Assumptions and intuitions

Overgeneralization across levels of representation

4. Comments on References

It's hard to give comments to just a list of references, without knowing the topic or the intended argument. Here are some comments that pertain to references in general.

Citation format

This citation is used as an "index" in the references. The citation is then expanded with the full list of authors, title of the work, book title of the work, year, and other necessary information. Example:

(Smith 2001) J. Smith. Some title. Journal of Educational Psychology. 13(1):209-215. 2001.

1. Create a references section called "Secondary References". List those sources under this heading, in the same format as the primary sources.
2. Keep them in the same reference section, but change the style so that the primary source is included. For example:

   [some text] so and so said this works 90% of the time. (Lee 1999)

   [references] 9. (Lee 1999) John Lee. Some title. Journal of Educational Psychology. 11(2):123-129. 1999.

   If you didn't read (Lee 1999) and only got the information and reference from another book, (Feldman 2001), the above reference would need to be changed to the following:

   [some text] so and so said this works 90% of the time. (XYZ 1999, from Feldman 2001)

   [references] 9. (Lee 1999, from Feldman 2001) John Lee. Some title. Journal of Educational Psychology. 11(2):123-129. 1999.

   And (Feldman 2001) would be listed in the references as well.

Literature selection

• Books: Who is it written by? Is the author a university professor or works in a research lab? Does the author have a research record? What is the level of writing, is it suitable for the general public, or is it aimed at a specialized audience?
• Edited Books/Collections: These can be good sources if the particular papers/chapters inside are relevant to your topic. The nature of these collections tend to be survey-ish, and the same kind of "reliability testing" for books (above) is needed here.
• Journals: The UofT library has an amazing collection of academic journals. Any journal you find in this catalogue is reliable.
• Conference papers: This is another source that will serve well for finding references to your argument. However, conference papers tend to be overly technical, so it will take time to sift through everything. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of Cognitive Science, it is almost impossible (at least very unrealistic) for us to try and list all the relevant conferences here. If you are unsure of the quality of a conference or paper, ask us for feedback.
• Magazines: Some magazine articles may serve as background references, because some of them survey the state-of-the-art in particular areas. However, they will often not have any argumentation involved, because magazines are aimed at a very general audience. So becareful how you use such sources in your work.
• Websites: Websites aren't the best sources for references. The Internet is a good tool for identifying relevant books, articles, papers, etc., but anything written on websites is an expression of the website creator, and not peer-reviewed. This means, the person (like me) can write anything about anything. Unless you know for a fact that the website is made by a trusted party, don't bother with the material you see there.
• Dictionaries/Encyclopedias: Unless a quote is taken out of these, and the discussion of such definitions are necessary, there is no need to reference dictionaries or encyclopedias.

5. Proofreading