Autism is a highly controversial disorder, which has gotten its popularity over the past couple of decades from a former scientist who said autism was caused by vaccines. This caused an uproar among parents everywhere, the “evidence,” which was eventually proven to be false, caused a wave of parents to not vaccinate their kids, and advanced autism studies further in order to disprove it. 1 in 68 children have this disorder in the United States, and to this day there still isn’t a cause or cure for any part of the spectrum. Autism has various levels, ranging from some deficit to severe deficits, and there are a variety of symptoms accompanied with these. Even though many people claim things like diet, and the time spent in the womb are what causes autism and it’s severity, neither has been confirmed, and many still believe that vaccines cause it, even though that has been disproven. However, more studies are being done to see what causes autism, and a recent study says there may be a connection to how “male” or “female” our brain is. In an article posted in the psychiatry edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a study was published that suggests the phenotype, how our brain presents, may suggest out chances of getting autism.

The question is how can a brain be more “female” or “male” since there have been no defining markers found with the brain. The researchers set out to prove that there can be a difference by doing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) on the brains of 98 individuals with autism (49 male and 49 female) as well as 98 neurotypical individuals (57 male and 41 female) and looked for a difference in cortical thickness, which is amount of grey matter on the cortex. Females have been found to have thicker cortexes in many areas, whereas men have thinner cortexes, which hasn’t been explained yet either. There is a belief that it could be due to testosterone, but it hasn’t been proven. During the study, the researchers were correct about 74% of the time on the gender of the person scanned, which shows that there is some correlation in cortical thickness and gender, but it is not exact. The researchers used cortical thickness to investigate about autism because cortical thickness has shown to be altered in individuals with autism. Autism was found to be 2 to 5 times more likely in males than females, the difference on whether a woman is 2 or 5 times more likely was dependent on whether her cortical thickness was more feminine or more like a man’s; if the girl’s brain is more like a woman’s she was 5 times less likely to get autism than a man, but if she had a manlier brain, she was only 2 times more likely to get autism. There was found to be no difference in likelihood in males with female or male brains.

The study didn’t include those who had genetic disorders, psychiatric disorders, history of brain trauma, or brain disorders (like epilepsy), and also took out those who took medications that would affect the brain like mood stabilizers. All of these would pull up as a change in brain structure since they all can cause or are caused by differences in brain structure. Also, this study only included those who are right handed because that can also effect brain structure since those who are left handed can have some functions form on the opposite side. Both groups mean age was in their mid-twenties but the group with autism was slightly younger than the neurotypical group. The researchers wanted both groups to be very similar because age also plays a major role in brain develop, and they didn’t want anything to mess up the results.

Even though this study wasn’t a definite cause for autism, it does give hope for us to find a cause soon and maybe a cure, but for now more studies on this topic should be done so we can create an actual lab test for autism. Right now we rely on just interviews, history, and also by ruling everything else out, but e test could allow for children to get diagnosed earlier, which could lower any deficits caused, and it could ease parent’s fears sooner than ever. The more we know about autism, the closer we get to the treatment and the cure, which will change the life of many who live with the disorder, no matter how big of a role it plays in their lives.

Links to articles: CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/health/autism-typical-male-brain-study/

Scholarly article:  file:///Users/Holly/Downloads/For%20Holly%20Hu%20(3).pdf

Reflection: I really enjoyed this assignment, because now I’m warier about what I read on news outlets like CNN because they don’t include all of what needs to be there. This made it easy for me to critique the CNN article because learning about what all needs to be in research allowed me to know what is needed for research so I could easily pick out what needed to be added and what needed to be more detailed. However, the scholarly research critique was the hardest because there wasn’t much to critique, since they had to be very thorough to get it published, but there were a few tiny things like why they did that experiment. The media production project paper was easier to write than the scholarly article critique, but harder than the CNN article critique, which was surprising, since I thought it would be harder. The media production paper was easy to do because it was explaining the study, which was explained well, but the hardest part was to put it into common terms while still explaining the study completely. Since the study had so many factors that many people don’t understand I had to be sure to define them all, while not making the paper filled with just explanations, which was the toughest part of all. By the end of this project, I figured out how deceiving popular articles can be, but I still believe they are worthwhile if they give the link to the original article so those who are truly interested can learn more about the topic.

