Assignment 2: Major report

Word/time limit: 2800 words (+/- 10%)

Weighting: 30%

Due date: 11.59pm AEST Monday 25 May 2026 (Week 11)

Assignment overview

The purpose of this component of the assignment is to explore the relationship between motivational traits and cognitive effort, using some trait measures and performance on an n-back task. You are required to generate a full research report on this topic.

This assignment supports unit learning outcomes 2, 3, 5 and 6.

View the Rubric to learn about this assignment’s marking criteria.

Assignment details

This assignment is designed to assess:

your ability to formulate hypotheses based on relevant literature (of which key references will be provided) and the measures used in the experiment

your ability to use the data provided to you to test those hypotheses and interpret the findings.

These two aspects of report writing will be assessed through your introduction and discussion of the research report. They will additionally be assessed through your ability to integrate the information into an APA-formatted report which reads and flows well.

Read the following instructions to understand the requirements for this assignment:

The following starter resources have been provided for this report:

The need for cognition Links to an external site. (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982).

NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX); 20 years later Links to an external site. (Hart, 2006).

Individual differences in trait motivation: development of the Motivational Trait Questionnaire Links to an external site. (Heggestag & Kanfer, 2000).

A short boredom proneness scale: development and psychometric propertiesLinks to an external site. (Struk et al., 2017).

What is the subjective cost of cognitive effort? Load, trait, and aging effects revealed by economic preference Links to an external site. (Westbrook, Kester & Braver, 2013).

A useful reference for how to write reports is How to write psychology research reports and essays Links to an external site. (Findlay & Kaufman, 2020). Along with the report document provided, this will guide you in writing your report.

Below it a transcript explaining the assignment

Hi everyone, I’m Dragan, and in the following video, I’m going to introduce and familiarise you with the expectations and details about Assignment 2B.

Assignment 2B will require you to write a major report on a research study. This will involve consulting relevant literature, providing a description of your research problem, describing the results, and discussing them at the end. It’s not your task to collect the data. The data have already been collected and, in addition, have already been analysed. Your task is to, based on the available data, define the research problem and interpret the data in the context of that research problem.

So, briefly speaking, the purpose of this particular component of the assignment is to explore the relationship between motivational traits and cognitive effort. Here, you will notice that Assignment 2B closely mimics the requirements for Assignment 2A. In Assignment 2A, we discussed different research studies that characterised how one can measure cognitive effort, the psychological value of cognitive effort, as well as different questionnaires and personality scales aimed at characterising how much cognitive effort one is willing to invest at the level of personality traits. Further, our experimental paradigm also asked participants to fill in these personality questionnaires and then engage in a cognitively demanding task. The main idea of Assignment 2B is to relate the results from the experimental study to the results of people’s responses in these personality trait questionnaires.

You are required to generate a full research report that includes an introduction, method, results, and discussion, along with an abstract and title page. Essentially, you are expected to write a sort of mini-article that could potentially be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. The final word count of your report should be 2800 words.

From the beginning of the introduction all the way through to the end of the discussion, the final word count will depend on how detailed your methods section is. You may potentially expand more on that section. Depending on how you frame your research problem, you will also need to describe one or more personality scales in greater detail.

Here is the breakdown of the percentage of marks you can earn for this report. For the title page and its formatting, you will receive 2% of the marks. For the abstract, which should comprise 150 words and is not included in the word count, you will receive 3% of the marks.

The introduction will carry a significant portion of your marks—exactly one-quarter of the total marks. In your introduction, you should build an argument to generate your research question and support your hypothesis.

This will require you to read through some literature and engage in analytical and critical reasoning in order to frame a specific research problem that can be addressed with the available data.  For convenience, you’re welcome to come up with your own hypothesis, but here are some suggested hypotheses that you may choose to cover in your research report:

**Hypothesis 1**: Participants who score high on the need for cognition (you will remember from your Assignment 2A that we discussed the need for cognition scale) will select a harder task.

