a. Television and fantasy play

For this assignment it is best to use the “Advanced” search option in PsycINFO, which allows you to combine the three terms, television, fantasy, and play. At the time of writing this book the combination resulted in 56 hits. It seems a feasible amount of abstracts to work your way through. Let us have a look what we got.

The first is by Schaefer and Harrison (2004) in Psychology and Education. This is not one of the major journals in the social sciences, and it seems doubtful whether your library subscribed to it. Reading through the abstract, it seems that the empirical evidence reviewed is not directly relevant. It is examined what the effects of fantasy play are one real behavior. Coincidentally, the word television is mentioned somewhere, but it does not seem that its effects on fantasy play are examined.

Further down the list of results we run into a publication by Krcmar and Vieira (2005). The abstract does mention the word “fantasy” but not in an entirely different the context. This illustrates that it is necessary to read through all the abstracts one by one and decide whether the publications meet your criteria. You will then find that some do not have an empirical basis (Pizzato, 2003; Schrader, 1992; Adams 1987). Do not include these in your assignment. Others examine the relationship quite differently than you would expect: for instance, what is the role of fantasy in responses to television? Our advice would be to store such abstracts somewhere (preferably in your EndNote file). Maybe they will prove to be useful later, when you write your paper or thesis, and address the research field as a whole (i.e., what types of questions are researchers interested in?), the theoretical approaches to the subject (i.e., what theories and ideas are there about the effects of television on children’s fantasy play?), as well as the relevance of the issue (what consequences do changes in fantasy play have?). But again, you should not include them here in your list.

Many of the articles you will read about are totally irrelevant. Consequently, you may consider refining the scope of your search, for instance using “fantasy play” instead of “fantasy”. In case you did already try that, you will have found out that this yields only ten publications, some of which are still not relevant. Therefore, we suggest you continue using the three terms suggested here. Using the wider scope helps you to discover themes in the available research that may be relevant to your own interest, directly or indirectly. For example, you will discover that some studies concern the effects of television on fears (Valkenburg, 2000Valkenburg, P. M., Cantor, J. & A. L. Peeters (2000) Fright reactions to television: A child survey. Communication Research, 27(1), 82–97.; Cantor 1998Cantor, J. (1998) “Mommy. I’m scared”. How TV and movies frighten children and what we can do to protect them. Orlando, FL.: Hartcourt.), as well as the effects on the distinction between reality and fantasy. For this assignment, however, we will exclude these from the list.

The results of your search inform you which researchers are important in the field. We see the names of Singer, Cantor, and Valkenburg and Van der Voort turn up a couple of times. These are obviously the researchers you should concentrate on. It may be interesting to examine other publications by these researchers to see whether there is more than the present PsycINFO search yielded. Make a note of such names and use them in other data systems (the library catalogue) and on Internet searches (e.g., via google.scholar.com). Second, your search may have given you ideas about alternative key words you could use (e.g., “imagination,” or “imaginative play” rather than “fantasy play”). For this assignment it is necessary that you do try these alternatives, otherwise you will not be able to list ten articles. In addition, you see that some journals appear more than once in your list. You may want to try a search using the hits from these journals in combination with your key terms. To do this, simply click on the name of the journal, and the hyperlink brings you to a complete list of all the abstracts included in the data system.

This is the list that we would recommend:

Alternatives

The following publications are alternatives. Some discuss issues related to this assignment. Others are somewhat old and were therefore not included in the list above. Nevertheless, when preparing for a literature study, do make use of such sources. Old does not necessarily mean outdated. Remember, however, that for this assignment we wanted you to locate the most recent publications.

b. Canned laughter

Running a search in PsycINFO for the words “canned laugher” at the time of writing this feedback yielded nine results only. That is too few. On top of that, one of these articles does not even seem to be empirical (Shane 2004). This leaves eight references. Luckily, the list includes articles published in major journals (e.g. the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). That means that we probably located high quality research. There is a good chance that the researchers have based themselves on other work: so one way to find more than just the eight references listed in PsycINFO is to find the articles on the web, and check out the authors’ bibliographies.