Autism is a highly controversial disorder, which has gotten its popularity over the past couple of decades from a former scientist who said autism was caused by vaccines. This caused an uproar among parents everywhere, the “evidence,” which was eventually proven to be false, caused a wave of parents to not vaccinate their kids, and advanced autism studies further in order to disprove it. 1 in 68 children have this disorder in the United States, and to this day there still isn’t a cause or cure for any part of the spectrum. Autism has various levels, ranging from some deficit to severe deficits, and there are a variety of symptoms accompanied with these. Even though many people claim things like diet, and the time spent in the womb are what causes autism and it’s severity, neither has been confirmed, and many still believe that vaccines cause it, even though that has been disproven. However, more studies are being done to see what causes autism, and a recent study says there may be a connection to how “male” or “female” our brain is. In an article posted in the psychiatry edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a study was published that suggests the phenotype, how our brain presents, may suggest out chances of getting autism.

The question is how can a brain be more “female” or “male” since there have been no defining markers found with the brain. The researchers set out to prove that there can be a difference by doing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) on the brains of 98 individuals with autism (49 male and 49 female) as well as 98 neurotypical individuals (57 male and 41 female) and looked for a difference in cortical thickness, which is amount of grey matter on the cortex. Females have been found to have thicker cortexes in many areas, whereas men have thinner cortexes, which hasn’t been explained yet either. There is a belief that it could be due to testosterone, but it hasn’t been proven. During the study, the researchers were correct about 74% of the time on the gender of the person scanned, which shows that there is some correlation in cortical thickness and gender, but it is not exact. The researchers used cortical thickness to investigate about autism because cortical thickness has shown to be altered in individuals with autism. Autism was found to be 2 to 5 times more likely in males than females, the difference on whether a woman is 2 or 5 times more likely was dependent on whether her cortical thickness was more feminine or more like a man’s; if the girl’s brain is more like a woman’s she was 5 times less likely to get autism than a man, but if she had a manlier brain, she was only 2 times more likely to get autism. There was found to be no difference in likelihood in males with female or male brains.

The study didn’t include those who had genetic disorders, psychiatric disorders, history of brain trauma, or brain disorders (like epilepsy), and also took out those who took medications that would affect the brain like mood stabilizers. All of these would pull up as a change in brain structure since they all can cause or are caused by differences in brain structure. Also, this study only included those who are right handed because that can also effect brain structure since those who are left handed can have some functions form on the opposite side. Both groups mean age was in their mid-twenties but the group with autism was slightly younger than the neurotypical group. The researchers wanted both groups to be very similar because age also plays a major role in brain develop, and they didn’t want anything to mess up the results.

Even though this study wasn’t a definite cause for autism, it does give hope for us to find a cause soon and maybe a cure, but for now more studies on this topic should be done so we can create an actual lab test for autism. Right now we rely on just interviews, history, and also by ruling everything else out, but e test could allow for children to get diagnosed earlier, which could lower any deficits caused, and it could ease parent’s fears sooner than ever. The more we know about autism, the closer we get to the treatment and the cure, which will change the life of many who live with the disorder, no matter how big of a role it plays in their lives.

Links to articles: CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/health/autism-typical-male-brain-study/

Scholarly article:  file:///Users/Holly/Downloads/For%20Holly%20Hu%20(3).pdf

Reflection: I really enjoyed this assignment, because now I’m warier about what I read on news outlets like CNN because they don’t include all of what needs to be there. This made it easy for me to critique the CNN article because learning about what all needs to be in research allowed me to know what is needed for research so I could easily pick out what needed to be added and what needed to be more detailed. However, the scholarly research critique was the hardest because there wasn’t much to critique, since they had to be very thorough to get it published, but there were a few tiny things like why they did that experiment. The media production project paper was easier to write than the scholarly article critique, but harder than the CNN article critique, which was surprising, since I thought it would be harder. The media production paper was easy to do because it was explaining the study, which was explained well, but the hardest part was to put it into common terms while still explaining the study completely. Since the study had so many factors that many people don’t understand I had to be sure to define them all, while not making the paper filled with just explanations, which was the toughest part of all. By the end of this project, I figured out how deceiving popular articles can be, but I still believe they are worthwhile if they give the link to the original article so those who are truly interested can learn more about the topic.

