(a) to address an applied challenge, that is, some challenge faced in the “real world,” outside of university departments of psychology, by

(b) making use of information in a scientific paper that presents some psychological science that can be used to address the challenge.

Below, you will find a list of paper topics. You should choose one as your topic. Each topic contains two parts: (a) an applied challenge, and (b) a scientific paper relevant to that challenge. Once you choose a topic, your assignment is to:

(1) describe the theory and research presented in the scientific paper listed for your topic

(2) explain how that theory and research addresses the applied challenge, in other words, to explain how the psychological science (the theory and research in the paper) might help to solve the problem faced by the person with the applied challenge.

The paper you write should be 3.5 – 4 pages in length, double-spaced. That is font size 12, 1-inch-margins, and 3.5 – 4 pages of actual text that you yourself write. (This would total roughly 1100 words of writing.) In these 3.5-4 pages, you should be accomplishing the two asks above: (1) describe the theory and research presented in the scientific paper you read (answer questions such as: What is the main idea of the paper? What are the main research findings supporting this idea? What methods did the researcher use to support their findings?), and (2) explain how that theory and research can be applied to the applied problem (explain what the person facing the applied challenge might do differently if they knew about the theory and research in the paper). You should probably spend about an equal amount of space on each of the two tasks; your paper thus would have about 1.5-2 pages describing the theory and research that is presented in the relevant scientific paper, and about 1.5-2 pages explaining how the scientific information might be used to solve the applied problem.

Notes on the Readings: You do not have to do any additional outside reading for the paper, that is, you don’t have to read anything except for the one paper listed as the relevant scientific paper for your topic. Also note that you can get your paper, absolutely for free, in either of two ways. If you’re on campus, you merely need enter the title of the

paper into an internet browser. Google Scholar almost always finds the paper, and if you’re on campus the UIC computer system will add a “Find It @ UIC” link. Alternatively, from any computer you can access the paper through the UIC library system list of electronic journals.

Notes on writing style: For this paper, you should have little or no direct quotes from the paper. Unlike a writing style in the humanities (e.g., an English class in which you are writing about a work of fiction), here in the social sciences there is rarely any need at all to quote directly, word-for-word, from a paper you are reading. The text in your paper should be text written by you.

Education and Student Interest

Imagine that you’re a teacher. You want to make class interesting for the students. To this end, you try to make your reading assignments easy, try to keep projects as simple as possible, and try to make the class fun for students by showing a lot of wacky TV shows and cartoons during class. Yet the students seem bored. What might you be able to do differently to enhance student interest?

Relevant scientific paper

Silvia, P. J. (2008). Interest—the curious emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 57-60.