**Hypothesis 2**: Participants who score high on boredom proneness will select the shortest task.

**Hypothesis 3**: Participants who score high on competitive excellence will select the hardest task.

**Hypothesis 4**: Participants who score high on motivation anxiety will select the most manageable or easiest task.

These hypotheses are provided as suggestions, and you’re welcome to use them. Alternatively, you may come up with hypotheses of your own if you feel inclined. This will not impact your marks.

As we move from the introduction to the methods section, note that the methods section will account for approximately 10% of the total marks. In this section, you are expected to describe the participant sample, including their associated demographics and the number of participants tested. You will also need to describe each of the measures included in your research report. Additionally, you should describe the NBA task (we will go through this shortly) and outline the experimental procedure.

In the methods section, you should also outline the proposed data analysis to test your hypotheses. Since the results have already been analysed, you don’t need to come up with new or innovative data analysis methods. You can simply refer to the provided tables.

The results section, which will account for about 15% of the total marks, should begin with a summary of how the data were selected for analysis. You should describe the tables you are presenting, including interpretations of correlations. The main results will be presented in the form of pairwise correlations between different measures.

Specifically, the results should include interpretations of correlations between different rated measures or scores on those scales and performance or the free choice of the level of difficulty of the NBA task. You should also describe the observed relationships in the tables, particularly those relevant to your hypotheses.

The tables provided will contain more results than you need to address your hypotheses. It is critical to focus on the results that are immediately relevant to your hypotheses. While you are welcome to mention other results, the main body of the results section should focus on the key findings.

The discussion section, which is the final written section of your report and will account for about 20% of the total marks, should address the findings in the context of your research question. Begin the discussion with a brief summary of the main findings, and then tie these findings to any literature presented in the introduction.  We should discuss the limitations of the study, as well as the implications of this study and future directions for research. No study is conducted in isolation. Ideally, each study builds on existing knowledge and opens avenues for future research. Your task will be to identify these avenues for future research and analyse how much these findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge.

As mentioned in the assignment to Group A, we have provided you with a set of suggested starter references that you can use for both the introduction and discussion. However, you are by no means limited to this set of papers. You are welcome—and even encouraged—to look for additional literature.

The last section of your report should contain references. It is crucial to format your references properly. Why is this important? Proper referencing acknowledges the existing knowledge and the individuals who have contributed to it. When formatting your references, please ensure they adhere to APA style, as outlined by the Association for Psychological Science.

Additionally, your report must include at least three journal articles selected from the list of suggested references. While you are welcome to include more, a minimum of three articles from the provided list is required.

Marks for referencing will be allocated based on your choice of appropriate references. This means you cannot simply include any reference you come across; it must be relevant and appropriate.

You should also ensure that in-text citations and the reference list are formatted correctly. My recommendation is to use one of the many reference management tools available as add-ons to text processing software. These tools can automate the referencing process, saving you time and effort. Regardless of how you choose to manage your references, you will be assessed on how well your referencing style complies with APA requirements.

Finally, 15% of your marks will be allocated to the structure, presentation, and writing style of your report.

This part of the assessment will, to some extent, be subjective. However, in evaluating this aspect of your report, you can gain points by presenting your arguments clearly and ensuring your reasoning is logically consistent.

Some of the questions we will consider include: Does the title match the content? Does the abstract summarise your report effectively? Does the discussion address all the issues raised in the introduction? Does your report tell a coherent story? While this evaluation is somewhat subjective, it will reflect the overall consistency and clarity of your report.

Finally, be mindful of the word count. You are expected to write 2800 words for this report. This word count does not include the title page, abstract, figures, figure captions, or reference list. However, it does include the text in the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections.  If you go a little bit over that limit, that will be tolerated, but try not to make too large deviations.

Obviously, the shorter, the better. However, provided you are covering all these topics, try to be strategic about your word count. Aim to be as concise as possible while still addressing all these topics comprehensively.

We will provide you with a template document for your report, which you can review at your leisure.

