This exercise is the first research assignment designed to get you familiar with doing research using the psychology journal database. For all of the writing assignments in this classyou will need to use the PsychInfo or PsychArticles database that you access through the library website. These databases contain thousands of articles published in journals that are refereed and reviewed by established scientists. You must use these databases to search for articles related to your interest area. You MUST learn to use the psychology databases through the library access for these assignments. For the first assignmentyou are to find a specific article listed below that helps us understand the implications of using hypnosis to aid individuals to remember events that they may have forgotten.
Hypnosis can be used in some types of therapy and the question is "How accurate are the memories that are recovered under hypnosis?" Some individuals troubled by past personal events and undergoing hypnosis have "recovered" memories of being sexually abused by a relative. They have involved the police and through a court trial the accused abuser has been put into jail when the ONLY evidence is this individual's recovered memory. Should we believe this person? Are these recovered memories using hypnosis accurate? To better answer these questions we need to review the results of other investigations into recovered memories using hypnosis. We are going to use the PSYCHINFO database to search for research that is related to this question. You are to:
1) Find the article using the library electronic database
2) Save the pdf to your flashdrive or ISU account harddrive space
3) Print it out and read it
4) Using your knowledge of experimental design identify the research question, the independent and dependent variables, and the results.
5) Create a one page word document that clearly states the above and then comment on the methodology or results of the article. Include an APA style reference to this article at the bottom of the page. Be sure to create a header with a running head on the left and page number on the right.
6) We are using APA style for this research paper so you will need to make sure you have a cover page at the start and a reference page at the end. Use the Sample paper as a template to help you get the page numbers, running head, margins and other formatting correct.
7) You should title this paper with some version of our research question - Is the accuracy of personal memories improved with hypnosis? Or something like that. Then you should attempt to answer the question based on the results of the study. You should include enough information about the methodology (how did they hypnotize the subjects and how did they measure the accuracy of memory reports) to demonstrate you understand how to design an experiment to answer this type of question.
Some Considerations:
A) Pay attention to Table 1. Our question of interest concerns the accuracy of memory AFTER the hypnosis compared to the accuracy of memory without being hypnotized. Nash and colleagues also measured memory DURING hypnosis - but we are not really concerned with the accuracy during hypnosis so you don't have to present that data. The hits and misses under the Posthypnotic recollection column represent the memory accuracy AFTER hypnosis and the hits and misses under the Postsimulation recollection column represent the memory accuracy for those subjects that were not hypnotized - they were just pretending or simulating being hypnotized.
B) Be sure you understand how the researchers evaluated the accuracy of the subject's recollections of their childhood. Remember - no children were interviewed! All the subjects used were college students.
C) We want to compare the Control group (the simulators or pretenders) to the Experimental group (the Post hypnotic interview) by examining the percent of subjects with accurate memory recollections in each group. What can we conclude? Which group had the highest percent of subjects with accurate recollections?
Article: THE HARVARD GROUP SCALE OF HYPNOTIC SUSCEPTIBILITY: Accuracy of Self-Report and the Memory for Items by HGSHS AND ACCURACY OF SELF-REPORT AND MEMORY FOR ITEMS JARRED YOUNGER ET AL. JARRED YOUNGER1,2 Arizona State University, Tempe, USA and DAVID D. KEMMERER, JUSTIN D. WINKEL, AND MICHAEL R. NASH University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.