For this assignment, however, you can find all you need in PsycINFO. One way to extend the results is to use different key words. What you could do is look at the abstracts and the key words mentioned in the nine records to see what other terms could be relevant. One is “pre-recorded.” However, you may discover that this does not bring you any further. In the lists of index terms below the abstract you sometimes see “social influence” and “social interaction”. One of the abstracts mentions “social facilitation.” (e.g., Donoghue, et al., 1983Donoghue, E. E., McCarrey, M. W. & Clement, R. (1983) Humour appreciation as a function of canned laughter, a mirthful companion, and field dependence: Facilitation and inhibitory effects. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 15(2), 150–162.). It seems that these studies could be relevant: one could argue that the social environment is mimicked by canned laughter, and that the influence of laughter around has on our responses holds for canned laughter as well. Using the term “social facilitation” in combination with “laughter” and “television”, for instance, may result in publications that could help you writing your paper or thesis (e.g., for formulating your hypotheses). Social facilitation research is of course not directly relevant. Therefore, let us keep it in mind but still look a bit further.

The trick here is not to give up too easy. Another is that some of the articles can only be found by exploring the full records. In information for the article by Platow et al (2005)Platow, M. J., Haslam, S. H., Both, A., Chew, I. (2005) “It’s not funny if they’re laughing”: Self-categorization, social influence, and responses to canned laughter. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(5), 542–550. you will find a very useful list of references the authors used for their article. This means (for now) that you do not have to go to the library to copy the article. The list below is supplemented with articles mentioned by Platow et al., but there are other abstracts too that will help you in this way. By reading the titles in Platow et al.s’ record you can often guess what type of article it is, and whether it is relevant for your assignment. Fuller (1977)Fuller, R. (1977) Uses and abuses of canned laughter. In A. J. Chapman & H. C. Foot (Eds.), It’s a funny thing, humour (pp. 395–398). New York: Pergamon Press., for instance, probably presents some empirical work, although you cannot tell directly from the title. He published experimental work elsewhere, so therefore we assume that it is based on empirical research. One way to find out is to check whether there is a record for that publication in PsycINFO itself. For this assignment, make sure that all publications meet the criteria mentioned.

The list shows which researchers are important to the field. Obviously, after reading Chapman’s name thrice, it cannot hurt checking whether other work by her is relevant. Do this by simply clicking on the hyperlinks for her name, and combine the results (in Search History) with terms like “movie” or “humor.”

We hope your list will look like this:

Recommended

Alternatives

Listed below are some alternatives. We include only some of Chapman’s work here, to avoid that the list for the assignment is completely dominated by her research. Keep in mind for your own (future) research projects, that it is important not to rely too much on one type of source. Researchers sometimes repeat themselves, publishing the same work in more than one place (for different audiences). Older work and research on social influences is cited below rather than in the list of recommended literature.

c. Understanding story character’s emotions

One basic requirement for this assignment is patience. Use “story character”, “understanding” and emotion” and you will end up with only six references. Using the terms “character” and “emotions” results in 800 references. In case you had the time, it would be interesting to read through all the titles and the abstracts. But reading through some of the abstracts you will find that only few are relevant to the assignment. What you can do is start with a large group of references and then reduce the results step by step by adding more specific terms (see under “Search History”). Or you could start with a small sample of texts that seem directly relevant, and find the terms that are key to the research field you are interested in.

