February 14, 2018
Psych professor writes simple science — by writing for kids
Ashleigh Maxcey, a visiting associate professor in the Department of Psychology, has co-authored 15 peer-review publications and penned an additional eight more on her own, but she still encounters one of the biggest problems when it comes to communicating her research: writing simply. This past summer, Maxcey challenged students in her undergraduate cognitive psychology class at Vanderbilt University to write a research paper in the style of the journal Frontiers for Young Minds, an open-access scientific journal edited by and for children. One of her student’s articles, “A Face Scavenger Hunt: Why We See Faces in Objects without Faces,” was published in the journal this past December.
