AQA Level 3 Advanced GCE in Psychology
Official qualification regulated by Ofqual, awarded by AQA. Classified as a GCE A Level.
Course Syllabus & Study Modules
Complete breakdown of verified curriculum topics and learning objectives.
Addiction
Describing addiction: physical and psychological dependence, tolerance and withdrawal syndrome.
- Describe withdrawal syndrome as symptoms opposite in direction to the drug's own effects, using nicotine at 24 to 72 hours.
- Distinguish physical from psychological dependence in a given case by whether stopping brings bodily symptoms or craving alone.
- Apply tolerance to a climbing dose, explaining receptor downregulation as why the original amount now does less.
- Explain why gambling makes the physical and psychological split hard to sustain, given DSM-5 reclassified it in 2013.
Addiction
Explanations for gambling addiction: learning theory as applied to gambling, including reference to partial and variable reinforcement; cognitive theory as applied to gambling, including reference to cognitive bias.
- Explain how variable ratio reinforcement and near misses together make gambling unusually resistant to extinction.
- Describe Griffiths' think-aloud comparison of 30 regular and 30 non-regular fruit machine players and what he found.
- Identify which cognitive bias a gambler's statement shows, choosing between gambler's fallacy, illusion of control and recall bias.
- Evaluate learning theory against cognitive theory on the first bet and on why most regular gamblers never become disordered.
Addiction
Explanations for nicotine addiction: brain neurochemistry, including the role of dopamine, and learning theory as applied to smoking behaviour, including reference to cue reactivity.
- Describe nicotine's route from inhalation to nicotinic receptors in the ventral tegmental area and dopamine in the nucleus accumbens.
- Explain why a smoker feels flat without a cigarette, using desensitisation and upregulation dropping dopamine below baseline.
- Apply positive and negative reinforcement to distinguish an early cigarette from one smoked only to end withdrawal.
- Explain why a lighter or a coffee triggers craving, using cue reactivity and Carter and Tiffany's meta-analysis of 41 studies.
- Evaluate the neurochemical account using relapse after nicotine replacement therapy and the many who try cigarettes without dependence.
Addiction
Reducing addiction: drug therapy; behavioural interventions, including aversion therapy and covert sensitisation; cognitive behaviour therapy.
- Describe how agonists, antagonists and aversives each work, naming methadone, naltrexone and disulfiram.
- Explain aversion therapy as classical conditioning and distinguish it from covert sensitisation by where the pairing happens.
- Outline what a CBT programme for addiction covers, from functional analysis of triggers to relapse prevention planning.
- Apply Petry's trial of 231 gamblers as evidence that eight CBT sessions beat Gamblers Anonymous referral alone.
- Evaluate drug therapy and aversion therapy on relapse, side effects and the ethical objection each raises.
Addiction
Risk factors in the development of addiction, including genetic vulnerability, stress, personality, family influences and peers.
- Explain what a risk factor is, stating that it shifts probability and is neither necessary nor sufficient for addiction.
- Describe genetic vulnerability using the 50 per cent heritability estimate and Blum's DRD2 A1 finding of 69 against 20 per cent.
- Apply stress, personality or peer risk to a given case, naming self-medication or overestimated peer use as the route.
- Evaluate the risk factor evidence as correlational and explain why diathesis-stress handles the interaction better.
Addiction
The application of the following theories of behaviour change to addictive behaviour; the theory of planned behaviour and Prochaska’s six-stage model of behaviour change.
- Describe the three components of the theory of planned behaviour and state which one also predicts behaviour directly.
- Apply Prochaska's six stages to a given smoker and say which intervention matches the stage they have actually reached.
- Explain why relapse in the six-stage model returns a person to an earlier stage rather than counting as failure.
- Evaluate the theory of planned behaviour using Webb and Sheeran's intention-behaviour gap across 47 experimental tests.
- Discuss West's objection that the stage boundaries cut arbitrarily across a continuum and that many people quit unplanned.
Aggression
Institutional aggression in the context of prisons: dispositional and situational explanations.
- Describe the importation model as values, gang ties and violent history carried in through the gate.
- Explain the deprivation model through Sykes's pains of imprisonment and regime factors such as overcrowding.
