Psychology

These instructions apply to Prof. Jeff Adams' class only. 
The evening class with Prof. Bond has a different assignment - see the box at the bottom of the page for information about it.

Lab Assignment 1 #5 & Lab Assignment 2 #3

For this assignment, we'll be looking at question #5 in your Lab Assignment #1, as well as question #3 in your Lab Assignment #2. The task is to find a research article from a psychology journal on a specific topic and to print out the abstract.

What is this assignment asking for?

• Use the library resources to find a scholarly research article from a psychology journal and print out the abstract
• Find the article using the general topics of neuroscience, neuropsychology, or memory
• Make sure that the abstract you print off has the author, year of publication, article title, journal title, journal volume, and page numbers

Lab Assignment 2 #1

For this assignment, we'll be looking at question #1 in your Lab Assignment #2. Your task is to find a specific article and print it out.

What is this assignment asking for?

• Use the library resources (namely the e-journals database) to find a specific article provided by the professor
• Learn to recognize the different parts of a citation that will help you locate the article

Step One: Connect to PsycINFO

PsycINFO is the database used to find scholarly articles published in psychological journals. It tell you what articles have been published in which journals.

• Navigate to the PsycINFO database from the library website.
  • Find a link on this Psychology Subject Guide (under the "Articles" tab at the top) or in Databases A-Z on the library homepage.
  • It's important to use a link on the library website so that you're recognized as a Trent student and permitted access by the publisher.  It's not a free database.

Step Two: Search PsycINFO

At the search screen for PsycINFO, enter the terms you want to find.  PsycINFO will search through thousands of journals to find items that contain your search terms.

• Your search can be as simple as "neuropsychology".
• Make it more specific by adding another term on the next line down. 
  • Example: neuropsychology and memory.
  • This finds all the items with both terms in the description.
• Click "Search" or press "Enter" to perform the search.

Step Three: Select an Article

Out of the thousands of article descriptions you find, select one you like.  There are options on the screen to limit your results.

• Limiting to "Scholarly Journals" removes any book chapters or dissertations that might be included.
• Limiting to a "Publication Title" that includes the word "Psychology" might be useful here.

Click on the title of an article to see its full description, including the abstract.

Step Four: Abstract and Citation

Everything you need for your citation and abstract is available from the PsycINFO database.  Be sure you've navigated to the full description by clicking on a title from your results list.  Find the options on the top right of your screen.

• Click the "Print" icon to print the "Citation, Abstract, Indexing" of your article.  Or if you prefer, do a "print screen" using your browser options.  Or copy/paste it.
• Click the "Cite" icon to obtain a complete citation in APA format.  Copy and paste this.
  • CHECK YOUR CITATION.  It is machine-generated and may have some errors.  It's your responsibility to make sure the citation you hand in is correct.  Use your APA manual for this.
  • In many cases, the "Retrieved from..." at the end of the citation is not needed.  You may wish to check with your instructor on his preference, or go with what the APA manual says.

This video walks you through the process of accessing and searching PsycINFO, then following the link to an online article.  This is a demonstration of the process outlined in the Finding Articles tutorial.

Step One: Review the Assignment & Find Trent's E-Journals

The assignment gives you your starting point. Using the links below if needed, navigate to the Trent Library homepage and find the tab for Journals A-Z.

Step Two: Find Your E-Journal

Once you have found the Journals A-Z tab on the Library homepage, enter the title of the journal you are looking for and click "Go".

• If you have entered the title correctly, it will be the first link to appear in your results.
  • The symbol next to the title, of a magnifying glass over a page, tells you that the journal is a peer-reviewed source.
• Click on the title.
• Select "Full text available from E-Journals - Scholar's Portal". This will open the main page of the journal.

Step Three: Find Your Article

From the main page of the journal, you can use the citation provided in the assignment to locate the correct article.

• First, find the year the article was published and locate the corresponding year on the right hand side of the site.
• Next you need the volume and issue number, which looks something like 31(2). The link on the right will also have the number of pages in the issue.
• Find the title of the article in the list (Table of Contents) and click the title. From there, you can download the article as a PDF and print or save it.

In order to start this assignment, you must have a very basic understanding of how the library website works, which will help you locate PsycINFO to find your abstract. Take a look at the links below to familiarize yourself with the library site.

You must also have a basic understanding of what a scholarly article is and how to recognize it. This will help you to distinguish scholarly articles from newspaper articles and popular sources. A quick look through the links below will help you to familiarize yourself with this part of the process.

The assignment given to the evening class with Prof. Bond asks you to access a specific article.  You're provided with the title of the article and the authors.  These are the steps to accomplishing this.

Step One

Navigate to the PsycINFO database.  You'll find it on another page of this guide - click the tab for "Articles" near the top of the page.  Always use the link from the library website to access databases, because it's through these links that you get past paywalls.

PsycINFO is a database that describes journal articles published in thousands of psychology journals. Use it to find out which volume and issue of which journal published a specific article. 

Step Two

You'll need to search this database.  How you search depends on what information you already have.  In this case:

• Choose a couple of unique words from the title.  Enter them into the first search box with AND between them; this tells the system to locate all items that have all the terms you've entered, rather than just one of them.
  • Change where you want to search for these terms by changing "anywhere" to "Document Title" at the end of the search box.
• In the box below this one, enter the last name of one of the authors. 
  • Change the search location to "Author".
• Click "Search" (or press Enter).
• Look through your results for the article that matches what you need.

Step Three

When you've found the description for the correct article, click "Get It! Trent".  Because PsycINFO doesn't provide the full text of articles, you need to locate it through our other online journal subscriptions.  Get It! Trent does this for you.

• Click the Get It! Trent icon and a new tab opens, showing your options for accessing the full text of the article.  There may be only one option, or there may be several.  Choose one by clicking on it.
• A new window opens, with the site of the online journal.  The system gets you as close as possible to the article.  Most of the time it goes directly to the article, but sometimes you need to navigate through the issues.  Use the information in the PsycINFO database to identify which date, volume, issue, and page has the article.
• If your first selection doesn't provide the issue you need, go back and try a different one.

Now that you've found the correct journal, year, volume, and issue, go through the table of contents to locate your article.

Click the .pdf link to load the article on your desktop.  From here you can print or save it.

See the box above for a quick video on how to use PsycINFO to find articles.