Use the following key terms: “story character” and “emotion”. At the time of writing this feedback this resulted in 11 references, all to do with children’s responses to stories. In case this age group is irrelevant to your paper or thesis, you have a problem, but for this assignment they are fine, of course. In any event, you can use these abstracts to find synonyms of the terms that you are interested in. For instance, for “characters”, you could look at “protagonist”; “story” you could replace by “narrative”. You could include the term “reading” to avoid that the search results include too much about spoken narratives. One important term is “understanding”. Think what it actually means, understanding a character: maybe “inference” or “infer” is a useful and even a more appropriate term. Also, reading some of the abstracts, you may discover that researchers use different terms, for instance “representation”, or “represent”. For “emotion” consider using “affect” or “feeling.” But you can also use the thesaurus. Type “understanding” and what you find is that PsycINFO suggests “comprehension”. Work systematically. Write down all the options that you think of during your search and try them one by one, making notes of the results and other ideas that appear to you.

When you have found one reference that is on target, you can refine your search (e.g., by concentrating on other work by the same researcher, or using the key terms suggested in the abstract). For example, during one of your searches you may have run into the work of Gernsbacher (1992)Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H. & Robertson, R. R. Do readers mentally represent characters’ emotional states? Cognition and Emotion, 6(2), 89–111.. You see that the information suggests three key terms: “Emotion content”, “Human Information Storage”, and “Reading”. Maybe it will be helpful to try one or more of these terms in one of your searches.

You will run into articles that discuss very specific aspects. They may not always seem important to the general concepts that you are interested in. But there are exceptions. For instance, research pertaining to readers with some mental disorder can tell you something about how readers normally respond as well (e.g., Rehak et al., 1992Rehak, A., Kaplan, J. A., Weylman, S. T., Kelly, B. (1992) Story processing in right-hemisphere brain-damaged patients. Brain and Language, 42(3), 320–336.).

We hope you made absolutely sure that all the abstracts are relevant to the central theme before you handed in your assignment. In some cases the titles may seem pertinent, but reading the abstracts you will discover that the use of the terms is slightly different than you expected. For instance, Bamberg and Reilly (1996) do look at stories, and at character emotions, but their focus is on stories told by children. Also, some titles suggest that you can ignore the publication, but reading the abstract you may discover that the research may still be important (e.g., Camras and Allison, 1985Camras, L. A. & Allison, K. (1985) Children’s understanding of emotional facial expressions and verbal labels. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 9(2), 84–94.).

Below our own list of recommended readings, we provide some alternatives. For example, Bower et al. (1981)Bower, G. H., Gilligan, S. G. & Monteiro, K. P. (1981) Selectivity of learning caused by affective states. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 110(4), 451–473. looks at how the emotional state of readers influences recall of situations that are happy or sad to characters. Indirectly such studies may be relevant to your own research. However, we do not recommend them for this assignment. We list some dissertations that seem important. But since they are often hard to find, we include them under alternatives rather than the list of recommended texts (e.g., Sanchez, 2002Sanchez, R. P. (2002) The role of story structure variables in children’s understanding of the causes of emotion in text. Disseration Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering Vol. 62(11-B) Jun 2002, 5411.).

This is the list of studies that we would recommend:

Alternatives

Not all these works are directly relevant to the subject of this assignment. For instance, a character’s goals may be relevant to their emotions, but it is not quite the same. Therefore we would advise you not to include them in your list.

d. Film music

This assignment is very hard. In case you got ten references, there is a good chance that some of them do not really concern the effects of film music on emotions but on related issues. The combination “music” and “film” yields 81 references. But reading through all these abstracts you will find that those publications that are empirical often deal with cognitive effects of film music rather than emotional effects. Here are some tips on how to compile a list of references that are on target.

The first is that you should try alternatives for all the terms in this assignment. For “music” you can try “soundtrack”. Of course, not all the sounds in a film or television program are music, but still, the research you may find could be relevant. For “film” you may try “movie”, “motion picture”,” or “cinema.” The key terms that you have found in the abstracts may also bring you further. For instance, you may consider replacing music by the term “music perception.” Another way to find more relevant publications is to search for the work of a particular researcher or a journal with a promising title. Reading through the PsycINFO abstracts you will discover that Annabel J. Cohen has written on the subject. Clicking on her name in one of her abstracts will give you all her work. The same holds for the titles of journals that reoccur in your list. You click on the name of the journal as it appears in one of the abstracts on your screen and you find all the articles in that journal (e.g., Psychmusicology). That will be too much to read. Therefore, we advise you to check your “Search History” and combine the findings for the journal with one of the terms from the assignment (e.g., the results for Psychomusicology and “film”).

