Paper 1 Instructions: The first unit of the course is devoted to learning about the science of psychology – how research is conducted, how psychology developed as a science, and how we study the physical nature of the brain and body’s communication systems. As a means of demonstrating what you have learned, you will describe a hypothetical experiment designed to demonstrate the functioning of one particular part of the brain. You will describe this hypothetical study, what its historical grounding is, and how the research would be conducted. Note that you aren’t actually going to be conducting this research, so you should feel free to propose studies which would be difficult for us to actually run
In particular: Your paper should discuss most or all of the following points. Note that your paper should be in long-form not bullet points. You should separate your paper into three sections:
1) Introduction. Here you should talk about what you want to study, and you should describe the historical schools of thought that have relevance for your work. Key parts of this section:
a) description of your topic of interest and
b) connections to historical schools of thought. For instance, if you want to study what part of the brain is active when people lie vs. tell the truth, you might comment about the role of cognitive psychology, social psychology, and cultural psychology
2) Experiment Description. Here you should explain what your hypothetical study would do to investigate your topic of interest. Be thorough and detailed – we learned a lot about how studies are conducted, how we sample people, how they are assigned to conditions, how we structure a study, and how we ensure we’re measuring causation and not just correlation. Key parts of this section:
a) thorough description of a proposed study
,b) correct usage of experiment vocabulary that we have covered in class appropriate design and consideration of potential biases and ethical issues. For instance, in my study about people lying, I would have everyone say sentences to a research partner in the experiment, and for half of the people those sentences would be lies and the other half would tell the truth. I’d use an FMRI to measure the brain while they were saying their sentences. I would talk about some potential ethical issues, and be sure to talk about sampling, demand characteristics, and other relevant topics.
3) Assumptions about Results. Obviously we are NOT conducting these experiments. However, based on your understanding of the brain, neuron structure, and the other topics we’ve covered in class, you should be able to make a reasonable guess about how your study might turn out. Do that here, and make sure you draw connections to what we’ve learned in class. Key parts of this section:
a) appropriate assumptions about the results of the hypothetical study,
b) appropriate descriptions of the function of relevant brain regions/neurons/neurotransmitters. For instance, in my lying experiment, I would expect that certain verbal areas of the brain would be active in both conditions but that areas of the prefrontal cortex that involve more complex thought and decision-making might be active for lies but not truths. I would explain the function of these areas and why I thought this might be my result.