^WC = Wellesley College users only.

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Ideas for choosing a topic

• Discuss your topic ideas with your course Professor.
• Schedule a research consultation with a Reference Librarian at the Science Library.
• There are subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks for most topics or subject areas. See Find background information.
• Sometimes it is helpful to state your topic idea as a question.
• Example: "Does smell play a part in the evolution of mate selection in humans?"
• Identify the main concepts or keywords: "scent", "evolution", and "mate selection"
• Diagram your sentence and underline the keywords, to help you visualize your topic.
• Make a list of synonyms underneath each keyword. [See table below.]

Smell	Evolution	Mate Selection
Olfaction	Adaptation (Biology)	Mating
Pheromones	Behavior Evolution	Mating behavior
Sex Attractants - MESH term	Behavior Genetics	Sexual Selection
Odor	Natural Selection	Courtship
Odour (British spelling)	Human Genetics	Sexual behavior in animals

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Find books Wellesley College Library catalog In addition to books, you will also find journals, videos, and more. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Wellesley College faculty, students, and staff may use Interlibrary Loan and or other Document Delivery services to borrow or obtain copies of materials not found in Wellesley's collection. Other nearby library catalogs Links to other nearby libraries. WorldCat WC OCLC catalog of books and other materials in libraries worldwide. CogNet Books WC- Over 400 full-text books in cognitive science from The MIT Press are included. on-campus access / off-campus access (search function may not work with off-campus access) National Academies Press At the National Academy Press web site, you can search over 3,000 full-text books online for specific subject terms, in order to locate relevant chapters or book titles. Coverage includes subjects like physical sciences, materials science/engineering, environmental issues, and more. Floor Map of Science Library Find background information Encyclopedias and handbooks are great resources for research ideas, to get a quick overview of the research that has been done on a topic (and the names of the key researchers), and to find out a definition of an unfamiliar term or field of research. Scanning current issues of journals is another way to get ideas for your project. Some key titles in cognitive science are: Cognition, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Brain & Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Journal of Mental Imagery, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, Neuropsychologia, Trends in Cognitive Science, and Behavioral Neuroscience. AccessScience WC Access to all the articles, fully illustrated, from the latest edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, Research Updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks, thousands of illustrations, and the latest Science News® headlines, biographies, 110,000+ definitions from The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, and more. Blackwell Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology SCI Ref BF 311 B535. Blackwell Dictionary of Neuropsychology SCI Ref QP360 .B577 1996. Blackwell Handbook of Perception SCI Ref BF 311 B537 2001. Encyclopedia of the Human Brain Sci Ref q QP376 .E59 2002. CogNet Reference WCis a collection of 7 full-text online reference books. Reference books included: The Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, The Cognitive Neurosciences III , The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks 2e, The Handbook of Multisensory Processes, The Visual Neurosciences, and The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders. on-campus access / off-campus access (Search function may not work with off-campus access.) Cognitive Science Dictionary provided by the University of Alberta. Companion to the Philosophy of Mind Clapp Ref BD 418.3 C62 1994. Desk Reference for Neuroscience SCI Ref QM 451 L625 1992. Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind is a peer-reviewed dictionary intended to reflect current approaches to the philosophy of mind. Encyclopedia of the Human Brain Sci Ref qQP376 .E59 2002. Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence SCI Ref BF 431 E59 1993. Encyclopedia of Language And Linguistics Clapp Ref. P29 E48 1994. Encyclopedia of Learning and Memory SCI Ref BF 318 E53 1994. Encyclopedia of Psychology SCI Ref q BF 31 E52 2000. Handbook of Memory Disorders SCI Ref RC 394 M46 H38 1995. Handbook of Psychology SCI Ref qBF121 .H1955 2003. Oxford Companion to the Mind SCI Ref BF 31 C94. Oxford Reference Online WC Oxford Reference Online contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. Return to top Find articles and essays The following databases provide either full-text articles or citations (information about when and where the article was published). Once you have a citation for an article, use the Find It! @ Wellesley link from each citation to search one or more electronic journal sources through the Wellesley College Library Catalog. Use the name of the journal as the title. If Wellesley does not own the article, you can request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). WC = Wellesley College users only. Academic Search Premier The world’s largest academic multi-disciplinary database, Academic Search Premier provides full text for nearly 4,650 serials, including full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed titles. Behavioral and Brain Sciences Print Archives BBS print archives provide full text of articles that can be accessed through subject browsing or searched by keywords or author. CogPrints Electronic Archive CogPrints Electronic Archive provides access to scholarly papers in many areas of psychology. ERIC WC The Educational Resources Information Center contains annotated references to educational materials issued in the monthly Resources in Education (RIE) and to journal articles issued in the monthly Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). Contains bibliographic references from the U.S. Department of Education, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and the National Library of Education. JSTOR WC The JSTOR collection contains full-text articles from several periodicals. This is an archive, and the most recent few years are usually not available on JSTOR. MEDLINE WC(via ISI's Web of Science) MEDLINE is the premier database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). It contains over 12 million records of journal articles in all areas of the life sciences, with particular emphasis on biomedicine.The articles indexed in MEDLINE were published in more than 4,600 international journals, published in over 30 languages. MLA Bibliography WC1963- Use this to find articles about language, literature, film, and drama in all languages. Project Muse WC Academic journals in humanities & social sciences. Current 5 years available PsycINFO WC(via EBSCO host) PsycINFO , from the American Psychological Association (APA), contains nearly 2.3 million citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,100 periodicals in more than 25 languages. Science Direct WC Full-text articles from several social science periodicals. Access to articles with green icons only. 1995+ Web of Science WC Web of Science at Wellesley consists of the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Humanities Citation Index. Web of Science is very useful in performing interdisciplinary subject searches and citation searches. Other databases may be useful for you, depending on your specific topic and approach. The Databases A-Z page lists all of the electronic resources and what subjects and time span they cover. Return to top APA Format for Research Papers We recommend the following two sources: 1. Citing print sources: We recommend consulting the book: Publication manual of the American Psychological Association APA standard format, 5th ed, BF76.7 .P83 2001. There are 2 copies on Reserve in the Science Library and one copy in Clapp Reference.    Note: The following are not "official" APA sources, but some students find them helpful: APA Style Essentials Using APA Format Bibliography Styles Handbook Documenting Sources APA Style 2. Citing electronic sources: see APA Style Electronic References. NOTE! If you cite a journal article from a database, you must acknowledge that you read the article in electronic form (as opposed to reading the actual article in print). Here is an example: Borman, W. C., Hanson, M. A., Oppler, S. H., Pulakos, E. D., & White, L. A. (1993). Role of early supervisory experience in supervisor performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 443-449. Retrieved October 23, 2000, from PsycARTICLES database. Return to top Tracing citations Use the "cited references" tab for citation searching in PsycINFO. Use the Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-present) in Web of Science WC. Internet links General Sites American Association for Artificial Intelligence's Cognitive Science page is a great place to start for introductory material, readings and links related to AI & Cog Sci. Celebrities in Cognitive Science links you to the leading researchers in the field. CogPrints Electronic Archive provides access to scholarly papers in many areas of cognitive science. Wellesley's Internet Resources for Psychology. Artificial Intelligence MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory AI on the Web from UC Berkeley. American Association for Artificial Intelligence Consciousness Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness The Humanoid Robotics Group at MIT builds, maintains, and experiments with Cog, a humanoid robot. Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated Bibliography, from David Chalmers, and his Web resources related to consciousness. The Koch Lab - Christof Koch at CalTech is interested in the biophysics of neuronal computation. Evolutionary Psychology The Center for Evolutionary Psychology at UC Santa Barbara Human Behavior and Evolution Society Psycholinguistics Cornell Language Acquisition Lab--Papers on Language Acquisition The Mind Articulation Project an international collaboration focused on language and thought research. WordNet is an on-line lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. Psycholinguistics Index from About.com, a listing of psycholinguistics sources on the Web. Linguistic Society of America Contact the departmental Library liaison Contact: Neil Nero, library research liaison to Cognitive Science  Contact: Deborah Lenares, library collections liaison to Cognitive Science Go to related Wellesley College academic departments Cognitive Science Neuroscience Psychology Department Philosophy Department Anthropology Department Language Studies Computer Science Department Return to top Return to Research Guides by Subject Research & Instruction | Library |Wellesley College | Information Services | Knapp Center | College Archives | Site map Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Neil Nero • last modified: March 10, 2008