Questions about doing literature searches

I don't have access to Scopus or Web of Science, so I mostly just use Google Scholar.

I usually recognize review articles simply by their titles, which are usually shorter and broader than the titles of experimental papers. Or, I find a handbook / companion / edited volume on the field and look for relevant review articles within.

Let's use cognitive skill acquisition as our example. John located a decent review article from 1996. Since review articles often cite earlier reviews, I checked Google scholar for articles citing that paper from the past 5 years. When scanning through the titles in the results page, I try to guess at which papers are likely to be or to cite recent review articles on the topic.

The first one that looks promising is the third result (when I did the search): Neural and cognitive plasticity: from maps to minds (2008). The first sentence of the abstract mentions learning cognitive skills, so that's promising. The paper begins:

Intellectual capacity varies as a function of species, age, and individual... Behaviorally, this variability is evidenced by differences in the capacity to learn a cognitive skill, the rate at which the skill is learned, and the highest performance levels that can be achieved (Ackerman & Cianciolo, 2000; Harlow, 1959; Li et al., 2004).

The first and third citations are recent enough that they might be cited by a recent review article on cognitive skills learning, since such an article might presumably point out that there are individual diferences in the capacity to learn cognitive skills.

Two paragraphs later I read:

In the present article, I attempt to provide an integrative, brain based framework for investigating and understanding variability in cognitive plasticity in humans and other animals by building on classic theories of learning and intelligence.

So this paper isn't particularly likely to contain what I want by itself, but I skim the list of headings anyway. About 10 pages down I hit the heading 'Explanations of Variability in Intellectual Capacity: Past and Present'. Some relevant studies might be cited here, so I skim through that section a bit more slowly. Most of the citations are bout neural plasticity. A few studies on cognitive skills learning in, for example, older adults are cited, but they're from the mid-90s. I decide I may look at this paper more closely later, but for right now I have more promising leads.

I look up Ackerman & Cianciolo (2000) and Li et al. (2004) on Google scholar.

In the first paper, the authors use not just the term "skill learning" but also "skill acquisition" and "asymptotic performance", which may be additional useful search terms. The results of experiment one showed mild cognitive skill acquisition with practice, using the Kanfer-Ackerman Air Traffic Controller Task. If that's a standard test for cognitive skill acquisition, it may be a useful search term. The other two experiments reported in the paper are less directly concerned with skill acquisition.

In the second paper, under the section 'Experimental Cognitive Tasks', the authors name several cognitive skills: 'visual search', 'response competition', long-term and short-term 'memory search', and 'choice reactions'. These may be useful keyword searches later. Other than that, a quick skim of the paper doesn't suggest much immediate usefulness.

I use Google scholar to check for papers from the past four years that cite Ackerman & Cianciolo (2000). The first result is, again, 'Neural and cognitive plasticity: From maps to minds'. The second result looks promising: Exercising your brain: A review of human brain plasticity and training-induced learning (2008).

That process took me about 15 minutes. I won't continue the story at this point, but hopefully this gives some clarity to the processes I use, anyway. We can now check:

• The promising review article of 'training-induced learning' from 2008.
• Other recent papers that cite Ackermann & Cianciolo (2000).
• Recent papers that cite Li et al. (2004).
• Recent papers that cite 'Neural and cognitive plasticity: from maps to minds' (2008).
• Recent papers that mention "cognitive skill learning", "cognitive skills learning", "cognitive skill acquisition", "cognitive skills acquisition", "asymptotic performance", "Kanfer-Ackerman Air Traffic Controller Task", "visual search", "response competition", "memory search", or "choice reactions".
• Recent papers that mention "cognitive skill" or "cognitive skills" or "cognitive ability" or "cognitive abilities", especially when coupled with the search term "learning" or "acquistion".

Often, you may also be aware of useful leads because of past research. For example my recent posts on rationality skills cite some studies on teachable rationality skills.

I don't follow your first paragraph. Could you point to the search engines at ISU and WUStL?

I have access through the university of washington. However I've had bad luck with their search functionality. Sometimes it doesn't even find a paper when I give it a direct title. Perhaps I could use a different school's search, though.

I'll have to try web of science, is it better than google scholar's citation search?