- Apply both models to a described prison incident and say which one the evidence there favours.
- Evaluate the two models using Camp and Gaes's random allocation result and the different policy each implies.
Aggression
Media influences on aggression, including the effects of computer games. The role of desensitisation, disinhibition and cognitive priming.
- Explain desensitisation, disinhibition and cognitive priming as three distinct routes from media to aggression.
- Describe Bartholow and Anderson's noise blast study and the size of effect Anderson's meta-analysis found.
- Apply cognitive priming to explain why a media effect can be sudden and short-lived after a matching cue.
- Evaluate media effects research, given that noise blasts are not violence and aggressive people choose violent games.
Aggression
Neural and hormonal mechanisms in aggression, including the roles of the limbic system, serotonin and testosterone. Genetic factors in aggression, including the MAOA gene.
- Describe the roles of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in reactive aggression, using Gospic's Ultimatum Game.
- Explain why low serotonin releases impulsive violence, using Virkkunen's lower 5-HIAA in violent offenders.
- Explain what the MAOA gene codes for and what the complete MAOA deficiency did in the 14 men of Brunner's Dutch family.
- Apply Caspi's gene-environment interaction to explain why the MAOA-L variant alone does not predict antisocial behaviour.
- Evaluate biological explanations on reductionism and what determinism would imply for legal responsibility.
Aggression
Social psychological explanations of human aggression, including the frustration-aggression hypothesis, social learning theory as applied to human aggression, and de-individuation.
- Explain the frustration-aggression hypothesis through a blocked goal, an aggressive drive and displacement.
- Describe Bandura's Bobo doll findings and how punishing the model changed what children imitated.
- Explain de-individuation as a loss of private self-awareness, using Zimbardo's hooded participants.
- Apply the weapon effect to explain why environmental cues raise aggression beyond frustration alone.
- Evaluate catharsis and the Bobo doll method, given that venting raises later aggression and the doll invites hitting.
Aggression
The ethological explanation of aggression, including reference to innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns. Evolutionary explanations of human aggression.
- Explain an innate releasing mechanism and a fixed action pattern and how a sign stimulus connects them.
- Describe Tinbergen's stickleback study and the features of a fixed action pattern that it demonstrated.
- Explain why Lorenz argued ritualised aggression and appeasement limit killing within a species.
- Apply anti-cuckoldry logic to Shackelford's link between mate-retention tactics and violence towards wives.
- Evaluate the ritual claim using Goodall's Gombe chimpanzees and Nisbett's culture of honour.
Algebra
Solve simple algebraic equations (to include: calculating the degrees of freedom for a Chi Square test)
- Calculate degrees of freedom for a Chi Square table as rows minus one times columns minus one, so 2 by 3 gives 2.
- State which rows and columns are counted, leaving out the totals row and totals column a printed table often carries.
- Explain what the degrees of freedom decide, namely which line of the critical values table is read and so the decision reached.
- Calculate a mean by rearranging the same kind of short equation, dividing the total of the scores by the number of scores.
Algebra
Substitute numerical values into algebraic equations using appropriate units for physical quantities (to include: inserting the appropriate values from a given set of data into the formula for a statistical test, eg inserting the N value (for the number of scores) into the Chi Square formula)
- Calculate each expected frequency for Chi Square as its row total multiplied by its column total, divided by N.
- Identify what every letter in a printed formula stands for, so N is the number of scores or the number of pairs of scores.
- Calculate the sum of squared rank differences for Spearman's rho, squaring first so negatives do not cancel positives.
- Explain why the substituted line is written out in full, since the method mark survives an arithmetic slip.
Algebra
Understand and use the symbols: =, <, <<, >>, >, ∝, ~ (to include: expressing the outcome of an inferential test in the conventional form by stating the level of significance at the 0.05 level or 0.01 level by using symbols appropriately)
- State the meaning of each of =, <, <<, >>, >, proportional to and approximately equal to when used in a results section.
- Explain why p less than 0.05 reports a significant result while p greater than 0.05 reports one that is not.
- Outline an inferential outcome conventionally, quoting calculated and critical values, N or df, the tail and the level used.
