Description
The Results section follows the Method section. For our project, it should be about 1 page, double spaced. Start by stating what you are testing (keep it simple, e.g. “In order to understand the effect of sleep and exercise on memory…”) Report the preliminary analyses (how was the outcome variable calculated, how were the groups split up, and zero order correlations if you have continuous variables – we’ll review how to report these in lab). Report the statistical results for your hypotheses (i.e., the ANOVA). The results section should have translation but not interpretation (explain the statistics in words and show you understand them, but the interpretation and implications should be left for the discussion).
RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
SECTIONS
LAB WEEK 4 – FEB. 4
• Due tonight @11:59pm – Intro and Method Final
Draft
COMING UP
• Next Lab – Peer Review Day. Bring a copy of Results
and Discussion sections (laptop or paper).
RESULTS SECTION – BASICS
• 12pt. Times New Roman
• Double Spaced
• Follow directly after the method section
• Bold heading
• Not typically split up into subsections
• Can include tables or graphs
• For this assignment, about 1 page long
RESULTS SECTION-KEEP IN MIND
•
This is where you summarize the data you collected and present the main findings (even those that are
counter to your hypotheses)
•
When actually presenting the results, try to emphasize the meaning of the statistics.
Clearly describe what it is you are testing and what significance means for the variables involved.
•
Do not mention scores from individuals; instead report means and standard deviations for the entire
sample.
•
When presenting the results of statistical tests, give descriptive statistics before the corresponding
inferential statistics. Means, Standard Deviation (SD) and/or percentages (perhaps referring to a table or
figure), before talking about the results of any statistical tests you performed.
•
Assume reader has professional knowledge of statistical methods. Do not review basic concepts and
procedures or provide citations for commonly used procedures.
RESULTS STEPS
Step 1: State what you are testing (re-state hypotheses) and the statistical approach used to test them
•
Example: “In order to understand the effect of car color on happiness…”
“…an Independent-Samples t test was used to test group differences…”
Step 2: Report the preliminary analyses (descriptive statistics, such as means and standard deviations)
•
Example: “It was found that those with red cars (M = 18, SD = 1) versus blue cars (M =14, SD = .8) were…..”
Step 3: Report the statistical results for your hypotheses (the inferential statistics)
•
Example: “…were significantly different in self-reported levels of happiness, t(38) = 3.812, p = .04.”
•
Include value of test statistic, degrees of freedom, p-value, and effect size . Provide the reader with enough
information to assess the magnitude of the observed effect
**Be sure to emphasize whether or not your results were statistically significant**
• The results section should have translation but not interpretation. Explain the statistics in words and show you
understand them, but the interpretation and implications should be left for the discussion section.
RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENT
Key to variables:
• Sleep 24, Sleep 48, SleepAvg correspond to self-report values of how much they have slept in the past 24 hours,
48 hours, and on average how much they sleep on a weeknight, respectively.
• MinExercise – self report of minutes of exercise in the past week
• WMAcc/WMRT- working memory (n-back) accuracy and reaction time, respectively
• Exercise category- exercise broken into categories: low (less than 1 hour), moderate (1 hour to 3.5 hours), high
(more than 3.5 hours)
• Sleep48_3categories: low (13 or fewer hours), moderate (13.5-15.5 hours), high (more than 15.5 hours)
• Sleepavg_3categories: low (less than 7 hours), moderate (7-8 hours), high (8 or more hours)
Did NOT do sleep 24 as a categorical variable because of the unequal distribution and given we had these other
metrics.
RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENT – DESCRIPTIVES
• Starts with descriptive statistics for the main variables, including histograms.
• Range of distributions are represented, including normal distributions for average sleep per week and
48 sleep, skewed for exercise, etc.
• Examples of descriptives on following slide. For all statistical results, see the file that Kristina put on the
class page.
RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENT – CORRELATIONS
• All of our correlations were non-significant.
• Treating these as continuous variables did not
yield significant results. Unclear exactly why but
correlations are best at catching linear trends so
we may see something different when we do
the ANOVAs.
• Here’s an example of sleep and wmacc being
not very correlated.
RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENT – T-TESTS
• Ran t-tests for many gender comparisons.
• Nothing there except for a trending effect of males reporting more exercise than females
RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENT – ANOVAS
• Two Univariate ANOVAS: looking at WMAcc and
WMRT as the dependent variables, and in both
cases using sleepavg and exercise categorical
variables as the independent variables.
• No main effects when WMAcc was the
dependent variable. A trending interaction that
seems to be drive by the people who reported
low average sleep and moderate exercise
showing very low accuracy on the WM task,
whereas those with moderate sleep performed
best with moderate exercise. Pretty hard to
interpret. This is plotted, but is complicated.
• No main effect of exercise on WMRT, but there
was a significant main effect of average sleep
on working memory RT, basically the only
significant finding in the data. Interesting
because you wouldn’t expect the short term
measures to have as big of an effect on WM as
the longer term measures (of which we only
have one). This is result is the graph here.
DISCUSSION SECTION – BASICS
• 12pt Times New Roman
• Double-spaced
• About 2-3 pages long
• Follow directly after the results section
• Bold heading
• Can have subheadings but not required (Limitations, Implications, Future Directions)
• The discussion should NOT have any statistics in it, and any citations that you discuss should have
already been brought up in the introduction (i.e., don’t include a bunch of new information)
DISCUSSION STEPS
Step 1: Restate your hypotheses and findings. Give a clear statement of support or non-support for your hypotheses
(1 paragraph).
Step 2: Implications- how do your results relate back to the literature you reviewed, and what does it mean for the field of
psychology? Discuss similarities and differences between your results and the work of others to contextualize, confirm, and
clarify conclusions (~ 1 page).
• Make sure each statement contributes something new to your interpretation and reader’s understanding
Step 3: Limitations and Future Directions of your study- what can you and can’t you conclude? What should be done to
follow up on these results? (~ 1/2 to 1 page)
• Think about: sources of potential bias and other threats to internal validity, the imprecision of measures, other
weaknesses of the study.
• Don’t overthink limitations. Talk about the most important ones that, if fixed, could create a better follow-up study.
Step 4: Conclusion- what do you want to leave the reader with, how does this benefit broader society? (~ 1/2 to 1 page)
QUESTIONS?
Running head: HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
How Do Sleep and Exercise Affect Working Memory?
Sophie Lee
University of Utah
1
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
2
How Do Sleep And Exercise Affect Working Memory?
There are several reasons for a person to be physically active. The major ones include are
reducing the chances of developing diabetes, stroke and heart disease. A person may want to lose
weight and improve their blood pressure and avoid depression. There is a common reason among
people, the idea of doing regular exercise and sleeping to improve brain activity by protecting
memory and improving thinking skills. Exercise and sleep play an important role in boosting
human memory and thinking. Mostly, people do exercise to keep fit, keep the heart strong and
achieve a healthy body weight to avoid diseases such as diabetes. Exercise is equally important
as it helps to boost human thinking skills and memory. Exercise boosts thinking abilities and
memory both directly and indirectly. For instance, exercise works directly on the body through
stimulation of physiological changes like inflammation, insulin resistance reductions and
encouragement of production of growth factors like the development of new blood vessels in the
brain and growth of healthy new brain cells (Pérez-Olmos, & Ibáñez-Pinilla, 2014). Brain parts
that control memory are larger in volume in individuals that are involved in exercise more
regularly than the ones that don’t. The indirect way that exercise boosts memory is by improving
the mood and sleep and through anxiety and stress reduction (Pérez-Olmos, & Ibáñez-Pinilla,
2014).
Regular exercise for a longer period can lower the chances of suffering from an agerelated decrease in cognition. However, Stroth, Hille, Spitzer, and Erinhardt (2009) argued that
the short term impacts of regular exercise on memory improvement among young people have
not yet been successfully researched. Strengthening and organization of memories for a long
time to stabilize them is referred to as memory consolidation. The main aspects of memory
consolidation take place extensively, but not exclusively at night while sleeping and also such
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
3
consolidation may occur while awake, mostly when one gets emotional and while exercising.
