Draft your Sub-process Section r

Goal

Your goal for this section of the lit review is to identify your cognitive sub-process (only one!) and to describe many of the factors that affect how it works, based on what you find in the research literature. You need to write about 250 words — a full page — just about your cognitive sub-process.

Structure of your Cognitive Sub-process Section

You need to write about 250 words — a full page — just about your cognitive sub-process. It’s easiest to think of it as two or three separate paragraphs. Any sub-process can be affected by a wide range of factors: differences in the participants, differences in the stimuli, differences in the task or context, etc. Your job is to make two or three GROUPS of factors and describe each group in one paragraph.

Paragraph 1. Factors that affect your sub-process (group 1)

Paragraph 2. Factors that affect your sub-process (group 2)

Paragraph 3. Factors that affect your sub-process (group 3) [optional]

Important Tip. Be sure to mention only factors of one kind in a given paragraph. Don’t talk about factors that affect your cognitive process in general (or other things). Separating information this way in different paragraphs makes you look focused : )

Sources for your Cognitive Sub-process Section

You need to understand how researchers think about your cognitive sub-process.

Where to start?

1. Find general, uncitable sources that will help you get warmed up: Encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks

• Look for key concepts, key terms, key authors; other sources! You especially want to identify the factors that affect your cognitive sub-process.

To find general information about a cognitive sub-process, look for:

Cognitive Psychology textbooks, like this one Download this one . The chapter titles are usually general cognitive processes and they will mention the sub-processes.

Encyclopedia articles, even Wikipedia

Specialized dictionaries like the APA Dictionary of Psychology (Links to an external site.).

2. Look for Existing Literature Reviews!

• I always start with the Annual Review of Psychology. It ONLY contains lit reviews : )
• Definitely look for Dissertations and Theses. Use ProQuest Dissertations and Theses to find theses and dissertations in Psychology. This link will probably take you there: https://www-proquest-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/dissertations/advanced?accountid=10361 (Links to an external site.) Theses and dissertations always include a literature review — often very well researched — as the first chapter.
• Find books and book chapters, especially those by key authors. Book chapters often summarize a lot of research to describe the state of the art in a particular area. They are similar to literature reviews but usually structured differently.
• Some journals contain a lot of literature reviews. Use PsycInfo to find research publications like Psychological Review. This journal is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Review
• Look for key concepts, key terms, key authors; other sources! You especially want to identify the FACTORS that affect your cognitive sub-process.

Important tips:

Do NOT waste your time with keyword search on Google! Do you want to check 3.8 billion results for ‘reading’?!

Do NOT ever pay to read scientific articles! The SJSU Library gives you access to them all for free.

For more tips and details, see the items in the module called Tools & Tips: How to Research the Existing Literature to Develop your Research Question

Collaborate with your classmates who are interested in the same mental action.

Produce one list of relevant sources — shared by your teammates — that will you help you understand how your cognitive process works.

Checking Relevance

As you are drafting and after you’ve finished a first version, check what you wrote to make sure that it’s relevant and informative.

Section Questions to check relevance and informativity

Cognitive Sub-process

Paragraph 1: Does each sentence mention your cognitive sub-process and a factor that affects it? Nothing else? Are all the factors mentioned in paragraph 1 in the same group?

Paragraph 2: Does each sentence mention your cognitive sub-process and a factor that affects it? Nothing else? Are all the factors mentioned in paragraph 2 in the same group?

Paragraph 3: Does each sentence mention your cognitive sub-process and a factor that affects it? Nothing else? Are all the factors mentioned in paragraph 3 in the same group?

Examples

Here are some important cognitive processes and one way of dividing each one into steps or parts. You can choose a cognitive process then choose a single sub-process of it to focus on. You can also choose other processes that are not on this list. These are just a sample.

Cognitive Processes	Different sub-processes
Perceiving	Sensation, classification, scene parsing, object detection
Remembering and forgetting (Working Memory, aka Short-term memory)	Phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, central executive, episodic buffer, WM for images; WM for words, sentences; WM for numbers, equations
Remembering and forgetting (Long-term Memory)	Remembering words, numbers, sentences, restaurant orders, music, texts, images, etc. Remembering events, facts, skills, AKA: Eyewitness memory; Procedural memory; Event Memory
Reading Comprehension	Word recognition, grammatical analysis, sentence interpretation, inferring information, semantic interpretation, schema building, using prior knowledge
Writing	Planning, word choice, structuring sentences, revising
Translation & Interpreting	Reading in a second language, writing in a second language, translation, managing memory during interpreting, …
Problem solving	Understanding problems and building problem spaces, evaluating solutions, identifying the best solution, creative reasoning, gambling, …
Reasoning	Mathematical reasoning, logical reasoning, spatial reasoning, categorization, …
Decision making	Identifying alternatives, risk assessment, choosing
Thinking about people (aka social cognition)	Perceiving, classifying, inferring information about people; stereotype formation, stereotype activation, perceiving beauty, detecting emotion
You can also choose other cognitive processes that aren’t on this list.

Choose the cognitive process that you want to focus on, then read up on it to prepare for the next step.