Autism is a highly controversial disorder, which has gotten its popularity over the past couple of decades from a former scientist who said autism was caused by vaccines. This caused an uproar among parents everywhere, the “evidence,” which was eventually proven to be false, caused a wave of parents to not vaccinate their kids, and advanced autism studies further in order to disprove it. 1 in 68 children have this disorder in the United States, and to this day there still isn’t a cause or cure for any part of the spectrum. Autism has various levels, ranging from some deficit to severe deficits, and there are a variety of symptoms accompanied with these. Even though many people claim things like diet, and the time spent in the womb are what causes autism and it’s severity, neither has been confirmed, and many still believe that vaccines cause it, even though that has been disproven. However, more studies are being done to see what causes autism, and a recent study says there may be a connection to how “male” or “female” our brain is. In an article posted in the psychiatry edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a study was published that suggests the phenotype, how our brain presents, may suggest out chances of getting autism.

The question is how can a brain be more “female” or “male” since there have been no defining markers found with the brain. The researchers set out to prove that there can be a difference by doing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) on the brains of 98 individuals with autism (49 male and 49 female) as well as 98 neurotypical individuals (57 male and 41 female) and looked for a difference in cortical thickness, which is amount of grey matter on the cortex. Females have been found to have thicker cortexes in many areas, whereas men have thinner cortexes, which hasn’t been explained yet either. There is a belief that it could be due to testosterone, but it hasn’t been proven. During the study, the researchers were correct about 74% of the time on the gender of the person scanned, which shows that there is some correlation in cortical thickness and gender, but it is not exact. The researchers used cortical thickness to investigate about autism because cortical thickness has shown to be altered in individuals with autism. Autism was found to be 2 to 5 times more likely in males than females, the difference on whether a woman is 2 or 5 times more likely was dependent on whether her cortical thickness was more feminine or more like a man’s; if the girl’s brain is more like a woman’s she was 5 times less likely to get autism than a man, but if she had a manlier brain, she was only 2 times more likely to get autism. There was found to be no difference in likelihood in males with female or male brains.

The study didn’t include those who had genetic disorders, psychiatric disorders, history of brain trauma, or brain disorders (like epilepsy), and also took out those who took medications that would affect the brain like mood stabilizers. All of these would pull up as a change in brain structure since they all can cause or are caused by differences in brain structure. Also, this study only included those who are right handed because that can also effect brain structure since those who are left handed can have some functions form on the opposite side. Both groups mean age was in their mid-twenties but the group with autism was slightly younger than the neurotypical group. The researchers wanted both groups to be very similar because age also plays a major role in brain develop, and they didn’t want anything to mess up the results.

Even though this study wasn’t a definite cause for autism, it does give hope for us to find a cause soon and maybe a cure, but for now more studies on this topic should be done so we can create an actual lab test for autism. Right now we rely on just interviews, history, and also by ruling everything else out, but e test could allow for children to get diagnosed earlier, which could lower any deficits caused, and it could ease parent’s fears sooner than ever. The more we know about autism, the closer we get to the treatment and the cure, which will change the life of many who live with the disorder, no matter how big of a role it plays in their lives.

Links to articles: CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/health/autism-typical-male-brain-study/

Scholarly article:  file:///Users/Holly/Downloads/For%20Holly%20Hu%20(3).pdf

Reflection: I really enjoyed this assignment, because now I’m warier about what I read on news outlets like CNN because they don’t include all of what needs to be there. This made it easy for me to critique the CNN article because learning about what all needs to be in research allowed me to know what is needed for research so I could easily pick out what needed to be added and what needed to be more detailed. However, the scholarly research critique was the hardest because there wasn’t much to critique, since they had to be very thorough to get it published, but there were a few tiny things like why they did that experiment. The media production project paper was easier to write than the scholarly article critique, but harder than the CNN article critique, which was surprising, since I thought it would be harder. The media production paper was easy to do because it was explaining the study, which was explained well, but the hardest part was to put it into common terms while still explaining the study completely. Since the study had so many factors that many people don’t understand I had to be sure to define them all, while not making the paper filled with just explanations, which was the toughest part of all. By the end of this project, I figured out how deceiving popular articles can be, but I still believe they are worthwhile if they give the link to the original article so those who are truly interested can learn more about the topic.

