How do sleep problems affect thoughts, memory and emotions
Teaching Period 1, 2022
PSY10007 Brain and Behaviour
Assignment 1B: Essay
Word/time limit: 1500 words (+/- 10%)
Weighting: 30%
Due date: 5pm AEST Monday 9 May 2022 (Week 8)
After you have read this information, head over to the Assignment 1 Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.
Assignment overview
This assignment will help you develop fundamental skills in APA formatting, academic writing, and the critical evaluation of research. The learning materials, activities and discussions provide opportunities to develop the relevant skills and knowledge for completing the essay. For this assignment, you will write an essay that critically reviews the research that relates to the topic outlined in the Assignment details.
This assignment assesses unit learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Assignment details
Essay topic
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 well-being. 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 well-being. 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.
For this essay, you will review the research literature on how compromised sleep (e.g., sleep deprivation, poor quality sleep) affects thought, memory, and emotions. Given the complexity of this topic, you may need to focus on a few key studies to stay within the word limits. You will need to refer to at least four articles in your essay – the two Starting references plus at least two you find independently. You will need to support your argument with credible source material, which you may have found during your literature search for Assignment 1A: Article analysis.
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, & 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 Library. 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, & 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.
The following video was created by psychology lecturer Dr Ben Bullock from Swinburne University and discusses writing critical review essays specifically in relation to this assignment. Please note this video refers to APA 6. Please refer to the most recent updated APA 7 Style for your assignments.
Critical review essay
Swinburne University of Technology
Welcome to this brief introduction on writing academic essays. In Psychology, most essay topics will require you to critically evaluate or critically review a current topic. What does this actually mean? Basically, what we are referring to here is a gathering of arguments from both sides of the debate. Rarely is there just one correct view on a topic. Most topics in Psychology have a range of views or perspectives. The perspective with the strongest argument and the one that is supported by the best evidence is the one that carries the most weight in the debate.
Your job in a critical review essay is to ultimately decide which perspective has the strongest argument and is backed up by the best evidence. Note that evidence from research in Psychology is constantly evolving as new studies employing updated technologies and methods are conducted and reported in the literature. It is important therefore that you seek the most up to date research on which to base your arguments.
When critically evaluating research that is included in your essay, some of the important things to look for include:
The logic of the argument put forward by the researchers. Do their predictions or hypotheses make sense based on the evidence they have reviewed?
If the research is an experiment, are the methods used suitable for the research questions being investigated?
Also, is the sample of participants representative of the population being investigated?
Do the conclusions of the research follow logically from the results the researchers have reported?
Have the researchers acknowledged the limitations of their research and have they suggested alternative ways of researching the topic that may overcome these limitations?
Two other things are important to include when critically evaluating research in the essay. A brief description of the study’s aims, methods and conclusions is required so the reader of your essay can understand what the study was about. You also need to include a comment on how the research contributes to the overall literature on the topic.
Let’s now move on to the structure of an academic essay. What should the final essay look like? Of course, all university assignments are required to have a title page and at the very least includes the title of the essay, your name, your student number and your tutor’s name.
After the title page and starting on a new page is the first proper section of the essay, the introduction. The introduction should consist of one medium to the long paragraph that outlines the general topic of the essay, why it is important to investigate this topic and what you will argue in the body of the essay. Some students find it easier to write this section after they have written the rest of the essay. It does not need a heading.
The next section is the body of the essay. It continues on from the introduction on the same page. This is where you will critically review the existing literature and present your argument. This section is by far the largest of the whole essay, taking up about 75% to 80% of the word limit allowed from the essay. It should consist of several paragraphs and you should avoid using sub-headings in this section. Use topic sentences instead.
Another important thing to remember when writing the body of the essay is that it is far better to comprehensively describe and evaluate a limited number of relevant studies than it is to briefly cover a large number of studies that are only indirectly relevant to the topic being investigated. For each study or article, you review, ask yourself how does this study fit in with the overall essay? And how does it contribute to my argument?
The final section of the essay is the conclusion. This is where you will summarise the main points of your argument and present a final statement of your position on the topic being investigated. Similar to the introduction it consists of one medium to long paragraph and does not need a heading. It just continues on from the body of the essay on the same page. At the end of your essay, you will also need to include a reference list. The reference list starts on a new page and includes all of the references you have used in your essay. Remember to use APA 6th Style for all the references in your reference list.
That’s all for now.
