Reading for Lab Meeting

In the results sections of experiments researchers will tell you factually what they found (e.g., one group was faster than another, but another group was more accurate). Discussion sections are where researchers will interpret these findings, and tell you whether their results align with their initial predictions, and if the results don't align with the predictions, what this means for our understanding of the original phenomenon.

Reading Papers

For lab meetings we occasionally read empirical papers describing current research. These papers are not like textbooks that you have read and you need to read them more strategically and thoughtfully than you might read class materials.

Generally, papers are divided into sections that include a General Introduction, Experiments, and a General Discussion. Each experiment often includes its own smaller Introduction and Discussion, as well as Methods and Results sections. Below are some helpful tips in how to go about trying to read these papers so that you come to lab meeting prepared.

General Reading Advice

Research papers are complex, and it is easy to get bogged down in details. However, rather than trying to read and memorize every specific detail of a paper, it is often far more important to make sure you're following the larger narrative.

All research has a point. The researchers had a question that they wanted to answer or an issue they were curious about. When reading papers make sure to look out for these larger issues.

Researchers will often support their general claims with more specific findings or citations, and may mention numerous past findings to support their claims. Don't get bogged down focusing on these minutiae. Always make sure that as you're reading a paper you can answer the basic question of why this study is being conducted and what researchers are hoping to find.

Reading Introductions

Introductions are where researchers introduce the phenomenon that they wish to study, provide you with some background information about the phenomenon (i.e., what is already known about it), and then introduce their specific question or hypothesis (i.e., what they are hoping to find out).

When reading introductions ask yourself...

WHY are the researchers are conducting this study? WHAT questions they are trying to answer? HOW they think things might turn out? And WHY do they think this?

Reading About Experiments

Experiments are always conducted for a reason. After reading the introduction you should have an idea of why the researchers are conducting each experiment, and what they think they might find.

When reading about experiments, there are going to be a lot of details about the methods and procedures, and statistical information about results and findings. It is not necessary to read and scrutinize all this information, but you should extract the gist of it, and scrutinize a few bits that are of particular relevance to the research question.

When reading about experiments ask yourself...

WHAT were the authors trying to find out with this experiment? HOW did they conduct their experiment? WHAT was the outcome of their experiment?  WHAT does this result tell us?

Example

Imagine someone told you they wanted to learn if pets were intelligent, and they ultimately concluded they were not. You might want to know HOW that person assessed the intelligence of pets. If that person told you that they played a game of chess against their pet dog, and the dog lost, you may start to question their conclusions, and consider that chess might not be a fair assessment of animal intelligence for a variety of reasons.

However, you don't really need to know what time of day the game of chess was played, or what color the pieces were, or whether the dog was male or female. Often times extra details like this are included in reports, so that if someone were interested in gender, they could examine get that information from the report. But for most readers the information about gender in the report may not be relevant and can be skimmed over.

Reading Discussions

In the results sections of experiments researchers will tell you factually what they found (e.g., one group was faster than another, but another group was more accurate). Discussion sections are where researchers will interpret these findings, and tell you whether their results align with their initial predictions, and if the results don't align with the predictions, what this means for our understanding of the original phenomenon.

It is in discussion sections where researchers will remind you of their original hypotheses and predictions, and discuss how their results fit here. If you understood the point of the experiments from the introduction, and understood how the experiments were conducted generally, then the discussion section should be easy to follow.

When reading discussions ask yourself...

WHAT do the researchers say their results mean? WHAT does this mean for the original hypothesis and predictions? WHAT do we know now that we didn't know before these experiments? WHAT new questions are now raised?

Discussing Papers

Usually when we read a paper for lab meeting we subsequently discuss that paper as a group. The purpose of discussing papers is to think about them in more detail, to bring up ideas to each other than some of us may not have considered, and to critically evaluate the work, often in service of developing our own ideas for our own experiments or papers.

With that in mind, as you are reading papers, if you are not taking notes already you should at least be jotting down a few key questions you could ask in lab meeting. Below are a few helpful tips in coming up with two general types of questions.

Comprehension Questions

One of the simplest and most important kinds of questions to ask is often one students are reluctant to admit: What did you NOT understand?

It is not expected that when you read papers you are going to understand every aspect of them. Indeed, sometimes professors do not understand all elements of a paper and must discuss them with one another. It is this discussion that often leads to enhanced understanding, or sometimes illuminates areas where our entire group does not know the answer, which can lead us to pick future readings in an attempt to correct this. In short, when you are reading a paper, make note of things you do not understand.

Example Questions
  • The researchers said they wanted to study intelligence, but not IQ, what does that mean?
  • The researchers said that the experiments support their original hypothesis that nonwords would not be stored in the linguistic areas of the brain, but didn't the linguistic areas of the brain light up when participants read nonwords?
  • Why did the researchers have participants recognize photos that they were shown earlier? This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the research question
  • Though I understood the initial motivation for the experiments, by the end of the discussion I was lost... what WAS the take home message?

These are terrific questions that will spur discussion in the group. Do not be afraid to admit you did not understand something. Instead, bring it up during the meeting and let's discuss it together.

Curiosity Questions

For these kinds of questions, you are taking the existing experiments, findings, or conclusions, and thinking of other scenarios where they might apply, or coming up with new possible interpretations of the experimental results, beyond what the authors suggested.

Curiosity questions are harder to come up with when reading a paper, but you should challenge yourself to try to come up with at least one for each paper that we read. Even if you don't come up with one for each paper, if you try each time you will slowly develop the ability to read papers in a more sophisticated way and to think about research more broadly.

Example Questions

Another kind of question you can ask are questions that begin with "I wonder..." 

  • I wonder if this explains why older adults have trouble remembering things outside familiar spaces like their homes...
  • I'm wondering what would happen if we re-ran this study using nonwords instead of words...
  • I found myself wondering if this kind of experiment could be used to study recollection instead of familiarity...
  • Though these experiments were conducted to learn about memory, I wonder if these results are telling us something about attention...

 

Final Checklist

Here’s one last check list of questions you can use to quiz yourself on any article you read, to make sure that you are getting the big picture. If you read and understand an article, you should be able to provide an answer to each of the following questions:

Introduction
  • What is the specific phenomenon being examined in this paper?
  • What is already known about this phenomenon?
  • What is something that is not known?
  • What are the researchers therefore interested in studying?
  • What is the specific hypothesis that the researchers are testing in their experiments?(include their rationale/justifications for why their hypothesis makes sense and include their predictions)
Discussion
  • What was the question the researchers set out to answer?
  • What did the experiments tell us about the phenomenon that we didn’t already know?
  • What does this therefore tell us about the researchers’ hypothesis and ideas?
  • Are there thing the researchers wished they’d done differently? Or that they would like to pursue in a follow up experiment? Or just any other lingering questions that the experiments didn’t fully answer?
  • What is the take home message of this paper?
For Each Experiment

What were the researchers testing with this experiment?

Methods:

  • What was done in the experiment?

 

Results:

  • What was the outcome of the experiment?
  • What does this outcome tell us about the phenomenon and hypothesis?

In the end, reading papers critically is an acquired skill and takes effort and practice. But put in the effort and let's have some interesting discussions in our lab meetings!