This paper is your chance to investigate and learn about the biopsychological perspectives of some of your own everyday experiences. Your paper should contain a particular event related to a specific time of day: morning, afternoon, evening, or night. Such events could reflect aspects of behavior, emotion, cognition, or a psychological condition or experience. Within the body of each paper, you’ll be asked to fulfill certain requirements to demonstrate your understanding of the event in relation to biopsychology. Note that I include an expected page length minimums for various sections of the paper. However, there is no penalty for having longer sections than what is listed in this outline. The important factor is successfully meeting the requirements, clearly and accurately providing your information to demonstrate your knowledge gained from researching the event. Having said that, I find typical papers are usually between 6-10 pages in total length (when using 11 size font – 1.5 spacing).
1. Title: You’ll need to include a title on each entry, specifying the time of day for the entry (i.e. morning, afternoon, evening, night) and the specific event chosen.
2. Reasoning: Next, you’ll need to include an explanation of why you chose to investigate the behavior. This should include putting the specific event into context for the reader. The reasoning portion is expected to be a minimum of 1-2 paragraphs.
3. Research Perspectives: After that, you’ll be required to provide information on what researchers know about your chosen event based on two of the perspectives (e.g. functional, evolutionary, or ontogenetic) we discussed in the lectures. One of these must be the cyto-architectonic perspective. This section will require a minimum of 4 references, with one representation from either the somatic or the behavioral approaches clearly outlined. In other words, I would expect you to specifically state what are the independent and dependent variables in the study and why it would be considered a somatic or behavioral approach. The research perspectives portion is expected to be at least 2 pages in length.
4. Research Methods: For this next portion of the entry, you’ll need to select two research methods (i.e. autopsy, modern imaging, histology, lesion studies, psychophysiological procedures, etc.) from the lectures. For each method, locate one good peer reviewed study that uses an aspect of that method to investigate your event (for example, an MRI study for the modern imagining methodology). Now, clearly outline the goal of this study, what they did, who were the participants, and how their results fit within the context of your event. Again, please remember you are picking one significant paper to outline for EACH of the research methods you’ve chosen. The research methods portion is expected to be a minimum of 1.5 pages.
5. Reflection: Finally, you’ll be asked to reflect on your findings. This should include a discussion of how the results of your examination of the event relate to your own personal experiences of the event. In other words, make sure to tie it back to specific experiences from your event! It should also include a discussion of the implications of your findings, such as potential flaws/promises/meanings gleaned from the results as well as directions for future research. The reflection section is expected to be a minimum of 2 paragraphs in length.