PSY10007 Brain and Behaviour
Assignment 1A: Article analysis
Word limit: Maximum 400 words (please refer to Assignment details for specific guidance on the word count)
Weighting: 5%
Due date: 5pm AEST Monday 5 August 2024 (Week 5)
After you have read this information, head over to the Assignment 1A Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.
Assignment overview
Assignment 1A: Article analysis and Assignment 1B: Essay ask you to consider the following topic:
How do sleep problems affect thought, memory, and emotions?
In this assignment, you will use the provided resources and the skills you have developed in the activities and discussion in Weeks 1, 2, and 3 to locate, analyse and summarise articles related to the assignment topics. This assignment requires you to:
Complete an article analysis on one article from the starter references.
Locate two additional references that are relevant to the essay topic through the library.
The purpose of the task is to assist you with developing skills in locating and summarising research articles. You should write approximately 300 words for the article analysis, not inclusive of the references. The resources and feedback from this assignment directly relate to Assignment 1B: Essay.
This assignment assesses unit learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Assignment details
This assignment is supported by a range of activities including:
1.4 Activity: Understanding your essay topic
2.4 Activity: Finding, using and referencing journals
3.4 Activity: Evaluating resources.
You will need to read through the two starter references and find an additional two articles that you can use to inform your response to the essay topic. Be critical in your selection—choosing articles that make great proposals that you can use in your essay response will save you time as you prepare for Assignment 1B in later weeks. The following steps will help you get started on this assignment.
Step 1: Understand the topic and aim
The essay topic is as follows: How do sleep problems affect thought, memory, and emotions?
We spend approximately one-third of our life asleep and yet rarely think about how important it is to our overall wellbeing. Many restorative and protective processes occur during sleep, so it is not surprising that lack of sleep, or even normal length but poor-quality sleep, can have a negative impact on our wellbeing. Poor concentration, a ‘foggy’ mind, and an inability to control emotions are common consequences of compromised sleep. In chronic cases, where sleep problems occur consistently over long periods of time (e.g. insomnia), there can even be a greater risk of developing a mental illness. Despite knowing about the negative consequences of compromised sleep for many years, we are only just starting to understand some of the mechanisms that might explain these associations.
You are required to find literature to support your discussion of the evidence regarding sleep problems and their effect on thought, memory, and emotions.
Step 2: Find your articles for analysis
To get started on your research, you might want to refer to the Researching your assignmentLinks to an external site. section in the Student Hub. You can additionally refer to 1.4 Activity: Understanding your essay topic, as it will introduce you to your essay topic and assist you in identifying key search terms that you can use in your library search. You will learn how to complete these searches as part of 2.4 Activity: Finding, using and referencing journals and 3.4 Activity: Evaluating resources.
You may also like to look ahead at Week 6: Consciousness, sleep and dreams as it relates to your essay topic. This will give you a further introduction to the topic and a couple of key readings to get you started on this assignment.
Important: You must find two articles that are not already presented as a starting reference.
Starting references
You must locate and read the following journal articles:
Title: Losing control: Sleep deprivation impairs the suppression of unwanted thoughts
Authors: Marcus Harrington, Jennifer Ashton, Subbulakshmi Sankarasubramanian, Michael Anderson, and Scott Cairney
Publication Details: Clinical Psychological Science, 2021, Vol. 9, pp. 97–113 (Please note that are two versions of this article available through Swinburne LibraryLinks to an external site.. You need to read the one published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science).
Title: Emotional memory processing is influenced by sleep quality
Authors: Daniel Tempesta, Luigi De Gennaro, Vincenzo Natale, and Michele Ferrara
Publication Details: Sleep Medicine, 2015, Vol. 16, pp. 862–870.
Note that these references are not in APA format. You are required to correctly format references in your essay’s reference list.
Step 3: Get started on your analysis
Download the PSY10007 Assignment 1A Article analysis framework (DOC 58 KB) Download PSY10007 Assignment 1A Article analysis framework (DOC 58 KB)template. This guide provides some key questions to consider how valuable each of the articles will be in supporting your essay response. You should aim for approximately 300 words for your article analysis.
If you have selected your articles carefully, you will be able to incorporate parts of your analyses into the body of your essay in Assignment 1B.
Note: The word count is based only on the words you contribute to the assignment through the development of the article analysis and the relevance of the article to the essay topic. Any words that form part of the template used for this assignment are not included in the word count.
Word count
The word count for this assignment is 400 words maximum. The following is a suggested breakdown of this word count for each section of the assignment.
Starter article: 300 words
Additional article 1: 50 words
Additional article 2: 50 words.