Writer's block, an owner's guide: Cognitive priming

I am writing a long, long critique of someone else’s doctoral dissertation about writer’s block (it’s surprising how many of those there are). It’s a startlingly boring task but it’s also a mandatory preliminary to writing my own dissertation. And is certainly giving me some useful knowledge for that task.

I was careful to choose a dissertation that’s in my own subject area and uses an interesting research method. But the more I critique it the more I find wrong with it, and the less I believe that its research findings are of any value. So that could be kinda dispiriting if I chose.

Is there really anything wrong with it, or does being in the position of a critic make me negative-minded? There’s a whole conversation we could have here about priming and about the Zimbardo prison experiment. But shall we both leave this and get back to our writing?

And your response?

Published on August 28, 2006 at 8:46 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/cognitive-priming.html