- Justify reporting at the 0.01 level where a Type 1 error would be serious, and say what that does to Type 2 error risk.
Approaches in Psychology
Comparison of approaches.
- Compare two approaches on a stated criterion such as determinism, naming the criterion before either approach.
- Outline where each approach stands on nature and nurture, identifying the interactionist ones as interactionist.
- Explain the difference between nomothetic experimental and idiographic case methods and what each costs in credibility.
- Apply the approaches to therapy by matching drug therapy, token economies, CBT, psychoanalysis and counselling to each.
Approaches in Psychology
Humanistic Psychology: free will, self-actualisation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, focus on the self, congruence, the role of conditions of worth. The influence on counselling Psychology.
- Outline Maslow's five needs in order and say why deficiency needs must be met before self-actualisation.
- Explain congruence as the overlap of self-concept and ideal self and how conditions of worth widen the gap.
- Apply client-centred therapy to a case, naming unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness.
- Evaluate humanistic psychology on holism against vague concepts, thin evidence and its individualist bias.
Approaches in Psychology
Learning approaches: i) the behaviourist approach, including classical conditioning and Pavlov’s research, operant conditioning, types of reinforcement and Skinner’s research; ii) social learning theory including imitation, identification, modelling, vicarious reinforcement, the role of mediational processes and Bandura’s research.
- Describe Pavlov's procedure using UCS, UCR, NS, CS and CR in the correct order.
- Explain the difference between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment in the Skinner box.
- Apply the four mediational processes to a case of imitation, saying what each contributes between watching and doing.
- Evaluate the two learning approaches on control and application against demand characteristics and determinism.
Approaches in Psychology
Origins of Psychology: Wundt, introspection and the emergence of Psychology as a science.
- Describe Wundt's introspection procedure, naming the trained observers, controlled stimulus and standard instructions.
- Explain why opening the Leipzig laboratory in 1879 marks psychology separating from philosophy.
- Evaluate introspection against the criteria for a science, using Nisbett and Wilson and Watson's shift to behaviour.
Approaches in Psychology
The basic assumptions of the following approaches:
- Describe the founding assumption of each approach as a belief about where behaviour comes from.
- Explain why saying behaviour is learned from the environment is an assumption while the Bobo doll study is not.
- Apply the assumptions to a described behaviour by giving the account two different approaches would offer for it.
Approaches in Psychology
The biological approach: the influence of genes, biological structures and neurochemistry on behaviour. Genotype and phenotype, genetic basis of behaviour, evolution and behaviour.
- Explain the difference between genotype and phenotype, using PKU to show where the environment enters.
- Describe how twin studies test genetic influence, quoting Nestadt's 68% against 31% concordance for OCD.
- Apply neurochemical and evolutionary explanations to a behaviour, naming the transmitter or the survival advantage.
- Evaluate the approach on scientific method against genetic determinism and the shared environment confound in twins.
Approaches in Psychology
The cognitive approach: the study of internal mental processes, the role of schema, the use of theoretical and computer models to explain and make inferences about mental processes. The emergence of cognitive neuroscience.
- Explain inference as a method, showing how an unobservable process is deduced from a measured behaviour.
- Describe what a schema is and how it reshaped recall in Bartlett's War of the Ghosts.
- Apply the computer analogy to a mental process by naming its input, coding, storage and output stages.
- Evaluate the approach on objective method and its use in CBT against machine reductionism and artificial tasks.
Approaches in Psychology
The psychodynamic approach: the role of the unconscious, the structure of personality, that is Id, Ego and Superego, defence mechanisms including repression, denial and displacement, psychosexual stages.
- Describe the id, ego and superego by their governing principle and the age at which each appears.
- Explain repression, denial and displacement separately, with a different example of each.
- Apply the psychosexual stages to an adult behaviour, naming the stage and the fixation that would explain it.
- Evaluate the approach on explanatory power against unfalsifiable concepts and case evidence such as Little Hans's phobia.
Arithmetic and numerical computation
Estimate results (to include: commenting on the spread of scores for a set of data, which would require estimating the range)
- Calculate the range as the highest score minus the lowest, written with its unit, and say how variable that condition was.