Structure for your essay
Assignment title page (not marked but mandatory for submission)
The title page should include the title (Assignment 1B: Essay), your name, your eLA’s name, and the assignment due date. See figure 5.2 on page 77 in How to write psychology research reports and essays (9th ed.) (Kaufmann & Findlay, 2021) for a template of what your title page should look like.
Introduction
The introductory paragraph should broadly outline the topic, briefly explain why it is an important issue, and outline what you will discuss and/or argue in the essay.
Body
The body of the essay should define key concepts, as well as describe and evaluate the research literature that is relevant to the topic.
You will need to work the research literature into a story or narrative that helps you to present your perspective on the topic in a logical and coherent manner. The following are some questions to help guide you:
What is sleep? How does it contribute to emotional well-being?
What impact does sleep deprivation (e.g., short sleep, early waking) have on thoughts, memory, and emotion?
What impact does poor sleep quality (e.g., disrupted sleep, insomnia) have on thoughts, memory, and emotion?
What parts of the brain are affected by sleep deprivation and poor-quality sleep, and how are these parts of the brain thought to be involved in thoughts, memory, and emotion?
Conclusion
The concluding paragraph is an integrated summary of your major points and a final statement of your understanding of what the research literature has to say on this topic. You should not introduce new material in the conclusion and should avoid citations.
Reference list
The reference list should include all of the research literature you have cited in your essay, listed in alphabetical order by first author’s surname, and presented in correct APA 7th edition style. In order to receive a Distinction or High Distinction for the References criterion of this assignment, you must include at least two of the starter articles used and at least one other found independently.
Supporting resources
You can create an APA formatted reference list using Word. Microsoft Office has provided information about How to automatically format bibliographies in APA (Microsoft, 2021), which you may find useful.
For general information about assignments:
Study resources (Swinburne Online, 2020).
Swinburne APA style guide (Swinburne Online, 2020).
Essay writing guide (Swinburne Online, 2020).
Writing paragraphs (PDF 846 KB).
Linking words and phrases (PDF 69 KB).
The following essays received a HD mark in a previous study period. They are on a different topic, and are not perfect; however, they give you an idea of the approximate standard expected of a HD-level essay:
Structure for your essay
Assignment title page (not marked but mandatory for submission)
The title page should include the title (Assignment 1B: Essay), your name, your eLA’s name, and the assignment due date. See figure 5.2 on page 77 in How to write psychology research reports and essays (9th ed.) (Kaufmann & Findlay, 2021) for a template of what your title page should look like.
Introduction
The introductory paragraph should broadly outline the topic, briefly explain why it is an important issue, and outline what you will discuss and/or argue in the essay.
Body
The body of the essay should define key concepts, as well as describe and evaluate the research literature that is relevant to the topic.
You will need to work the research literature into a story or narrative that helps you to present your perspective on the topic in a logical and coherent manner. The following are some questions to help guide you:
- What is sleep? How does it contribute to emotional well-being?
- What impact does sleep deprivation (e.g., short sleep, early waking) have on thoughts, memory, and emotion?
- What impact does poor sleep quality (e.g., disrupted sleep, insomnia) have on thoughts, memory, and emotion?
- What parts of the brain are affected by sleep deprivation and poor-quality sleep, and how are these parts of the brain thought to be involved in thoughts, memory, and emotion?
Conclusion
The concluding paragraph is an integrated summary of your major points and a final statement of your understanding of what the research literature has to say on this topic. You should not introduce new material in the conclusion and should avoid citations.
Reference list
The reference list should include all of the research literature you have cited in your essay, listed in alphabetical order by first author’s surname, and presented in correct APA 7th edition style. In order to receive a Distinction or High Distinction for the References criterion of this assignment, you must include at least two of the starter articles used and at least one other found independently.
Supporting resources
You can create an APA formatted reference list using Word. Microsoft Office has provided information about How to automatically format bibliographies in APA (Microsoft, 2021), which you may find useful.
For general information about assignments:
- Study resources (Swinburne Online, 2020).
- Swinburne APA style guide (Swinburne Online, 2020).
- Essay writing guide (Swinburne Online, 2020).
- Writing paragraphs (PDF 846 KB).
- Linking words and phrases (PDF 69 KB).
The following essays received a HD mark in a previous study period. They are on a different topic, and are not perfect; however, they give you an idea of the approximate standard expected of a HD-level essay:
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Assignment support
Don’t forget that in addition to your eLAs who provide discipline-specific content advice, you can access the 24/7 draft writing service from Studiosity.
If you need assistance with academic feedback on a draft of your assignment task, see Assignment support: Studiosity.Assessment declaration
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