C
R
IC
O
S
P
ro
vi
d
er
C
o
d
e
0
0
0
9
8
G

PSYC1022 Essay Instructions
Read the following vignette and then follow the essay instructions detailed below:
Peter has been using cocaine for five years. When he first started using cocaine, he only used it
socially at parties every other weekend. However, now he is using cocaine most days, even when he’s
at work or at home by himself. He remembers when he first started using cocaine, the effect was very
pleasant. Right after taking cocaine, he would experience an intense rush of euphoria that made him
feel energized, very sociable, and talkative. He felt like he was the life of the party. Over time, Peter has
found that he needed to use more cocaine to feel the intense euphoria that he did when he first started
using it. Peter’s regular cocaine use is starting to become a burden. He’s spending a lot of money on
cocaine, so he’s trying to go back to using it only socially on the weekends. However, during the week
he’s finding this really difficult because when he doesn’t have cocaine, he craves it. Everything in his
life seems boring and uninteresting without cocaine, and he feels constantly tired. So, rather than
waiting for the weekend, Peter ends up taking cocaine again to feel better.
Instructions
The essay requires you to read the vignette above and identify critical features of cocaine addiction.
You need to:
1. Identify and explain the two associative learning phenomena embedded in the vignette that
explain how cocaine use is established and how it is maintained.
2. Describe the neuropharmacological processes and changes in the dopaminergic system that
underpin the two behaviours identified in part 1 above.
Essay Format
A single, 1200 word essay must be submitted through the Turnitin portal on the PSYC1022
Moodle page by 11:59 pm Sydney time on Monday of Week 4. The essay contributes 45% to your
overall mark in the course.
• The 1200 word limit is very strict. There will be a 5% penalty for a word count of 1201-1250,
plus a further 5% penalty for every 50 words thereafter. Thus, an essay of 2200 words would
receive a mark of 0 (The “10% over rule” does not apply here).
• In-text citations and any subheadings are included in the word count.
• The reference list itself does not form part of the word count, nor does the title, or other
Page 2
peripherals such as your name and student ID number.
• You will not be penalized for going under the word count. However, if you do go under the
word count then you should ensure that you are addressing all the instructions and
providing sufficient detail (see: “Things to consider” below). If you are more than 10% under
it is difficult to provide sufficient detail.
• If you choose to include appendices in your essay then these will be included in the word
count. You should ask yourself if you really need appendices before including them -
information pertinent to answering the question should be included in the main body of the
essay.
• If you choose to include figures or tables within your essay, make sure that the figure
caption contains sufficient information to understand its content. In addition to this, you
should not present new information or arguments in your figure captions that is not
mentioned within the main body of your essay (Figure captions/headings do not contribute
to the word count and are not required to do well).
• Do not include an abstract in your essay.
• Formatting (i.e. document setup parameters such as margins, line spacing, font size & type,
paragraph indents, etc.) and referencing (both in-text citations and the reference list) are to
be done using APA style (as per the APA manual’s 7th edition). See: APA 7th ed. and
https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf. A copy of the manual can be
found in the library. A sample paper with this formatting is provided in the “Assessment 3”
hub.
• It is expected that submissions adhere to the standard format of all academic essays (i.e.
introduction, body, conclusion). It is assumed that students have polished academic essay
writing skills, if not, it is highly recommended that students seek assistance with essay
writing skills prior to submitting this assessment. Poor academic writing skills will negatively
impact the mark achieved in this piece of assessment. For help with academic writing see:
http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/
Submission Guidelines
• Submit a .doc file to the Turnitin link- no PDFs please. Take care when selecting the file to
upload to ensure that it is the correct version and not a draft.
• Late penalties will be applied according to university policy. Unless an extended deadline
has been granted, if an assignment is submitted late, but within five days (120 hours) of the
initial deadline, 5% of the maximum possible mark for that assignment will be deducted for
each day (including weekend days) it is overdue. Students can submit an assessment late,
incurring the late penalty, until the “overdue submission deadline”. The overdue submission
deadline is five days (120 hours) after the initial deadline. Any assessment submitted after
the overdue submission deadline will not be marked and will result in a mark of zero for the
assessment. In determining whether an assignment is overdue, the date it was submitted
online via Turnitin will be used.
• Extended deadlines via Special Consideration or Equitable Learning Plan: If circumstances
outside a student’s control have impacted their ability to submit an assessment before the
initial deadline, they may apply to have the late penalty waived, via Special Consideration
through The Nucleus: Student Hub. If Special Consideration is granted, an extension up to a
maximum of 10 working days past the initial deadline may be provided. If a student is
registered with UNSW Equitable Learning Services (ELS), and an Equitable Learning Plan
Page 3
Plagiarism
• Please familiarize yourself with UNSW’s policy on plagiarism. This is very important. Plagiarism
is a serious academic offence. This course takes all forms (e.g. inappropriate citation and/
or paraphrasing, excessive quoting, copying, collusion, self-plagiarism, etc.) of
plagiarism seriously and action will be taken if plagiarism is identified in your work. For
more information see: https://student.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism.
