Feedback from the first markers
- Relevance
Abstract – Some relevant material presented but it was difficult to follow and some key details missing about the independent variables, problems used, participant sample and so on.
Introduction – The first part of the introduction gives a nice background and overview and outstanding questions are mentioned earlier which helps the reader to maintain the thread of the dissertation. However, from then on there is quite a lot of repetition and meandering without the creation of a clear narrative. Part of the problem is that the student goes into too much historical and descriptive detail about creativity and does not focus empirically on the issues at hand. It is unclear why PPP is important and why the focus is on personality when the student is focusing on trait capacity of attentional control – WMC. The student talks a bit about divergent and convergent thinking but does not justify why they hone in on a particular task. There is no explanation of what task is being used. Nothing about fixation. Nothing much about insight problem solving. Special processing vs. attentional processing underpinning creativity. No funnelling down into a hypothesis or hypotheses.
Methods – Written in future tense. Not very well detailed. Much of the information is redundant. Key information is missing.
Results – The inferential statistics are provided but where are the Tables?
Discussion – Very short. Very few citations.
- Quality of argumentation
Abstract – Difficult to parse in places. It is not completely clear how the background information fits with the goals of the study. E.g., why is background speech the source of interest in the study and how can it shed light on the types of processes that underpin problem solving.
Introduction – Because there is a lot of description, it is difficult to know what arguments the student is trying to make. The text is also very descriptive in places. There is no justification of the type of task used, the methods deployed. Nothing about competing theoretical accounts of creativity and therefore competing hypotheses.
Discussion – Not much evidence of argumentation. No linking back to relevant literature or synthesis of content.
- Originality and skill
Introduction – Evidence of broad background reading but nothing more detailed and relevant to the approach taken.
Results – It is difficult to see from the results whether the appropriate statistical tests have been undertaken. These are not detailed sufficiently within the Results section.
Discussion – Idea was original and within an area of contemporary interest but difficult to fathom this from the write-up.
- Knowledge and content
Introduction – The description of working memory is a little odd and poorly specified. Some evidence of background reading and the student does provide a background context. Large chunks of relevant information missing. Where is the detail about priming or fixation? Where is the detail about the CRATs and how they were selected?
Methods – Key information is missing. The student does not give the impression that they knew what the study was about or why the conditions were important. What about counterbalancing etc?
Results – There are inferential statistics but the student says that there are significant effects where there are not. They do not define SOS? Where is the MSE or description of the results? Inappropriate analysis undertaken? What does incorrect, correct and irrelevant refer to? Nothing is clear.
Discussion – No overview of the results, no theoretical background. Little by way of discussion.
- Quality of explanation
Abstract – Difficult to fathom out the rationale of the study or the results obtained and their implications.
Introduction – It was difficult to follow the train of thought in places and nothing seemed to help converge on the topic and the aims/hypotheses which were not written.
Methods – Some detail missing about the WMC tasks in particular. Lots of detail missing about the CRAT tasks. Procedure not at all well specified.
Results – Poor. Key details missing.
Discussion – Conceptual misunderstandings, short.
- Style
Overall –
Abstract – Needs some restructuring. Key details missing re: IVs, sample and results.
Introduction – There are issues in relation to organisation of ideas, structuring, repetition.
Methods – Needed a restructure. Participants and Design should be more detailed and separate sections.
Results – Poor. Student does not describe pattern of means. They do not include F reports. Instead they include many irrelevant descriptions.
Discussion – Very few citations, poorly structured.
Referencing – APA style is not adhered to within the writing…in terms of heading levels and in-text citations and references.
Identify two key areas for improvement:
- Introduction needed to be restructured to develop the aims and hypothesis.
- Method, Results and Discussion need restructuring and the whole dissertation requires to be more theory-driven.
Feedback of the second marker
1.Relevance – The introduction is very lengthy, but largely covers irrelevant material related to creativity in far too much detail. At no point are CRATs outlined as the creativity task, with an explanation as to why the CRAT are a valid task in this context. There is no discussion of the role of distraction in creativity, or any mention of theories of distraction.
- Quality of argumentation – The introduction is difficult to follow, and does not really set up any sort of rationale for the experiment. Indeed, the focus is on creativity, with little to no mention of distraction at any point.
- Originality and skill – Creativity is a very pertinent topic at present, and given a current focus on the impact of distraction on creativity, this project had great potential to extend this work by focusing on the role of working memory capacity. Unfortunately, the potential originality and skill is just not evident in this project.
- Knowledge and content – It is evident that the author does not have a particularly solid understanding of the rationale behind the experiment. There is significant content missing, particularly from the method, results and discussion section. For example, the results section does not contain any descriptive statistics in support of the presented ANOVA.
- Quality of explanation – This is reasonable, but unfortunately the focus is on material that is not made explicitly relevant to the proposed experiment.
- Style – The project appears to have been submitted with track changes in place. The results section is not presented in an appropriate format.
Identify two key areas for improvement:
- Further development of the results section, including presenting descriptive statistics.
- A more detailed discussion section drawing on distraction literature.