Nevertheless, the neurological and psychological conditions beneath memory improvement
through exercise have not been fully researched. For this reason, this project was meant to first
determine how exercise works in memory improvement (Stroth, Hille, Spitzer, & Reinhardt,
2009).
Generally, exercise is healthy for both the whole body as well as the brain. Past research
claims that the long term benefits include improved attention and perceptual ability as well as
improved scores on neuropsychological test batteries (Stroth, Hille, Spitzer, & Reinhardt, 2009).
According to Hershner and Chervin (2014), a person who exercises regularly at least three times
a week reduces the chances of suffering from dementia by about 32 percent. The impacts of
exercise on memory improvement have been researched in both human participants and animal
models. Mixed results have been collected from human experiments giving a wide range of data.
In past research, exercise has been associated with faster learning and short term improved
accuracy. However conflicting data has been collected in the past projects on the impacts of
exercise on memory (Hershner, & Chervin, 2014).
Lack of enough sleep has become so common with time, this trend poses a very serious
problem for ideal cognitive functioning. Hershner and Chervin (2014) also reported that this
research reviews the consequences of a lack of sleep on working memory. Lack of sleep can be
underestimated but it may adversely affect a person’s life quality. People ignore the importance
of enough sleep and prioritize other human activities. Working hours are increasing constantly
along with an emphasis on active leisure. The issue of lack of enough sleep is mostly a result of
more time demanding occupations such as doctors and drivers. In these careers, people work at
night and thus never sleep at night and fail to compensate for the sleeping hours with daytime
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
4
hours. In such careers, the impact of acute sleep deprivation on performance is crucial. In other
cases, some people tend to lengthen their capacity and forego their nightly sleep and thus ending
up chronically sleep-deprived. There is a varied need for sleep between people. The average time
for sleep is between 7 to 8.5 hours per day. Sleep is closely linked to two-body processes, the
circadian process, and the homeostatic process. A great deal of past research has tried to prove
that sleep is important for working memory. Lack of enough sleep decreases general attention
and mental capabilities and affects the neural activation in parietal and frontal cortices, which are
very important parts of working memory. Reduction in task performance is linked with a
reduction in activation task important parts under conditions of lack of enough sleep. However, a
lack of sleep may lead to decreased activation as a mechanism of compensation to allow
maintained performance (Hershner, & Chervin, 2014).
In an experiment carried out in a learning institution, the impact of exercise and sleep on
a person’s memory was investigated. The project contained three specific hypotheses as follows;
1.) Students who get more sleep have better memory scores. 2.) Students who get more exercise
have better memory scores. 3.) There is an interaction of sleep and exercise on memory scores.
This project tries to find out the facts that lie behind the concept of the impact that exercise and
sleep have on human memory.
Method
The research project is meant to conduct a correlational study of the relationship between
sleep, exercise, and memory. Sleep loss and lack of physical exercise are common among
students; this trait has been closely linked to poor performance and physical dysfunction. But,
current studies have little focus regarding domains tested. This project aimed to investigate the
effects of a sleepless night on cognitive and physical performance in students.
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
5
Subjects
The project had 96 students who participated as an in-class activity. If the students have
participated PSY 3010 lecture at that time, they were automatically recruited in the experiment
without compensation. The mean ages for both genders were 21.4 years old. The ratio of subjects
consisted of 70.8 percent female and 29.2 percent male. The data was collected by the class to
carry out a research project.
Measures
The researcher surveyed all the participants. The questions included in the survey were:
Number of hours slept in the past 24hours and 48 hours each, the average number of hours of
sleep on a weeknight. For the exercise data, the researcher included: minutes of exercise in the
past week. Also, age and gender for demographics. After the survey, participants did an activity
to get the score on the working memory task. The researcher used the “n-back” test from the
website cognitive fun in which participants have to temporally memorize information from the
past to inform them about the present to measure their participant’s accuracy (% correct) and
reaction time (average time).
Procedures
First, participants were asked to complete the survey. Second, the researcher explained
briefly the “n-back” test to participant and they have to pair up for the activity. The test was
implemented by the 2-back test, so the participants had to remember the position of item two
turns back, so on. Next, visit the website to test. One of the participants played the role of the
experimenter while the other played the role of the participant. Before the actual measurements,
participants have a chance to practice for one minute. At that time, the experimenter should use a
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
timer to measure the exact time. After each of them practice, need to re-run the test for three
minutes and record the results in questionnaires.
