User talk:Saholmes/sandbox

Hey, Sarah! So I have a lot of comments, because I wasn't exactly sure what you had worked on and what was just part of the original article, so like you, I have made some comments about every section (so it's a really long critique, sorry! But a lot of the suggestions are similar across sections). For a few general comments, I'd like to say good job picking sources. You seem to have selected sources that are both recent and credible. If I had to sum up all my critiques into one, I would say that there is a lot of information about very specific studies in this article, so I'd question just how necessary/useful all these studies are to the article. Below are comments I have that are more specific to each section:

Future Directions for Research
Further Directions for Research is an interesting section to add, but once again, I would recommend looking at each study (or in this case, potential future study) and check how significant it is to the article as a whole.

Introduction
Instead of defining stimulus in this article, maybe just link the word “stimuli” to the Wikipedia page of a stimulus (make sure it’s the page for psychology, not physiology). It might also be good to elaborate a bit on the 5 cognitive stages, because I don’t think they’re really mentioned elsewhere in the article.

Assessment
Certain sentences could be condensed into one (e.g. the first two sentences of this section basically say the same thing). There is no citation regarding assessment, so if any of the sources you have found so far describe a mental rotation test in the introduction/methods/etc. then you could use that citation in this section.

Notable Research, Shepard and Metzler in depth, and Vandenburg & Kuse
Between the sections “Notable Research,” “Shepard and Metzler in depth,” and “Vandenburg and Kuse,” there is a lot of information about specific studies in this article. This makes the article really long. I think that a more effective way to present the information would be to pick out the studies/researchers that are really the most prominent in the history mental rotation research and cut out the others, then take only the information that is most important for those significant studies. Perhaps these three sections could even be combined into one that is called something like “History of Research.”

The brain
I’m a little concerned by the fact that, especially because it is so long, there are no references in this section. I’m pretty sure that most of this section was in the original article (before you came along and worked on it), so I understand that there isn’t much you can do, but if there is absolutely anything in any of the sources that you’ve found that relates to the brain, I would recommend contributing a citation to this section. The first paragraph of the section is long and wordy. It’s only about one study, yet it goes very in depth about it, to the point where a lot of the given information isn’t relevant, so I would suggest some major cutting down for this paragraph until only the significant information is present. I think the second, third, and fourth paragraphs of this section are a lot more relevant to the article than the first paragraph.

Color
I have a few issues with this section. First, the section only focuses on one singular study. It might be better to cut down the information about that study to the key findings and add other studies about how other physical characteristics (texture and shape were two mentioned in the first sentence) also affect mental rotation. Second, the summation of the one study is rather unclear (e.g. “Those with poor rotational ability were affected by the colors of the image.” Affected how?). Third, I’m not actually entirely sure why this section is entirely important. The findings of the study do not seem to be particularly significant to our understanding of mental rotation as a whole, so why does color receive its own section? Fourth, there is no citation in the references section.

Effect on athleticism and artistic ability
This section goes into too much detail about each study that it discusses, and even then, some of the information is incomplete (e.g. first paragraph describes “Group 1” in a study but fails to describe groups 2 and 3). The readers do not need to know about every aspect of the study. The important parts of the research for this article are the results in relation to mental rotation, so this section could be cut down to only include the studies’ findings.

Concluding Comments
So like I said, the biggest idea is to cut down to only the key findings, and to only include the most significant studies in the first place. Sorry if this critique is super long/overwhelming, but I wanted to make sure I critiqued every part of the article so that I didn't miss any sections you edited. Good luck! Jenn.reed (talk) 06:05, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Hey Jenna, I only edited the future research section and changed all of the citations throughout the articles.  I have since gone back to edit the Introduction, Assessment, and Notable Research sections following your suggestions.  How much elaboration do you think is acceptable for elaborating on the five stages of cognition since Wikipedia is supposed to be so brief? I am slightly confused by your comments about the Future Research section: does it work better if I connect the studies to claims cited in the new History of Research section?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saholmes (talk • contribs) 23:47, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Notes from a friend
"Meneghetti et. al found children who trained with mental rotation tasks had improved strategy skills after practicing." This is in Future Directions, and it is not in Wikipedia style.

In the Intro: "It is thought to be related to the similar areas of the brain associated with perception. It is also thought to be associated with the cognitive rate of spatial processing and general intelligence.[7] [8] [9]" 'It is thought' is kinda counter to the Wikipedia style as it suggests an opinion. Watch for this kind of language. Try to stay as neutral as possible. Make statements of fact.

In assessment: Remember in psychology studies we have participants not subjects. :) I would also shift to present tense here.

In History: The word "enantiomorphs" is jargon. Try to phrase it more simply. Also, watch citing style. Try to move more to footnotes. This paragraph: "Also, males tend to be slightly faster in mental rotation tasks than females. Indeed, some areas in the brain are more activated in the male brain than in the female brain during a mental rotation exercise. That could explain why the time-response and the accuracy in mental rotation tests tend to be better for males.[4]" is very repetitive. Might clean that up a bit.

In "Effect on athleticism..." make sure you are citing or adding [citation needed] because right now there is very, very little and that's sketchy. AnnaCat2 (talk) 20:47, 30 September 2016 (UTC)