- Suggest whether a printed mean is plausible by estimating from rounded figures, since a mean outside the scores must be wrong.
- Explain why one extreme score makes the range crude and why standard deviation is the figure reported beside the mean.
- Explain what a small standard deviation shows about consistency and what a large one suggests about individual differences.
Arithmetic and numerical computation
Recognise and use expressions in decimal and standard form (to include: converting data in standard form from a results table into decimal form in order to construct a pie chart)
- Calculate the decimal value of a number in standard form, moving the point one place per power, right for a positive power.
- Calculate each pie chart sector angle as the category frequency divided by the total number of observations, times 360 degrees.
- State whether a probability such as 1.2 times ten to the minus four is below 0.05 and so whether the result is significant.
- Explain why a pie chart suits one set of nominal data divided into categories while a scattergram displays a correlation.
Arithmetic and numerical computation
Use ratios, fractions and percentages (to include: calculating the percentages of cases that fall into different categories in an observation study)
- Calculate the percentage in an observational category as the count divided by the total behaviours recorded, times 100.
- Explain why converting tallies to percentages lets observations of unequal length or group size be compared fairly.
- Convert the same data between a ratio, a fraction and a percentage, and recover a raw frequency from a reported percentage.
- Calculate percentage agreement between two observers and state the 0.80 criterion used for inter observer reliability.
Attachment
Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.
- Describe the Strange Situation procedure and name the five behaviours the observers score.
- Explain how the three attachment types differ at reunion, quoting Ainsworth's proportions for each.
- Apply the three types to an infant's observed behaviour, using the reunion response as the deciding indicator.
- Evaluate cultural variation using van Ijzendoorn's within-culture finding and the charge of an imposed etic.
Attachment
Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz and Harlow.
- Describe Lorenz's split clutch procedure and his finding that imprinting occurs only within a critical period.
- Explain how Harlow's wire and cloth mothers show contact comfort rather than food builds the attachment.
- Evaluate animal studies of attachment on generalisation to humans, reversibility of imprinting and ethical cost.
Attachment
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation. Romanian orphan studies: effects of institutionalisation.
- Explain Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis, naming the critical period and the two consequences he predicted.
- Describe the 44 thieves study and Rutter's Romanian findings, quoting the IQ scores for early and late adoption.
- Apply the theory to a case by distinguishing separation, deprivation and privation in what happened to the child.
- Evaluate the theory using Bowlby's biased interviewing and the confounding quality of the Romanian institutions.
Attachment
Caregiver-infant interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony. Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer. Multiple attachments and the role of the father.
- Describe reciprocity and interactional synchrony and give the behaviour that tells one from the other.
- Outline Schaffer and Emerson's four stages in order and the monthly observation of 60 Glasgow babies behind them.
- Apply the stages to an infant's described behaviour, naming the stage and the evidence that places it there.
- Evaluate claims about the role of the father using Grossmann on play and the social sensitivity of the conclusions.
Attachment
Explanations of attachment: learning theory and Bowlby’s monotropic theory. The concepts of a critical period and an internal working model.
- Explain attachment as classical conditioning, placing food, carer and pleasure in the correct order of terms.
- Outline Bowlby's monotropy, social releasers, critical period and internal working model.
- Apply both explanations to a described bond and decide which one the detail in the scenario supports.
- Evaluate learning theory using Harlow's monkeys and monotropy using the evidence for multiple attachments.
Attachment
The influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships, including the role of an internal working model.
- Explain the internal working model as expectations built from a first attachment and state the continuity hypothesis.
- Apply attachment types to described childhood and adult relationships, using Myron-Wilson and Smith and Hazan and Shaver.
- Evaluate the continuity hypothesis, given correlational retrospective data and temperament as a rival explanation.
Biopsychology
Biological rhythms: circadian, infradian and ultradian and the difference between these rhythms. The effect of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers on the sleep/wake cycle.
- Distinguish circadian, infradian and ultradian rhythms by cycle length and give an example of each.
- Explain how the suprachiasmatic nucleus and melatonin from the pineal gland drive the sleep/wake cycle.
- Apply the pacemaker and zeitgeber distinction to Siffre's cave study to say why his cycle ran near 25 hours.
