PSY251-Psychology: Your task is to write a laboratory report on the study: Biological Bases of Behavior Assignment, MU, Singapore

PSY251 LAB REPORT
A researcher was interested in exploring the influence of stress on cognitive functioning, specifically memory performance. Upon reading about the topic, she learned that long-term stress in humans can lead to elevated stress hormone (cortisol) levels via activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Increased cortisol level has shown to damage neurons in the hippocampus, which, in turn, could impair memory performance. However,
she also learned that most studies examined the effects of stress on memory primarily in the clinical populations (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression), and only a few studies involved testing healthy populations.

Moreover, studies involving healthy populations assessed the effect of experimentally induced stress on memory, rather than self-reported or perceived stress. Thus, to address this literature gap, the researcher wanted to examine the effect of self-reported or perceived stress on memory in undergraduate psychology students. Specifically, the researcher wanted to know if the stress was associated with the salivary cortisol level, and secondly, whether stress affected memory performance. The researcher believed that further understanding of this stress/memory relationship could help designing strategies to reduce stress in the student population, which could potentially improve their academic performance.

Data Collection

The researcher obtained approval from the University’s Human Research Ethics Committee before commencing her testing. She collected data from 211 undergraduate psychology students. All participants had normal health and were not suffering from any medical or psychiatric conditions nor taking any medication at the time of testing. She assessed the stress level using the short form of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS 21). Memory was measured using the Digit Span tasks of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
(WAIS). The saliva sampling and cortisol assessment procedure followed that of Kuhlmann, Piel, and Wolf’s (2005) study (page 2978).

She tested each participant separately starting from 10 am. First, she advised participants about the purpose of the study (i.e., to evaluate the effect of stress on memory) and the details of the testing procedure. After participants provided consent to participate in the study, she collected their saliva samples. Following this, she asked the participant to fill in the DASS questionnaire and then administered the Digit Span tests to a participant. Upon completing
the study, she gave participants 2 hours of Research Participation credit points.

Your Task:
Your task is to write a laboratory report on the study. Your lab report must be written using APA standard and format conventions. Thus, you should consult Burton et al. (2018) or O’Shea’s Writing in Psychology texts when writing your lab report. Refer to the Unit Guide for further information and assessment details on the lab report.

To write a coherent lab report, you should:

1. Read the literature on the topic widely to build a strong rationale for the study, and make sure that your research question(s) and hypotheses are derived from existing literature and evidence
2. Discuss the findings in relation to the literature
3. Recognise strengths but focus on discussing weaknesses and making an appropriate recommendation(s) to address any limitations.

Other points:
1. You can assume that there were no outliers nor missing data and that the data met assumptions of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity.
2. A separate measure of effect size is not required to be calculated as Pear’s r itself is an index of the strength of the relationship between the two variables.
3. The reliability coefficient for the digit span task used in the study is .83. You will need to include this information in the method section of your lab report. You can cite the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) as follows:
Wechsler, D. (1981). WAIS-R manual: Wechsler adult intelligence scale –
revised. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation.
Please be mindful that the Wechsler reference provided can only be used as the citation for the reliability coefficient. You cannot use this reference as a citation for any other information in your method section, including the description of, or instructions for the task.