How Breastfeeding Can Benefit Babies?
A literature review is a critical summary of what the scientific literature says about your specific topic or question. Often student research in APA fields falls into this category. For this assignment, you will summarize, apply, and extend two research studies with the same underlying theme. They must be from peer-reviewed psychological journals. Choose a developmental topic you find most interesting.
Purpose. The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to spend some time thinking critically about psychological research and to become familiar with different kinds of research projects that are on-going in the field of psychology.
Structure. The literature review required for this course should contain the following components:
Running Head
Title Page
Abstract (~100 words)
Summary and synthesis of sources (2 paragraphs)
Application (2 paragraphs)
Extension of research (2 paragraphs)
List of references
The paper should include no more than 3 pages of double-spaced text, in Times New Roman font, with 1-inch margins (go to the following link on how to write APA style https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html .)
Detailed instructions:
1. Summarize no less than 2 articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Information from websites and the textbook can be used as additional resources, but not in place of peer-reviewed journals. In two paragraphs, you should compare and write the summaries as if they were intended for a close friend who is not familiar with psychological research. You should avoid jargon terms or, if you use them, make sure that you explain them. The summaries should not be a transcription of the article’s abstract. Make sure to mention (a) the general topic of the articles (i.e., what view does it generally wish to support?), (b) the experiment(s)’ particular hypotheses, (c) important features of the methodology, (d) the main findings, and (e) what can be concluded from the results.
If the article has more than one experiment, you may choose one experiment from within the article on which to focus.
2. Apply the research articles. In two paragraphs, demonstrate your understanding of the purpose and outcome of the experiments by providing an application to real-life circumstances. You might share a story from your own life that is illuminated by the articles. Make sure you are applying the results of the particular experiment(s). You don’t have to be extraordinarily creative, but you must depart from what appears in the paper itself.
3. Extend the research article. In two paragraphs, describe how you might extend research on this topic in some small way. What follow-up study would you do? Most articles will describe what
the authors would like to do next. Don’t repeat that. These should be your own ideas! I’m not looking for
great leaps forward, just make sure to explain why this extension is important to you. Tell me what you
would learn from your extension that we don’t already know.
4. You must take great care not to plagiarize any portions of the assignment. You should not use exact phrases without quotation marks. However, if you reproduce the original ideas with only changes in wording, that is also plagiarism. The best way to avoid plagiarizing is to take notes on the article and then write your paper from your notes!