- Evaluate the isolation evidence, given single cases, small samples and artificial light acting as a zeitgeber.
Biopsychology
Localisation of function in the brain and hemispheric lateralisation: motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory and language centres; Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, split brain research. Plasticity and functional recovery of the brain after trauma.
- Describe the motor, somatosensory, visual and auditory centres by lobe and function, stating contralateral control.
- Explain how damage to Broca's area and to Wernicke's area produce different patterns of aphasia.
- Apply split brain findings to predict what a patient can name or pick out when an image goes to one visual field.
- Outline plasticity and functional recovery using Maguire's taxi drivers, axonal sprouting and homologous recruitment.
- Evaluate localisation using the tiny epileptic split brain samples and the plasticity evidence against fixed sites.
Biopsychology
The divisions of the nervous system: central and peripheral (somatic and autonomic).
- Outline the divisions of the nervous system from CNS and PNS down to sympathetic and parasympathetic.
- Explain how the somatic and autonomic branches differ in voluntary control and in what they act on.
- Identify which division a described bodily response belongs to, such as a racing heart before a performance.
Biopsychology
The fight or flight response including the role of adrenaline.
- Describe the pathway from amygdala to hypothalamus to sympathetic branch to adrenal medulla and adrenaline.
- Explain three physiological changes in the response and give the survival reason for each.
- Apply the response to a described threat and say what the parasympathetic branch does once it has passed.
- Evaluate the model using Taylor on tend and befriend as beta bias and Gray on the freeze response.
Biopsychology
The function of the endocrine system: glands and hormones.
- Describe how a hormone travels in the bloodstream and why only cells with matching receptors respond.
- Outline the pituitary as master gland and give two further gland and hormone pairs with their function.
- Explain how endocrine communication differs from neural transmission in speed, spread and duration.
- Evaluate hormonal explanations of behaviour, given correlational human evidence and the charge of reductionism.
Biopsychology
The structure and function of sensory, relay and motor neurons. The process of synaptic transmission, including reference to neurotransmitters, excitation and inhibition.
- Describe sensory, relay and motor neurons by location, direction of travel and dendrite and axon length.
- Explain synaptic transmission from action potential to vesicle release, diffusion across the cleft and receptor binding.
- Apply summation to decide whether a neuron receiving named excitatory and inhibitory inputs will fire.
- Explain why transmission at a synapse can run in only one direction.
Biopsychology
Ways of studying the brain: scanning techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); electroencephalogram (EEGs) and event-related potentials (ERPs); post-mortem examinations.
- Describe what fMRI, EEG, ERPs and post-mortem examination each actually measure.
- Compare fMRI and EEG on spatial and temporal resolution and explain why the trade runs that way.
- Apply the techniques to a described study by choosing the one that fits what the researcher needs to detect.
- Evaluate post-mortem examination, which cannot establish cause and raises consent problems after death.
Cognition and development
Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant abilities, including knowledge of the physical world; violation of expectation research.
- Describe the violation of expectation procedure from habituation to possible and impossible events, with looking time as the measure.
- Explain the inference chain from longer looking to surprise to knowledge of the physical world.
- Apply the competence and performance distinction to explain why an infant may know a toy exists yet not reach for it.
- Evaluate Baillargeon's explanation of early infant abilities using the argument that longer looking may show perceptual novelty rather than understanding.
Cognition and development
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: schemas, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration, stages of intellectual development. Characteristics of these stages, including object permanence, conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
- Describe assimilation, accommodation and equilibration as the process by which a schema is built and changed.
- Describe Piaget's four stages of intellectual development in order with rough ages and the characteristic achievement or limitation of each.
- Apply conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion to predict how a five-year-old answers each classic task.
- Evaluate Piaget using Hughes and the naughty teddy study, where easier task demands raised young children's success.
Cognition and development
The development of social cognition: Selman’s levels of perspective-taking; theory of mind, including theory of mind as an explanation for autism; the Sally-Anne study. The role of the mirror neuron system in social cognition.
- Describe Selman's levels of perspective-taking in order and the dilemma method used to score a child's reasoning.