Perhaps most importantly, I would like to guide you through the experimental paradigm and the results to make it possible for you to write the report.

So, how did this experiment look? In this experiment, participants completed an online task conducted within a web browser. Participants provided ratings across different rating scales, most of which you are already familiar with—specifically, the Need for Cognition scale, the Boredom Proneness scale, and the Motivational Trait Questionnaire. They also completed the NASA Task Load Index, which we discussed in “Assignment 2A”. Additionally, they provided ratings on how generally self-efficient they felt following these different tasks. This General Self-Efficacy scale was used to measure whether participants noticed any differences as they moved from less difficult tasks to more difficult ones.

The main task performed in this study was a working memory task, which was a specific implementation of an N-back task. I’ll guide you through that in more detail shortly. For now, let me explain the details of the rating scales.

The Need for Cognition scale comprises 18 statements, and participants report how well these statements describe themselves on a 9-point rating scale. In the document, you will find a list of all individual items. For illustration, participants addressed statements such as:

– “I would prefer complex to simple problems.”

– “I like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking.”

As you can see, the Need for Cognition scale reflects how intellectual participants perceive themselves and how willing they are to engage in cognitively effortful activities.

The Boredom Proneness scale comprises 8 items, which participants agree or disagree with using a 7-point scale. Again, in the document, Table 2 shows all items from the Boredom Proneness scale. For reference, here are a few examples:

– “I often find myself at loose ends, not knowing what to do.”

– “I find it hard to entertain myself.”

This scale reflects how easily people feel bored or disorganised.

The Motivational Trait Questionnaire comprises 48 questions divided into 3 scales and 6 subscales. As before, participants report how much each question applies to them, in this case on a 6-point scale. Table 3 in the document shows all individual items from the Motivational Trait Questionnaire. Of potential importance, the third column in the table indicates which subscale each item belongs to. Out of those three, each item belongs to these subscales.

R, as follows: there’s a subscale called “Desire to Learn” and “Mastery Goal”, which belong to a broader category of personal mastery. Then, there’s a subscale, “Other-Referenced Goals” and “Competition Seeking”, which belong to a broader class of competitive excellence. Finally, there are subscales of “Worry” and “Emotion”, which belong to a broader category of motivational anxiety. Here, you see the word coding that will repeat in the third column of this table, so it will be easy for you to match each individual statement to its respective subscale.

Let me just read out loud a few examples from this scale. Item one goes as follows: “When I become interested in something, I try to learn as much about it as I can.” Here, you can already see that this motivational trait questionnaire tries to address how motivated people are to engage in different cognitive effort activities.

The “General Self-Efficacy Scale” is a very short scale that comprises just four items, and participants rate how much they agree with each of them on a four-point scale.

This “General Self-Efficacy Scale” is used to assess how participants perceive the task demands across different levels of difficulty in the MA task—the main cognitive performance tasks they engage in later on.

For example, one of the items on the “General Self-Efficacy Scale” is: “I’m confident I can perform well on this task.”

Obviously, as the task becomes more difficult, participants should grow less confident if their self-assessment aligns with how objectively difficult the task is.

The final scale that participants completed was the “NASA Task Load Index”, which comprises six items. Again, participants rate each of these items on a scale between 1 and 21.

For illustration, one of the items from this scale is, for example: “How mentally demanding has the task been? How physically demanding has the task been?” Here, participants rate each of the tasks they are performing in terms of how cognitively demanding or effortful these tasks were.

Finally, participants engage in performing an “N-Back Task”. You are probably familiar with the concept of the N-Back Task. This is a working memory task in which a series of visual displays is presented to participants, and they have to keep track of each of them.

How do we make sure that they’re keeping track? We ask them to compare the currently presented stimulus to the stimuli that have been presented in the past and to detect whether there are any repetitions or changes between the currently presented visual stimuli and those they have seen before.