The second tip concerns the full records that PsycINFO can provide. For instance, click on the file fore Ellis and Simons (2005)Ellis, R. J., Simons, R. F. (2005) The impact of music on subjective and physiological indices of emotion while viewing films. Psychomusicology, 19(1), 15–40.. The researchers mention in their abstract that there are only few studies available – we noticed! But we are lucky. They also list all the work that they do know of. Those that are clearly relevant for us are included in the list below. Some of the titles are ambiguous. Before you include those publications you need to be sure that the work is empirical, and pertains to the effects of film music on emotions.

Some researchers may be included in your findings that refer to unpublished dissertations etc. or even to PowerPoint presentations at conferences. In that case you could again focus your search on the names of the researchers and see whether their work is available in some other form.

Finally, we advise you not to reject all publications on cognitive effect without reading thoroughly through the abstracts. For instance, Boltz (2001)Boltz, M. G. (2001) Musical soundtracks as a schematic influence on the cognitive processing of filmed events. Music Perception, 18(4), 427–454. is also relevant to effects on mood. Marshall and Cohen (1988)Marshall, S. K. & Cohen, A. J. (1988) Effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes toward animated geometric figures. Music Perception, 6(1), 95–112. focus on attitude, but it could be argued that attitude has an emotional component. Do not stretch the terms too far though. You should ignore, for example, research on responses to music in music videos (Preston and Eden, 2002).

This is the list we recommend:

Alternatives

Here are two alternatives. Both seem indirectly relevant to the assignment.

e. Effects of art education

This assignment is complicated for two reasons, at least. First, there is much work done in this field, but not all publications that you will find are based on empirical research. You may have tried the combination “art” and “education” and stumbled on a listing of 3370 publications. Of course this is too much to read through. Also, you will soon find out that the word “art” is used in many different meanings.

Here are some hints on how to narrow down your search. One thing you could do is include the word “effect”. This results in a list of 160 articles and other publications. Maybe you could manage to read through these and select the ones that are relevant for this assignment. Other options are that you consider alternatives for the key terms that bring you closer to the work you are interested in. For “education” you could use “curriculum” or “instruction.” Try the PsycINFO index term “Art Education”; this will certainly exclude all the articles that talk about education and the “state-of-the-art” in some domain of research. Another way to reduce the number of hits is to focus on particular effects of art education. The definition of the assignment topic is rather global. What you could do is make it more specific by including “therapy” or “aesthetic preference” in your search. Consider, though, the consequences. Such a search will not inform you about what other effects have been found. Think also of the many kinds of art education that are out there. You will find that some concern music (and you were instructed to look for research on the education of the visual arts), and others on making art (drawing, painting).

Like in the other assignments, one quick way to find your ten references is to focus on relevant journals. Reading through the PsycINFO output you soon discover there are at least two sources that turn up often. One is Empirical Study of the Arts, the second is Visual Arts Research. Click on the names of these journals and you will find a listing of all the articles included in PsycINFO. Now reading through all of these will again take too much time. What you could do instead is narrow down the search in Search History with terms like “training” or “curriculum”.

One way to come closer to your subject is to consider how one would go about assessing the effects of art training. One way would be to compare the behavior, preferences, perception, etc. of art novices with art students/experts. You can make use of this assumption in your search by including the terms “novice” or “expert”.

Recommended

Alternatives

You will find that there are many dissertations written on the subject. Since the assignment specifies you should focus on peer-reviewed journals, we included some of them in our list of “alternatives” below. Also, as you may have discovered, some of the work is rather old. These were not included in the list of recommended literature.