- Explain what theory of mind is and how the Sally-Anne task tests false belief, including its control questions.
- Describe the mirror neuron system and the broken mirror hypothesis it generates for autism.
- Apply the theory of mind deficit account to explain the social and communicative features of autism.
- Evaluate false belief tests using their language demands and the many autistic people who pass them.
Cognition and development
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, including the zone of proximal development and scaffolding.
- Explain the zone of proximal development as the gap between unaided performance and performance with a more knowledgeable other.
- Describe the scaffolding strategies of Wood, Bruner and Ross and how help is withdrawn as competence grows.
- Apply scaffolding to plan the graded help a teacher would give a named child on a specific task.
- Evaluate Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development against Piaget on readiness, and note the difficulty of measuring a zone directly.
Data handling and analysis
Analysis and interpretation of correlation, including correlation coefficients.
- Explain how the sign and the size of a coefficient give the direction and the strength of a relationship.
- Interpret a stated coefficient in the terms of the two named variables and say whether it reached significance.
- Evaluate a correlational claim using the third-variable problem and the curvilinear case of arousal and performance.
Data handling and analysis
Content analysis and coding. Thematic analysis.
- Describe the steps of coding for a content analysis and the steps of building themes in a thematic analysis.
- Apply both to the same material by saying what a frequency table and what a set of themes would each show.
- Evaluate both by setting high external validity against the researcher deciding what counts in the first place.
Data handling and analysis
Descriptive statistics: measures of central tendency – mean, median, mode; calculation of mean, median and mode; measures of dispersion; range and standard deviation; calculation of range; calculation of percentages; positive, negative and zero correlations.
- Calculate the mean, median, mode and range for a set of scores and state what each figure says about them.
- Calculate a percentage as the part divided by the total and multiplied by a hundred, showing the working.
- Explain what a large standard deviation says about the spread and about how well the mean describes anyone.
- Explain why an anomalous score makes the median a safer average than the mean for a given set of results.
Data handling and analysis
Distributions: normal and skewed distributions; characteristics of normal and skewed distributions.
- Describe a normal distribution by its symmetry, the mean median and mode at one point, and tails that never touch.
- Sketch a positively and a negatively skewed curve and mark where the mean, median and mode fall on each.
- Apply the idea to a set of results by saying which distribution a far too difficult test would produce and why.
Data handling and analysis
Levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal and interval.
- Describe nominal, ordinal and interval data by how much information each level of measurement carries.
- Identify the level of a described measure and state which average is legitimate to use with it.
- Justify why interval data makes a test more powerful and less likely to miss a real effect.
Data handling and analysis
Presentation and display of quantitative data: graphs, tables, scattergrams, bar charts, histograms.
- Describe when a bar chart, a histogram and a scattergram is each the correct display for the data.
- Sketch a labelled graph for given data with both axes named, units shown and a title naming the variables.
- Identify how a vertical axis that does not start at zero can make a trivial difference look dramatic.
Data handling and analysis
Primary and secondary data, including meta-analysis.
- Describe what makes data primary or secondary and define a meta-analysis and the effect size it produces.
- Apply the distinction to a described investigation by stating which type of data it used and how you can tell.
- Evaluate meta-analysis by setting its huge combined sample against publication bias inflating the pooled effect.
Data handling and analysis
Quantitative and qualitative data; the distinction between qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques.
- Distinguish quantitative from qualitative data and name the technique that produces each of them.
- Apply the distinction to a described study by saying which type it produced and quoting the detail that shows it.
- Evaluate the trade between objectivity and easy comparison on one side and depth of meaning on the other.
Eating behaviour
Biological explanations for anorexia nervosa, including genetic and neural explanations.
- Describe Holland's twin concordance and Strober's family risk figures as evidence of an inherited vulnerability.
- Explain the serotonin and dopamine account of anorexia, including Kaye's raised metabolites in recovered patients.
- Explain why starvation itself makes it hard to tell whether neural differences cause anorexia or follow it.
- Evaluate the biological account against the female preponderance, rising incidence and cultural patterning it cannot explain.
Eating behaviour
Biological explanations for obesity, including genetic and neural explanations.
- Describe Stunkard's Danish adoption findings and the heritability estimate near 70% for body weight.