The N-Back Task is very useful because you can easily titrate or calibrate the task difficulty by varying how far back in the past participants need to go in order to perform the task. For example, a 2-Back Task would require comparing two consecutively presented visual displays, whereas a 6-Back Task would require comparing the currently presented visual stimulus to a stimulus presented six elements ago. That’s much more difficult.  In our specific task, unlike some of the research you may have read in the proposed references or studies, we used visual displays comprising squares that could appear at different locations in space.

These squares appeared around a central fixation cross, one after another, and participants had to monitor the locations where the squares appeared. I’m going to show you an illustration of the task. The task looked like this: on every visual presentation, a blue square would appear, say, above the fixation cross. Then, this square would disappear, and another blue square would appear, and so on. Importantly, participants had to monitor this series of spatial locations and report whether a square appeared in the same position as one of the previously presented squares.

We used three different levels of task difficulty: the one-back, two-back, and three-back tasks, which are illustrated in this diagram. In the one-back task, participants simply needed to detect whether two consecutively presented squares appeared in the same location. In the two-back task, participants had to monitor the locations and identify whether the square matched the location of the square presented two steps prior. Similarly, for the three-back task, participants had to monitor the spatial match between the currently presented square and the square presented three steps earlier.

Obviously, these three different levels of task difficulty required participants to engage varying levels of effort to perform them correctly. By varying the difficulty of the n-back tasks, we manipulated the cognitive demands of the task.

So, how did the procedure for this experiment look? At the beginning of the experiment, participants completed three different scales that provided information about their motivational traits and attitudes towards cognitive effort.

Next, there was a phase in which participants performed the three different tasks—one-back, two-back, and three-back—one after another. This phase allowed them to experience how demanding each task was and to familiarise themselves with the cognitive demands of each level. After completing a certain number of practice trials, participants also provided their responses to the NASA Task Load Index.

Once they finished the practice tasks, participants were given a free choice to select which of the three levels of task difficulty they wanted to perform in the main testing session.

Now, obviously, all other things being equal, one might expect everyone to choose the same level, or potentially the easiest task. However, there was a catch.

If participants chose the easiest task, the one-back task, they had to perform the most trials—four blocks of 20 trials. In other words, choosing the easiest task came at a cost: a time cost. They had to spend the most time on this task. If they chose the intermediate difficulty, the two-back task, they had to perform three blocks of 20 trials. Finally, if they chose the most difficult version, the three-back task, they had to perform the fewest trials—two blocks of 20 trials.

In this way, participants were offered a choice to trade off between cognitive demands, cognitive effort, and the time spent on the task.After participants made their initial choice, they were delivered to individual trials with one catch: whatever task they had chosen, they had to perform it with 80% accuracy.

If they failed to perform at 80% accuracy, the entire run was discarded, and they were presented with the free choice again. In this second round of free choice, they could decide whether to opt for a less demanding task, given that they had failed to perform the more demanding task in the first instance. The main idea was that if they failed to meet the performance criterion, they had to go through the same steps as before. They could make a different choice and continue until they achieved 80% accuracy.

This process was possible for up to three rounds of free choice, after which the experiment would terminate.

Naturally, it was in the best interest of each participant to make a well-considered choice in their first attempt, as this would allow them to complete the experiment more quickly.

Participants also completed general self-efficacy scales both before engaging in the selected task and after completing all the trials. This was done to measure any changes in their self-perception regarding how well they could perform the task.

In terms of data analysis, for each participant, we collected total scores on several different scales that reflected their opinions and attitudes related to cognitive effort. These included the “Need for Cognition” scale, the “Boredom Proneness Scale”, and the “General Self-Efficacy Scale” at two time points, as well as the NASA Task Load Index for three different types of tasks.

This provided us with a wealth of data about how participants felt about the tasks, as well as measures of their performance. However, in this case, performance measures were not particularly informative because we expected all participants to perform at the same level—namely, 80% accuracy. What was much more interesting and critical as a behavioural measure was the task participants chose to undertake. This choice revealed insights into their trade-offs between cognitive effort and the time spent on the task.

