Homework: Critical Appraisal
Article: Targeting ASIC1a Reduces Innate Fear and Alters Neuronal Activity in the Fear Circuit by Matthew W. Coryell, Adam E. Ziemann, Patricia J. Westmoreland, Jill M. Haenfler, Zlatan Kurjakovic, Xiang-ming Zha, Margaret Price, Mikael K. Schnizler, and John A. Wemmie
• What is the rationale for the study?
• From reading the introduction, what different types of evidence do the authors use to support their case?
• What are the outcome measures and what behaviour do they try to quantify?
• How compelling are the behavioural models with regards to face/construct/predictive validity?
• Why do the authors use different measures to quantify the same things or repeat very similar experiments?
• What potential problems of ‘signal-to-noise' do the authors encounter?
• Why do the authors sometimes present virtually the same data over several subfigures? What is the additional value of each one?
• What is the benefit of the types of graphs and statistical analyses referred to in the text?
• What do the figures actually show? How are they interpreted? What is novel about the findings of this study?
• What are the potential artefacts and confounds of the manipulations made in the study that could influence internal validity? How do the researchers control for these?
• What conflict do the authors report with previous findings and what could be done to advance the research question further?
Format your homework according to the give formatting requirements:
• The answer must be using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, typed, with one-inch margins on all sides.
• The response also includes a cover page containing the student's name, the title of the homework, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
• Also include a reference page. The references and Citations should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.