6
HOW DO SLEEP AND EXERCISE AFFECT WORKING MEMORY
7
References
Cognitive tests: Work memory test [Blog]. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2020, from
Hershner, S. D., & Chervin, R. D. (2014). Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college
students. Nature and science of sleep, 6, 73. doi: 10.2147/NSS.S62907
Pérez-Olmos, I., & Ibáñez-Pinilla, M. (2014). Night shifts, sleep deprivation, and attention
performance in medical students. International journal of medical education, 5, 56. doi:
10.5116/ijme.531a.f2c9
Stroth, S., Hille, K., Spitzer, M., & Reinhardt, R. (2009). Aerobic endurance exercise benefits
memory and affect in young adults. Neuropsychological rehabilitation, 19(2), 223-243.
doi: 10.1080/09602010802091183
Results
The results section simply describes the results of the statistical analysis. It should
briefly re-state the hypotheses being tested and the statistical approach used to test
them. Then the descriptives of your analyzed variables should be listed (means and
standard deviations). Then the primary analysis should be reported.
ex.
There was not a significant difference between the high and low neuroticism groups
for their level of anxiety F (2,31) = -1.839, p = 0.076.
Discussion
The discussion section is when we take the results of the study and put them in a
more broad context. The first paragraph is a summary of the results, in conceptual
terms. There should be no statistics mentioned in the discussion. Re-state the
results and whether or not they were consistent with the hypotheses.
Next, the results are considered in relation to other studies. Another paragraph
should compare the results to each of the studies that you cited in the introduction
(since you don’t have an introduction pretend like it is present). Are they consistent
with those studies? What might account for any discrepancies? Do your results
suggest anything new? Additional studies are often cited in the introduction to help
elaborate on why certain findings may have happened.
Next, there should be a paragraph on the limitations of the study. Are there sampling
issues in our study? Any reason to believe that one measure wasn’t being used
right? What about an unaccounted for variable or confound? It is important to not
only list these limitations, but ALSO state what their implications on our results are?
Do they bias the results one way? Do they limit the external validity? Could they be
the result of a confound?
After the limitations have been discussed, it is important to make suggestions for
future research. How might a study be improved to address these limitations? Are
there different ways of testing the hypothesis (an experimental approach?) that might
give more insight?
As the paper begins to wrap up, its important to state why the reader should care
about these results. What are the implications of these results? Do they inform
clinical practice? Could they inform policy? Do they explain an interesting aspect of
life? Tell the reader why these results are exciting. Even if the results are negative
they can still be informative.
PAPER 1 PROMPT: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
RESULTS
The Results section follows the Method section. For our project, it should be about 1 page,
double spaced.
1. Start by stating what you are testing (keep it simple, e.g. “In order to understand
the effect of sleep and exercise on memory…”)
2. Report the preliminary analyses (how was the outcome variable calculated, how
were the groups split up, and zero order correlations if you have continuous
variables – we’ll review how to report these in lab).
3. Report the statistical results for your hypotheses (i.e., the ANOVA).
The results section should have translation b ut not interpretation (explain the statistics in
words and show you understand them, but the interpretation and implications should be left
for the discussion).
Resources: Reporting Statistics Handout
DISCUSSION
For this project, the discussion section should be about 2-3 pages long, double spaced.
1. Restate your hypotheses and findings in words (1 paragraph)
2. How do your results relate back to the literature you reviewed, and what does it
mean for the field of psychology? (~ 1 page)
3. Limitations and Future Directions of your study: what can you and can’t you
conclude? What should be done to follow up on these results? (~ 1/2 to 1 page)
4. Conclusion, what do you want to leave the reader with, how does this benefit
broader society? (~ 1/2 to 1 page)
The discussion should NOT have any statistics in it, and any citations that you discuss should
have already been brought up in the introduction (i.e., don’t include a bunch of new
information)
Purchase answer to see full
attachment