The results we collected are organised in the table provided to you. In the first column, you’ll see the variable of interest, such as “Need for Cognition” (NFC for short), along with several different rating scales that you can reference in the text.

The table also shows the choices participants made at each level. You’ll recall that participants could make a free choice up to three times. We measured their first choice (or first level), their choice in the second round (or second level), and their choice in the third round. This allowed us to track which task difficulty levels they selected during each of these three choice rounds. We have here a column denoted as ‘N’, which indicates the number of participants per variable, and that’s already interesting. If you specifically focus on these three different variables—first level, second level, and third level—you will notice that all our tested participants, the number of which is 160, made a choice in this first round of choices. You will remember that only those participants who failed to perform at the expected performance criterion—namely, 80% correct answers—were provided with a second opportunity to make a choice, or second level. Here, you see that out of those 160 participants, only 38 failed to perform at the expected level, which is kind of encouraging. It tells us that most of the participants could gauge their ability to do the task accurately.

Finally, out of those 38 participants, only 7 failed to perform in that repeated main testing session at the level of the expected performance criterion, and they then had to engage in the main task for the third time. After the third time, the experiment ended, so we don’t really know how many of these 7 actually met the criterion or whether there were any people who failed to meet the performance criterion.

Now, this column, ‘Mean’, tells us something about the grand average values for each of the variables across participants. Again, you can inspect the grand average means for different rating scales, but just to focus on these three choices, we see that, on average, at the first level, free-choice participants chose between the 1-back and 2-back tasks because the mean is 1.79.

So, not too many people went for the most difficult 3-back task. Here, you have another measure of central tendency, namely the median. I urge you to check out our statistics textbooks to refresh your knowledge about the median, as well as some measures of the variability of these variables across participants, expressed as standard deviation, as well as minimum and maximum possible values.

The key table for your research report will be the correlation matrix.

The correlation matrix tells us something about correlations between different scales or different measured variables and participants’ choices.

In addition, we also have pairwise correlations within different scales. For example, here we see—perhaps intuitively—that high scores on ‘Need for Cognition’ correlate statistically significantly and negatively with ‘Boredom Proneness’. From those items that I have read out loud before, that’s kind of expected because it seems that people who have a high need for cognition also don’t tend to get bored very easily.

Ultimately, what you would want to investigate will be correlations between the choices participants made in terms of cognitive demands in their first-level choice and these different rating scales. What we are seeing here is that ‘Need for Cognition’ was positively correlated with the first-level choice, suggesting that people with a higher need for cognition tended to choose more cognitively demanding tasks.  And you will remember that those four hypotheses we suggested to you each focused on a relationship between people’s three choices in terms of cognitive demands and these different rating scales.

Here are those four hypotheses once again. Hypothesis one was that participants high in the need for cognition will select the harder task. To unpack this a little, for this particular hypothesis, you will need to operationalise or create a specific prediction. How would this hypothesis be reflected in the correlation pattern between the need for cognition and participants’ choices? Similarly, you need to do this for each of the four hypotheses, and you will also be expected to do so if you come up with your own hypothesis.

Finally, we also provide some pointers on how to write a good discussion, which you can see by consulting this document.

And that is a rundown of what is expected of you in Assignment 2B.

In this research report, you will need to demonstrate a critical evaluation of the literature; rather than just a summary, evaluation and/or interpretation of your results in relation to results reported in the relevant literature.

Use the document Assignment 2B Major report (DOCX 4 MB) Download Assignment 2B Major report (DOCX 4 MB)to write your report.

You are required to write the introduction, method, results and discussion sections, along with an abstract and title page. These sections are indicated in blue text in the document.

The key information for the method and results have been provided for you, but you will need to organise this information according to APA format.

A submission checklist has been included at the beginning of the document for you to refer to.

Note: The word count for this assignment includes the text of the introduction, method, results and discussion. It does not include the title page, references, Figure or Table captions, or abstract.