• Originality reports will not be available to students. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure
that their work is original and free of plagiarism prior to submission. If there are issues with your
originality report you will be contacted by the School of Psychology in due course.
• Please take steps to avoid your marker finding plagiarism in your work. This is a good resource:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/path-avoiding-plagiarising.
Chat GPT and other generative AI tools
Lecturers in the School of Psychology design assessment to help you attain the competencies
prescribed by APAC, the psychology accreditation body that oversees all psychology programs in
Australia. These competencies emphasise psychology as a scientific discipline, research methods,
values and ethics, critical thinking, and scientific communication skills. In the vast majority of cases,
using generative AI tools like chatGPT to complete your assessment will not aid you in gaining these
competencies. In fact, the output from tools like chatGPT is often inaccurate, overly general, and poorly
referenced. As this assessment task involves some planning or creative processes, you are permitted
to use software to generate initial ideas. However, you must develop or edit those ideas to such a
significant extent that what is submitted is your own work, i.e. only occasional AI generated
words or phrases may form part of your final submission. It is a good idea to keep copies of the
initial prompts to show your lecturer if there is any uncertainty about the originality of your
work. If the outputs of generative AI such as ChatGPT form a part of your submission, it will be
regarded as serious academic misconduct and subject to the standard penalties, which may
include 00FL, suspension and exclusion.
Things to consider – What makes a good essay?
(ELP) authorises extensions for assignment submission, you are required to email the
Course Convenor to request the ELP extended deadline adjustment be activated. Under
both of these circumstances an absolute fail deadline applies. Under no circumstances will
an extension be given beyond when marks and feedback on the assessment is provided to
students (10 working days from the initial deadline). Neglecting to submit an assignment by
the absolute fail deadline will result in a mark of 0 for the assignment, unless Special
Consideration has been granted to undertake a supplementary assessment. Please read
page 6 of the Psychology Student Guide for more detailed information about this policy. In
exceptional cases the university may be able to help you with withdrawing from the course.
• Marks and feedback will be returned to students 10 working days from the due date.
• You may choose to address each part of the instructions sequentially or you may take a
more integrated approach. Subheadings are optional.
• Make sure you read these instructions in conjunction with the essay marking guide provided
in Moodle. The essay marking guide explains how marks are distributed across part 1 and 2
Page 4
and the criteria for each component.
• You need to select appropriate literature to cite in your essay (i.e. websites, blogs, etc. are
not considered appropriate sources; published scientific literature, DSM-5 are appropriate).
You should use scientific evidence (e.g. published journal articles) to support your
discussion. Please do not cite the lecture notes.
• For part 1 you need to explain the associative learning phenomenon with reference to
scientific journal articles, as well as any relevant psychological theories or models. (i.e. how
has this phenomenon been shown in scientific research). You must make clear the
relevance of the associative learning phenomena to addiction (i.e. how do these concepts in
the vignette establish and maintain cocaine use and lead to relapse/inability to abstain from
cocaine).
• For part 2 you need to describe the neuropharmacological processes and changes involved
with the behaviours identified in part 1 (i.e. what happens at a neurological level that
supports initial cocaine use and what adaptations take place that maintain chronic drug
use). It is important to focus on the dopaminergic system and discuss why processes and
changes within this system are important for understanding addiction. You need to support
these discussion points with scientific literature.
• You should ensure that you explicitly define cocaine addiction and any models, theories, or
concepts you discuss in your essay. When you explain these things in your own words you
are demonstrating that you understand these concepts and the literature.
• You should not simply list a general description of facts. Instead, you need to clearly
discuss important concepts in the literature and research evidence and then provide a
detailed explanation of how/why these points are relevant to addiction.
• The number of references you use is not important or an indication of essay quality. A high
quality response can achieve a strong argument by carefully selecting a few good research
papers and discussing them in sufficient detail to effectively support their argument.
• Avoid relying too heavily on review papers that express the opinion of others. You need to
locate the scientific evidence, evaluate it and formulate your own opinions. Often review
papers are a good place to start reading on a topic so you can get an overview of the
scientific literature that already exists. Reference lists of relevant review papers can point
you in the direction of published research on a given topic which you can then read yourself
to form your own opinion.
• The quality of essays will be judged on the clarity of the information provided, and the
integration of scientific evidence into your discussion. The marking will be based on the
strength of your discussion and the clarity of your expression. When writing in science, the
key is to clearly explain complex ideas. With this in mind, the audience you are writing for is
an intelligent person who is ignorant of addiction/substance use disorder (doing this
demonstrates to your marker that you understand the material).
• If possible, you should ask family and/or friends to read over your article and see if they
understand what you have written. If they understand and are convinced by what you are
trying to say, and how any research was conducted and what it found, then you have done a
good job. If they are struggling to understand a section or do not know how some of the
research was conducted or what it found, then it is likely that you should re-write the section
to fix this.