Final project

PSY 511.003

Published

February 23, 2024

Project proposal

Please describe your plan for your final project in a concise, 1-2 page proposal. Your proposal should describe the form of your project, the topic or topics to be covered, how the project contributes to your scholarly or training goals, and highlight and cite no more than five (5) sources you intend to draw upon.

Please submit the proposal as a Microsoft Word (.docx) formatted document.

The proposal is due on Thursday, February 29, 2024

Project options

BBS-style critical review

Write a critical review in the style of a Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) commentary. The target of your review could be a published article in BBS or an article published in another journal. Examine some existing BBS papers in your areas of interest to see how authors choose to structure their commentaries. Typically, a BBS commentary is restricted to 1,000 words, but you have latitude to write up to 2,500 words.

Popular science piece

Choose a method, a nervous system structure, neurotransmitter or hormone, or a psychological state, and write a “what do we know about” style of piece targeted at the general, science-literate public. Consult The New York Times, Scientific American, The New Scientist, or The Economist for illustrative examples of the structure and style of the piece. Your piece should be 1,500-2,500 words, and could include illustrations you create, or videos or figures you find (and cite sources for) on the internet. If you choose a psychological state or behavior, please incorporate a biological perspective in some meaningful way. If you want to create a website for your content using Quarto or a similar tool, that is also acceptable.

Research proposal

Propose a research study that incorporates one or more biological measures and some well-defined behavior or set of behaviors or psychological states. Make sure to highlight how biological measures inform and enrich our understanding about the behaviors or psychological states. Your proposal can be up 1,500-2,500 words.

Do’s

Always put your last name and first name in the file name of all documents you submit. For example, gilmore-rick-psy-511-2024-final-paper.docx works fine.
Submit your paper as a MS Word document using Canvas.
Include a cover page and title. Make sure to add page numbers.
Unpack and define all acronyms when you first mention them. Define or explain technical terms and concepts.
Include all end-of-paper citations in a format that is convenient to you and easy to extract from your reference manager.
Include author-date citations in the text.
Use double-spacing.
Run spell-check on your paper before you submit. I also suggest reading your paper out loud as a way to catch run-on sentences, awkward phrasing, and odd word choices.