusions to any population. Another similarity between my summary and the NY Times article is that they both include specifically selected details to keep the length to a minimum.

After writing my own summary of the research article for the media production project I understand how hard it is for journalists covering psychology research to write a short article about a long, and sometimes complicated research study. I also understand why pop culture articles cannot include all information that is necessary for readers to answer the five critical questions. Before completing the media production project, I thought it was foolish of the journalist of the NY Times article to not include answers to so many of the critical questions. I felt as though she was not telling the whole story, but now I understand she probably tried to get across what she felt was most important for readers to know. From the scholarly article critique I know that research articles contain answers to many more of the five critical questions than do pop culture sources. I learned if you need more information on a topic that you read about in a popular source it is important to go back to the original source because the information you are looking for can probably be found there. After completing these three assignments I now have much more respect for the work that journalists do summarizing large psychology research studies.

Works Cited

Brody, Jane E. “An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep.” The New York Times. 13 Aug. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/well/an-underappreciated-key-to-college-success-sleep.html.

Hartmann, Monica E., and J. Roxanne Prichard. “Calculating the Contribution of Sleep Problems to Undergraduates Academic Success.” Sleep Health, vol. 4, no. 5, Oct. 2018, pp. 463–471., doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2018.07.002.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326819586_Calculating_the_contribution_of_sleep_problems_to_undergraduates’_academic_success