During the process when I went back to the article I first picked out and began to try and rewrite it, I found it challenging as to what would be the best way to try to summarize such an important study but still not exclude all of the parts that weren’t exactly statistics.  In looking at how a journalist approached this article, I was somewhat disappointed that they didn’t go beyond just gathering the information needed and putting it together neatly.  It was shocking to me that the journalist lacked any information on tools or other resources that could be used for more financially unstable Quebec women, or any other reasons why a fetus could have birth defects besides antidepressants.  The most important part of the study that I wanted to include in the new version of the article was that unhealthy habits and a poor diet lacking in essential nutrients can just be as detrimental to a mother’s health and her unborn child just as much taking antidepressants could.  I didn’t find it appropriate to completely try and rewrite the article since most of the important statistics and basic facts of the cohort were already stated in a manner that was easy to understand.  I also decided to edit the ending because it left an uncomfortable cliffhanger for someone who could have been reading the article and took away a negative theme from it, as it just simply stated that there are resources if you have the money for it.  I assumed that there could be such a thing as support groups and therapy for underprivileged Quebec women, so I stated that there are plenty of free websites and other tools that can be accessed with the internet.  Overall, the writing process for trying to edit this article was admittedly a bit tricky but I found it entertaining that I was able to add more information to make it more helpful to the general public.  

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170118103923.htm

In a study done by the University of Montreal, 6 to 10% of the women that were recorded and participated in the study who were diagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants for the previous 6 months, were at a higher risk for giving birth to infants with birth defects.  

“In pregnancy, you’re treating the mother but you’re worried about the unborn child, and the benefit needs to outweigh the risk,” said the study’s senior author, Anick Bérard, a professor at UdeM’s Faculty of Pharmacy and researcher at its affiliated children’s hospital, CHU Sainte-Justine.

A well-known expert in pregnancy and depression, Bérard has previously established links between antidepressants and low birth weight, gestational hypertension, miscarriages, and autism. Her new study is among the first to examine the link to birth defects among depressed women due to the usage of antidepressants during pregnancy.   

Every year, about 135,000 Quebec women get pregnant, and of those, about 7 % of these women shows signs of depressive symptoms or already have diagnosed depression prior to becoming pregnant and their pregnancy has magnified their symptoms.  Less than 1% of this population have severe depression.

In her study, Bérard looked at 18,487 depressed women in the Quebec Pregnancy Cohort, a longitudinal, population-based grouping of 289,688 pregnancies recorded between 1998 to 2009. Of the women studied, 3,640 — about 20 percent — took antidepressants in the first three months of their pregnancy.

“We only looked at the first trimester, because this is where all the organ systems are developing,” said Bérard. “At 12 weeks of gestation, the baby is formed.”

Antidepressant use during this critical time window has the potential to interfere with serotonin intake by the fetus, which can result in malformations.  It is also important information to note, that these pregnant women diagnosed with depression may try to use unhealthy habits or coping mechanisms, such as smoking, drinking, and poor diet, which also has a major role in fetal development.  

For example, when Celexa (the brand name for citalopram) was taken in the first trimester, the risk of major birth defects jumped from 5 per cent to 8 per cent, Bérard found. In all, 88 cases of malformations were linked to use of the drug.

Similarly, use of Paxil (paroxetine) was associated with an increased risk of heart defects; venlafaxine (Effexor), with lung defects; and tricyclic antidepressants (such as Elavil), with an increased documentation of eye, ear, face and neck defects.  It seems like the different classes of SSRI’s had different effects on the development of certain organs in the fetus and it wasn’t just one single SSRI that affected all organs.  

Depression is on the rise across the globe and is a leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization. Depression is particularly serious during pregnancy, and doctors — especially psychiatrists, obstetricians and other specialists — are prescribing more antidepressants than ever to expectant mothers.  This is only one way to treat an issue that is so ill-timed when a woman is carrying a child and doesn’t want the child to be exposed to the medication she is taking.  Other resources that should be available in place of antidepressants, or alongside if passed by a healthcare official, should be therapy sessions and support groups for women who are also experiencing depressive symptoms whether they are currently pregnant, have postpartum depression, or have depression and want to conceive a child.  

