A Second Update from the Cog Lab
It doesn’t feel at all like it’s been three weeks since I’d last posted — but it somehow has been! So here’s a quick update from the cognitive side to let you know how things are progressing. (Also, I’m clearly creative with post titles.)
Project.
For the past three weeks, my supervisor and I have continued to work on designing our study. Writing up the draft of our research proposal that was due last week also helped bring up some study design considerations, which was helpful. It was super interesting to figure out how we were going operationalise certain outcome variables, and I have to say that I really enjoyed thinking about this.
I’m excited to report that the study is almost at its final form! (Almost) all we have left to do now is to finish coding the experiment using jsPsych. Hopefully, the study will be ready to run before week 10! Fingers crossed.
Proposal.
Like everyone else in 3361, I’ve also been working on my research proposal, and finally managed to get a draft handed in last week! I wouldn’t really say that it was complete enough to have been called a draft, but having the deadline helped (/forced?) me to get my ideas into some mildly coherent form.
I’m looking forward to finally getting some peer feedback next week, and also feedback from my supervisor the following week. Having fresh pairs of eyes on something you’ve been working on for a while is always immensely helpful, and I’m glad that we have this opportunity to elicit feedback. Interestingly, I found that the process of giving feedback on other people’s writing also helped me better understand what I should improve in my own. (And also made me realise I had a tonne of writing tics… yikes.)
Programming.
On another note, we have just wrapped up the programming component of this course. We’d been learning R for the past six weeks, and it’s been a great experience. I made something I was kind of proud of but couldn’t figure out how to push it onto the web — but will share in a later post if I figure out how to do this by then!
And that’s it from me for this week folks. Til next time!

-Amy
