Paper 2 Checklist
Title Page
Put the title, your name, and your affiliation in the center of the page.
Abstract
Approximately 250 words long. Make sure to include 1-2 sentences about each section of the paper as well as keywords.
Introduction: should tell a story, going from general to specific
General introduction to the paper. Why is the topic important/interesting? Discuss the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism and the demands of doing several things at once in our modern world. Introduce and define executive function and cognitive flexibility in general, and specifically multitasking.
Describe previous studies that are relevant. Say something about the method if important to understanding the point the study makes (what type of executive function/multitasking task?); no need to include minute detail (like number of participants). Say what the relevant results are (don’t need to put statistics, just say the pattern of results). Say what these findings suggest about the relationship between multilingualism and multitasking.
Aim and hypothesis
Aim is to better understand the relationship between multilingualism and multitasking.
Say what the gaps in the literature are, and what this study will add to the field’s understanding of the topic.
State hypothesis (or hypotheses).
Method: should be detailed enough for someone to replicate what we did
Participants
Demographics: Hunter College students, family, and friends of researchers (N); gender (f, %) and age (range, M, SD). List all the languages represented in our sample. Explain how we divided people into multilingual v monolingual groups, and say how many were in each (f, %). Also state how many were monolingual an multilingual before 6 (f, %) and after 6 (f, %).
Materials
Explain the Multitasking Assessment (say it was adapted from creators – see slides for cite)
Multitasking was measured using a previously established Multitasking Assessment (for more details see Stoet, Connor, O’Connor, and Laws, 2013).
This description should be as detailed as it needs to be for someone who never did the task to understand what it was like.
See Paper 2 intro slides for details about what you should explain (must include timing of the task, block structure, number of trials, what information was recorded to generate scores, etc).
Explain how the Mixing Cost and Switch Cost variables were calculated, what lower scores indicate, and what they mean in terms of multitasking success
Make sure to note that larger scores for these variables represent greater difficulty multitasking
Explain the Language Fluency Questionnaire (developed by the researchers). Refer to appendix, where you will attach the questionnaire.
Procedure
Explain exactly what you did (as a group). Starting with informed consent and ending with debriefing. For the task, don’t need to say website, just say it was an online task on the computer. Be detailed enough so someone could replicate our study exactly.
Results: should include descriptive statistics and address both hypotheses
Descriptive statistics
Refer the reader to Table 1 for descriptive statistics.
Explain the analysis used to test the hypothesis (or hypotheses). Make sure to explain the variables that were tested.
Describe the findings for each hypothesis individually. Report full stats (M, SD, t, df, p) for each t-test conducted, refer to bar charts where appropriate, say if hypothesis was supported or not.
Discussion: should summarize and interpret your results, address problems with the study, and propose future directions for research
Restate your results in words – that is, summarize what the results section said without using numbers or statistical terms (Group differences? For what variable(s)?). Were your hypotheses supported?
“Unpack” your results for each hypothesis. What do your findings mean? What do they suggest about the link between multilingualism and multitasking? Does flexibility in switching languages generalize to flexibility in other cognitive domains? Any interesting or surprising findings? If you had to try to explain it all, what would you say?
How do your results compare with the results of other studies? Do they clarify or complicate things? Why do you think they are the same or different from previous studies? What is to be learned from this?
*#s 2 and 3 above should be the bulk of your discussion, comprised of multiple paragraphs.
Discuss the limitations of the study (small sample size does not count). This doesn’t mean to say why the study is bad, but go over some of the obvious limitations and how they can be overcome. For each limitation, be sure to explain why it’s a limitation. What error is introduced? What confounds exist?
Propose future research possibilities (this is in addition to saying that you would fix any limitations). Propose future research ideas to follow up on your study – what is the next step? Discuss some ideas for what you would do to follow this up – don’t just say that you would do it again with more participants.
End with a brief summary of your effects (1 sentence) – what is the “take-home” message? What are the implications of your study?
References
On a separate page, list all cited works. Everything in the references must appear in the paper, and vice versa. You should have a minimum of SIX references not including sources for tasks or questionnaires.
Table, Figures, then Appendix.
Follow APA format. Do not include any SPSS output (besides figure images themselves)
Table 1 should be descriptives of RTs by current monolingualism and multilingualism. Refer to the table template I uploaded to Blackboard.
Figure 1 should be the bar graph of the t-test evaluating switch cost between current monolingual and multilingual groups.
Figure 2 should be the line graph of the Pearson’s correlation demonstrating the relation between number of languages spoken and switch cost.
