PSYC11008 Biological Foundations of Psychology: Course Guide

For Assessment Item 2 (Essay assignment), you are required to write a short essay on the serial position effect.

In addition to the information provided under the resource section of the website for this course, you are required to use at least one additional source, such as a book or journal article.

This guide will show you how to find these additional sources.

• Starting your research
• Searching the library catalogue
• Searching the psychology databases on the CSA platform

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Starting your research

Regardless of whether you're searching for resources using the Library catalogue or an online database, you will need to devise a list of keywords you can use in your search.

Note: A 'keyword' might be a two or three word phrase e.g. serial position effect.

There are a number of ways you can devise your list of keywords:

• Read through the assignment details and pick out the main concepts or keywords.
   
• Consult your text book or course readings for words or phrases you could use as keywords.
   
• Think of synonyms (words that mean the same thing) and related terms for the keywords you have already found.
   
• Consult a dictionary or encyclopedia to get some more ideas e.g. A Dictionary of Psychology or the Encyclopedia of Psychology.

Sometimes it helps to put your concepts and keywords in a table with synonyms and related terms listed underneath:

Example keywords
serial position effect	short term memory	distracter task	primacy effect
serial position effects	memory	distraction	recency effect
serial position	recall
	long term memory

 

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Searching the library catalogue

To find resources on a particular topic,  perform a keyword search in the Library catalogue:

Example 1:

This search will return all records containing the word memory and the word psychology.
(More information on how to perform a keyword search.)

Example 2:

This search will return all records containing the phrase short term memory i.e. where the words are together.
(More information on how to perform a phrase search.)

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Searching the psychology databases on the CSA platform

There are three core psychology databases:

• PsycARTICLES provides full-text access to 58 American Psychological Association (APA) and affiliated organisations' journals.
• PsycBOOKS is a full-text database which provides online access to books and book chapters in the psychology field.
• PsycINFO provides a mixture of citation, abstract and full-text access to scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations and technical reports.

All three databases are available via the CSA platform and can be searched together.

How to access the databases

- Go to the Library Home
- Click on ‘SearchSMART’
- Select ‘CSA’ underneath ‘Database Quicklinks’
- If you are accessing this resource from off-campus, you will be prompted for your student number and password (e.rolment pin or Library barcode). Enter in these details and click ‘Login’.
- You will be taken to the CSA interface – this is where you can select the database you’d like to search. Tick the boxes next to ‘PsycARTICLES’, 'PsycBOOKS' and ‘PsycINFO’, then click ‘Continue to Search’.

How to search the databases

Once you've logged in, you'll be taken to the 'Advanced Search' screen where you can enter in a keyword:

Example 1:

This search will return all records containing the phrase serial position effect.
[There were 1167 results as at 07.02.2008.]

You might like to try combining keywords:

Example 2:

This search will return all records containing the phrase serial position and the word memory.
[There were 3604 results as at 07.02.2008.]

To reduce the number of results returned, you might also like to limit your search to a particular field in the record and/or limit by date:

Example 3:

This search will return all the records held in PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS and PsycINFO which contain the phrase serial position in the 'Abstract' field, AND contain the word memory in the 'Abstract' field, AND were published between 2003 and 2008. [There were 89 results as at 07.02.08.]

Note: Once you have a list of results, you have the option of re-sorting your results by 'relevance rank'. You may also like to click on one of the tabs at the top of the screen to look at a particular kind of resource e.g. peer-reviewed journals.

How to locate the full-text item

Only some of the citations in your search results will have a link to the full-text item.

If the item is available in full-text in the database, a link will appear below the citation e.g.  ‘Full-Text HTML’ or ‘Full-Text PDF’.

If the article isn't available in full-text, click on the ArticleLinker icon to see if it is available through another database or in print at CQU Library.