There are four things which must be fulfilled in the assignment. And markers will evaluate them, please pay attention on it. You can choose the topic, but the topic should about Psychology. - Identify, with reference to a one well-cited article, one open question from an area in psychology of your choice

There are four things which must be fulfilled in the assignment. And markers will evaluate them, please pay attention on it. You can choose the topic, but the topic should about Psychology. - Identify, with reference to a one well-cited article, one open question from an area in psychology of your choice - Review approx 20 citing articles to identify key gaps in knowledge to be filled before your question could be fully answered - Consider whether a biologically accurate simulation of the brain could, in principle, be used to address those gaps in knowledge - Explain precisely how an accurate simulation could help us address those gaps and/or explain clearly why an alternative approach would be more appropriate Also, the attached pdf file in the additional file includes the breakdown of the assignment, which must be followed. How to do well on PSY159 Assignment 2: Literature Review For assignment 2, you have been asked to conduct a literature review, and to address the following question: To what extent could an accurate simulation of the brain help us to answer an open psychological question? The question is deliberately broad, providing students with the opportunity to pull together the various critical skills that have been developed through PSY159 without the constraints of tying the topic to a specific sub-discipline within psychology. The broadness of the question may be daunting for some, so to supplement the semester 2 lectures the following notes are written to help clarify the objectives and intended learning outcomes of the assignment. The aim of assignment 2 The aim of PSY159 assignment 2 is to give you the opportunity to explore a topic of interest in psychological science by conducting a focussed review of the literature. To this end you are expected to identify an open research topic in psychological science, to investigate the current state of understanding about that topic by consulting the current literature, to identify from the literature the important lines of scientific inquiry that could lead to progress on this topic, and to consider the extent to which a perfect neuroscientific description of the phenomenon could enable progress to be made. Broadly speaking, you are likely to conclude either that a more complete neuroscientific description of the phenomenon would lead to progress, or that an alternative approach would lead to more rapid progress, e.g., by identifying a novel behavioural/cognitive/developmental/social experiment or series of experiments that could help shed light on your topic. What are you being asked to do? The question has been designed to give you freedom to pursue your specific interests within psychology, but also to impose on all reviews a specific focus through the consideration of brain simulation. Imposing this focus on all of the reviews makes the task more challenging, but it also makes it more interesting, pushing you to think outside of your chosen field about the merits of different approaches to psychological research. Specifically, you are being pushed to think, through the lens of brain simulation, about what in principle psychologists might gain through the pursuit of a perfect neurobiological description of neural and/or mental processes. There is no correct answer! On one hand, neuroscience would not exist as a scientific discipline were there not significant value in describing psychological phenomena in neurobiological terms, i.e., creating neuroscientific models of the brain. On the other hand, psychology encompasses a much broader set of scientific approaches than pure neuroscience and, depending on your chosen topic, behavioural, clinical, social, cognitive experimental approaches etc may allow for insights that are more difficult to establish in purely neurobiological terms. Based on your review of the literature you are therefore expected to reach an informed decision on whether a purely neuroscientific description of the phenomenon represents the most promising next steps for understanding your chosen phenomenon or not. Perhaps in order to make progress on your topic, scientists could benefit from collecting more information about its neural bases, in which case you would be expected to argue that a brain simulation would be useful and in this case you are expected to explain what specific aspects of such a neuroscientific description would be useful and why - can you identify the specific neural substrates involved? Or perhaps you can instead identify the crucial next behavioural/cognitive/social/developmental experiment that would plug existing gaps in our understanding, and explain how this could lead to more rapid progress than building a detailed picture of only the neurobiological factors - can you outline the crucial experiment that needs to be carried out? As there is no correct answer, there is also no wrong answer! Your assignment will not be marked down for ‘getting it wrong’. Your assignment will be marked in terms of whether the conclusions that you draw are well grounded in the literature you review, the evidence that you consider, and the critical skills that you apply in interpreting that evidence. Choosing a topic Try not to overcomplicate things! For all intents and purposes, the same assignment could have been phrased as follows: ‘Choose a topic in psychology that interests you, conduct a literature review on this topic looking for gaps in existing knowledge, and explain whether neuroscience or an alternative psychological approach would represent the best way to make progress’. You are not expected to become an expert on modelling - the question is about what in principle can be explained by neuroscience (as represented by an idealised entire brain simulation) rather than about the details of specific models or modelling projects. There are no limits on the choice of psychological phenonomena that could enable you to produce a good review. However, choosing the topic carefully is an important part of planning the assignment, because the choice of topic places constraints on the literature you will encounter and thus the conclusions you will reach. If you are choosing a topic with a strong history of neuroscientific progress you are more likely to conclude that an accurate simulation of the brain would be useful. If you are choosing a topic where influences external to the brain, for example social interactions between people or embodiment are key, then creating a ‘brain-in-a-jar’ model is less likely to be the most direct route to progress. Consider two extreme examples. If you choose a topic such as ‘the effects of cannabis on learning’, and your review of the literature reveals that important progress is being made in understanding the effects of cannabis on electro-chemical communication between particular neurons by the action of specific receptors in distinct brain regions, then you may well conclude that a simulation of these processes would be helpful to consolidate what is already known and to help build new theories. However, if you choose a topic such as ‘attitudes towards using environmentally friendly technologies’, which likely involves a stronger influence of social interaction and societal factors than neural processes, then you are more likely to conclude that a simulation of the brain would be less useful. For the first example you should interrogate the literature to