Over the decade or so that Bérard studied her cohort, the proportion of expectant mothers on antidepressants in Quebec doubled, from 21 users per 1,000 pregnancies in 1998 to 43 per 1,000 in 2009.

The women in this study that are prescribed these drugs and are taking them are usually older women who tend to live alone and don’t have much in the way of family or financial support or stability.  In some cases, it seems like an easier route for them just to take medication instead of seeking non-medicative treatment out of fear that they won’t be able to afford therapist visits or they’ll face stigma and ridicule from their family or peers.

If a pregnant woman in the Quebec area has been experiencing depressive symptoms or has been diagnosed with mild to moderate depression before conceiving a child and is looking for treatment, there are plenty of websites online and even mental health facilities that can help them on their journey to treating their symptoms and having a safe and enjoyable pregnancy, even if the woman is lacking in sufficient funds, she will still be able to reach out to a program or other people who are just like her.  

A recent study in Denmark has concluded that children can improve their math scores on tests if movement based learning is incorporated into their classrooms. The experiment conducted showed that there was a significant difference between the scores of children who performed various motor based learning activities and those that did not.

The study was done in a six week long period with one hundred and sixty five children participating. These children were in the first grade with an average age of seven and a half years old and all were from Copenhagen. In order to compare the math scores for each individual, three math tests were given at three different times during and after the experiment. The first test was given out immediately to the children as a baseline, the second was given out during the experiment, and the third was given out eight weeks after the experiment had ended.

The children in the experiment were randomly placed in three different groups in order to test various methods of motor activity incorporation. The first group was the control group and thus had no motor activity incorporated into their learning activities. The second group was the fine motor movement group, which performed math problems while manipulating LEGO bricks. The third group was the gross motor movement group, which performed activities such as hopscotch while solving math problems.

The experiment results were that all groups did improve their mathematical skills, but that the children in the gross motor movement group had the greatest improvement overall. The fine motor movement group came in second and the control group showed the least improvement. A sub group analysis was also performed using the information of the first math test given before the experiment was conducted. This analysis showed that children who initially performed normally on math test, performed the best when placed in the gross motor movement group, and that children who initially performed poorly did not make significant improvements.

From these results, the Danish article concludes that incorporating motor movement into learning activities can improve children’s math scores and that gross motor movement can result in the most improvement for children who perform normally on math tests. However, low math performers do not show as much improvement in gross motor movement activities.

Since the children in this experiment were allocated into random groups the causal claims this article makes are supported, but these results can only be attributed to Danish children in the first grade. While this experiment is insightful and is very well conducted, this does not mean that all children of varying ethnicities and ages can increase their mathematical skills by incorporating motor movement into their lessons. The sample size was also quite small and could contribute to skewed results. Overall the research is very impressive despite these problems and leads to some important questions we should be asking ourselves about our education system and whether or not we should investigate further into the matter. The results here could lead to some potentially important developments in education and thus I think a series of follow up studies should be done.

Overall I did not find writing a summary about the research article that difficult. All of the available information was right at my fingertips and with enough time I could understand it quite readily. Even though some aspects of the given information in the research article are well beyond my understanding, it is not hard to understand the main points of the research article and report them in terms that are easy to understand. The portion of this project that I found  most difficult was being able to get a high enough word count. The news article I had went up to 978 words and I was finding it difficult to get to 500 because the main points of this research article were not that difficult to understand. The information I chose to leave out was mostly the statistical analysis portions because  the formulas used were very long and difficult and I did not think I could report them properly. I think that the important information to get across to the audience is the results of the experiment and the methods used, and so those were the portions I focused on. I don’t hate journalist for trying to do their jobs or anything and I never did beforehand, but now I am more than skeptical of any news article I come across. At times I could see how doing this on a daily basis could become hard and slip ups can happen, but not reporting hardly more than two sentences pertaining to the methods of an experiment covered in a news article is  just shameful.

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.