Riley Bender, 5363924

Writing 2: WP1 Reflective Essay

For this assignment I decided to transform a formal, scholarly article into a powerpoint

presentation. I chose to find a research article on a topic that interests me, so therefore, as a

Psychology major, I wanted to find a study that appealed to a specific psychological topic that I

am curious about. I found the article: “In-Group Ostracism Increases High-Fidelity Imitation in

Early Childhood,” which is related to concepts I have learned in my Developmental and Social

Psychology courses. A concept that I have always found interesting is called the “Social

Learning Theory” which is the theory that describes how we learn social behavior by observing

or imitating and by being rewarded or punished. In this case, the reward is being included within

the social group. Therefore, this study examined imitation being used as a reinclusion tactic. Due

to this, understanding the article and summarizing it was a simple task for me because it was a

concept that grasped my attention easily.

The main challenge I had was identifying my target audience for my work. The task I was

assigned was to convert the research article into any non-academic genre. Scholarly articles have

such a wide range of readers. For this work in particular, I considered all of the different people

that would be considered an appropriate audience. Some of these being psychology students,

psychologists in general, parents, or just people interested in the topic. In my opinion, the

audience that I believed would benefit the most from a translated version of the information

presented in this article would be other psychologists who are conducting research on a related

subject matter. Therefore, I would base my genre on this intended audience.

Kerry Dirk’s article, “Navigating Genres,” speaks about how writers know which genre

to use according to the social situation they are in. Therefore, in the case of a research article,
almost everyone knows that the most common way the information found in the study will be

presented is in the form of a scholarly article. Most of the time when reading other studies as

research, psychologists are only really looking for certain key factors within the article, a main

one of these being the overall results of the study. I wanted to convert the research paper into a

version that was straightforward and pleasant to read for my intended audience of researchers.

Although I enjoyed reading the article myself, a long paper like that is often overwhelming for

many people. Despite this, I thought that the study had a lot of interesting information and knew

people would be interested in what it had to say, if only it was presented in a less daunting

manner. When contemplating the various genres I could transform the article into, I found it

quite difficult. This was because a research study is not something that is typically seen in any

other form but a scholarly article. I believed that it would be quite a challenge to transform a

psychological study into a poem, letter, or newspaper article. Then I thought about the elements

that comprise a powerpoint. What came to mind were short, bulleted sentences that were clear,

and to the point. In school, I always found myself paying more attention and understanding the

material better when my teacher presented the class with a powerpoint in which the screen was

not filled with thousands of words, but instead, highlighted the key points in which they were

trying to make. As I thought this over, I realized that was exactly what I wanted to achieve in my

translation of this scholarly article. For that reason, I thought that making a powerpoint

presentation based on a scholarly article would be a beneficial translation for psychologists who

are conducting research that is similar to this specific aspect of the social learning theory.

Oftentimes, researchers present their work to their colleagues in conferences for their specific

psychological field. Therefore, different psychologists can use information they found in their

colleague’s studies to inspire their own work or back up their hypotheses.

 Translating such a large amount of information into small sentences was not going to be

an easy task, and I knew this. In order to do this I had to really contemplate the purpose of the

article itself. In its entirety, it was trying to test the hypothesis that children use high-fidelity

imitation (reproduction of an action with little to no difference from the original) as a reinclusion

behavior as a result of being excluded by members of a group they belong to. The article was

successful in proving this hypothesis right by organizing itself in such a way that the purpose,

procedure, and results were made very distinct. They started the article by explaining the topic in

which they were exploring and describing previous research on the matter along with what the

findings of those studies were. They then described their method they used within their research

starting with the participants they gathered and what they told them. They continued to recount

the procedure and the activity they had the children participate in which was a virtual game they

created called, “Cyberball.” The researchers interpreted the participant’s behavior during the

game searching for signs of anxiety or frustration. Lastly, they had the children watch a video of

a member of their group or the opposing group performing a simple task with random objects.

When the objects were placed in front of the participants afterwards, the researchers examined

how the children interacted with them. The article then presents the audience with the results of

the article which favorably matched their predictions. Consequently, the purpose of the article

was achieved.

When adapting this information into my powerpoint presentation, I made sure to retain

the components that I believed were essential for psychologists to understand and be able to

utilize for their own work. I was able to decipher what I believed to be crucial information by

imagining I was the one planning on conducting research on a related matter to this study. If I

was using this article as inspiration or evidence for my hypotheses, the information that would be
important to understand would be the researcher’s hypothesis, how they tested this hypothesis

(i.e. the procedure and methods the researcher’s used), and ultimately the results of their

experiment. I knew this was important because it was also a concept I learned from reading

Dirk’s article. He taught me that genres demand way more than just following the simple rules.

There are many more factors to be applied. I must not only consider the genre I am translating

my work into, but also my intended audience and the purpose of the work altogether (Dirk,

2010). Meaning, I must make sure the design of my project makes it clear that it falls under the

genre of a powerpoint presentation, but also adjust my design so it would be appropriate to

present in front of a group of psychologists. For instance, a presentation made for an elementary

english class is going to look a lot different than a presentation that would be presented at a

psychology conference. Therefore, although the powerpoint presentation appears different, it

should still convey the overall purpose of the study. Considering the fact that the study had very

specific steps within its procedure it was fairly easy to cut down the article into just the

fundamental aspects. In my opinion, I do not believe that anything was “lost in translation,”

because although there were many small parts of the article I did not touch on in my

presentation, the ideas and findings of the article were still portrayed in my translation. The

elements of the article (and study in general) that I decided to include in the presentation were

what I believe to be the most important. The entire objective of my translation was to highlight

the key factors. For that reason, although I had to cut the article down quite a bit, I was

successful in my goal. Hopefully, when my intended audience views by powerpoint, they are

able to understand the entire study and not get lost in all the words and details.
 Works Cited

Watson-Jones, Rachel E. et al. “In-Group Ostracism Increases High-Fidelity Imitation in Early

Childhood.” Psychological Science 27 (2016): 34 - 42.

Kerry Dirk. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, Parlor Press

(2010)