identify specifically how a simulation of the brain could be used to make progress (if you conclude that it could), e.g., by identifying how gaps in the literature might be addressed with an improved model. For the second, you should consider what contribution, if any, neuroscience has made to the understanding of attitudes, and then present specific examples of how alternative scientific methods and approaches may lead to more rapid progress than neuroscience. Marking criteria Your literature review should be a maximum of 1500 words, excluding the title, references, and any (optional) section headings. This is not very many words, so you will have to think carefully about structuring your text, and you will need to be selective about which studies you include. Your assignment will be marked against the following criteria, which means that your marker will have a version of the following list in front of them when they evaluate your assignment: - Identify, with reference to a one well-cited article, one open question from an area in psychology of your choice - Review approx 20 citing articles to identify key gaps in knowledge to be filled before your question could be fully answered - Consider whether a biologically accurate simulation of the brain could, in principle, be used to address those gaps in knowledge - Explain precisely how an accurate simulation could help us address those gaps and/or explain clearly why an alternative approach would be more appropriate Breakdown of the assignment Whether you end up advocating a neuroscientific perspective or not, your literature review should address the following key points, and these points can be used to impose an appropriate structure on your assignment: 1. Identify a specific topic in psychological science as the focus of your review. Clearly identify a journal article that makes an important contribution to understanding your chosen topic and explain its main findings and/or the theoretical insights that the study affords. Your focus article should be ‘well cited’, which for me means that the article should have been cited by at least ten other journal articles, but you should use your judgement on this - if the article you choose to focus on has been cited by nine articles but it was only published last year, then its a safe bet that it is an important enough article to focus on. Your focus article may describe empirical work (i.e., experiments), it may be a review or a meta-analysis, or it may be a theoretical paper. As long as it is a peer-reviewed journal that provides a clear starting point for your review of the literature there are no restrictions. However, be aware that the more articles that have cited your focus article the better, because a highly cited study is more likely to have had an influence on the field and help you identify relevant studies around which you can build a review. 2. Conduct a literature review in order to determine the state of the art in the field, aiming to identify 10-20 key articles that can be presented together in a clear narrative. The articles you choose to include do not have to cite your focus article, as long as each article you cite clearly adds to the narrative. However, at least some of the articles you cite are expected to cite your focus article (else you should question why you chose to focus on it in the first place!). Build a narrative for the review around these articles, which demonstrates both the breadth of your review and your depth of understanding of the topic. Plan your review by first collecting articles around bullet points making sure you cover each of the criteria in this list, then re-arrange the bullet points in draft format so that the points you want to develop with respect to each article flow coherently from one to the next. 3. Demonstrate the breadth of literature that you have considered in your review by citing key studies that cover a range of scientific approaches that have been used to tackle questions around your chosen topic, and structure these citations logically to build a picture of the current state of the knowledge in the field. For example you might choose to include articles that tackle the topic using different methodologies (experiments, models, case studies, imaging etc.) or that tackle the topic from different theoretical backgrounds. You might find that completing an abstract coding table (see tutorial 6) and grouping studies by gaps, rationale, etc. will help you identify common themes that will help you impose structure. Once you have identified the themes that can be used to link multiple studies together, e.g., grouping studies together methodologically, theoretically, chronologically, or in terms of brain structures etc., then revisit your plan to make sure that the overall structure still reflects a clear narrative. 4. Demonstrate your depth of understanding of the topic by focussing on the details of two or three key studies/articles (in addition to your focus article), and if possible identify for each how a future study could be designed to address issues with their designs and/or the authors’ interpretations of the data, for example by identifying missing control conditions or methodological limitations. Think about the semester 2 lectures on the limitations of different types of scientific model, and your readings of the Stanovich text. Most importantly, consider the level of scrutiny that your tutor has been encouraging you to apply to the articles tackled through your journal club reading sessions, and aim to demonstrate your ability to apply similar levels of scrutiny to your independent readings of these two or three papers. This section should constitute the bulk of your review, because reviews that demonstrate excellent depth of understanding (in addition to the other criteria) are likely to be given first class marks, as explained below. 5. Answer the question directly. Identify the applications of and/or potential limitations to constructing a detailed neuroscientific model of the phenomenon, and either explain how a model could facilitate progress or explain with reference to the studies considered under point 4 how progress could be made by other lines of scientific inquiry. Avoid drawing vague conclusions such as ‘further studies are needed’, but instead explain with direct reference to the question specifically how the next study/experiment/model should be designed. What makes a good literature review? Broadly speaking, doing a good job of point 1 and 2 in the breakdown above will get you a passing grade. Additionally, doing a good job of point 3 will move you into 2ii territory. Additionally, doing a good job of point 5 (i.e., tailoring your review to the question) will take your assignment into 2i territory. Reviews that will stand out for first class marks are likely to do so mainly with additional merit with respect to point 4. Consider this when you plan your review. Finally, it is worth considering what the point of a literature review is in more general terms. Why do scientists publish literature reviews? One main purpose of conducting a literature review is to bring you and your audience up to speed on what is already known about a specific topic. On top of this, a good literature review will help the reader to appreciate the various lines of inquiry (theoretical and methodological) that have lead to advances in the field. Excellent reviews, as you will no doubt recognise from reading good reviews yourself, will clearly identify gaps in existing knowledge and new research directions. Reviewing the literature to identify areas in which progress can be made is a valuable part of the scientific process.