Research Review-Can a Nonspecific Bias Toward Top-Heavy Patterns Explain Newborns’ Face Preference?
o You need to establish a context for the experiment
What’s the area of psychology that the study is investigating.
o What previous studies are relevant?
o After establishing what the context of the study is, you need to bring up what the central question of the
study is:
What question is the study attempting to answer?
What are the independent and dependent variables
o Why was the study done?
o What happens in the study? What’s the method?
o What are the results? Graphs definitely help here. You might have to make them up if they are not present
in the study.
o What do the results mean?
o Show that you have thought about the results.
Do you agree with the conclusions of the author?
Any flaws in the author’s arguments?
Any flaws in the study?
Be very careful about criticizing a study for not having enough subjects. Although it is true that some
studies over generalize the results, it is all too common to raise this as a flaw.
*You may need to get supporting articles to understand all of the concepts presented in your article.
Remember that your goal is to present what the study is about, and you may need to learn some things that
are not presented in the article to