- Explain the neural account of obesity through leptin resistance and Wang's reduced striatal dopamine receptors.
- Apply gene-environment interaction to explain the rise in obesity since the 1980s without any change in the gene pool.
- Evaluate the dopamine evidence, since chronic overeating may downregulate receptors rather than low density driving it.
Eating behaviour
Explanations for food preferences: the evolutionary explanation, including reference to neophobia and taste aversion; the role of learning in food preference, including social and cultural influences.
- Explain the evolutionary logic behind preferring sweet and fatty tastes and rejecting bitter ones.
- Describe taste aversion learning and why one-trial, long-delay conditioning in Garcia and Koelling shows preparedness.
- Apply neophobia to explain a three-year-old's refusal of an unfamiliar food and the advantage that gave ancestors.
- Evaluate the evolutionary account using its post-hoc reasoning and the deliberate liking of coffee and chilli.
Eating behaviour
Neural and hormonal mechanisms involved in the control of eating behaviour, including the role of the hypothalamus, ghrelin and leptin.
- Describe the dual-centre model, naming which hypothalamic area starts feeding and which stops it.
- Explain how ghrelin and leptin differ in source, timescale and what each signals to the hypothalamus.
- Apply leptin resistance to explain why leptin replacement cures congenital deficiency but fails in common obesity.
- Evaluate the dual-centre model given that ventromedial lesions also damage the paraventricular nucleus and fibres of passage.
Eating behaviour
Psychological explanations for anorexia nervosa: family systems theory, including enmeshment, autonomy and control; social learning theory, including modelling, reinforcement and media; cognitive theory, including distortions and irrational beliefs.
- Describe Minuchin's enmeshment, overprotectiveness, rigidity and conflict avoidance and how the symptom stabilises the family.
- Explain how autonomy and control make food refusal a bid for effectiveness in Bruch's account.
- Explain body-size distortion and dichotomous thinking as the irrational beliefs cognitive therapy targets.
- Apply social learning theory to Becker's Fiji figures on disordered eating after television arrived.
- Evaluate family systems theory as a socially sensitive account built on uncontrolled clinical observation.
Eating behaviour
Psychological explanations for obesity, including restraint theory, disinhibition and the boundary model. Explanations for the success and failure of dieting.
- Describe Herman and Mack's preload study and state what counterregulation looked like in restrained eaters.
- Explain the boundary model's hunger, satiety and diet boundaries and the indifferent zone between them.
- Apply the boundary model to explain the burst of overeating that follows a dieter crossing the diet boundary.
- Explain what makes dieting fail and what makes it succeed, naming flexible restraint and self-monitoring.
- Evaluate restraint theory using anorexia, where restriction succeeds and weight keeps falling.
Forensic Psychology
Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach (atavistic form); genetics and neural explanations.
- Describe Lombroso's atavistic form and list the physical features he claimed marked out the born offender.
- Explain what Christiansen's 35 per cent against 13 per cent concordance and Mednick's adoptees each add to a genetic account.
- Apply the neural explanation to a violent offender, naming reduced prefrontal activity as the loss of impulse restraint.
- Evaluate the atavistic form using Lombroso's missing control group and Goring's 3,000 offenders against 3,000 non-offenders.
- Explain why concordance well below 100 per cent and crime being a changing legal category limit any purely genetic claim.
Forensic Psychology
Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and the psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour modification in custody. Anger management and restorative justice programmes.
- Outline the four aims of custodial sentencing and describe institutionalisation and prisonisation as effects that work against them.
- Explain how a token economy runs in custody, from operationalised target behaviours to tokens exchanged for privileges.
- Describe Novaco's three stages of anger management and state what the offender practises in each.
- Apply restorative justice to a case, naming the admission, the mediated meeting and the reparation made to the victim.
- Evaluate custody using the 45 per cent reconviction rate within a year and the contrast with Norway's rehabilitative regime.
- Discuss why token economy gains rarely survive release and why anger management volunteers inflate its success rate.
Forensic Psychology
Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types of offender; the bottom-up approach, including investigative Psychology; geographical profiling.
- Describe the four stages of the top-down approach and the FBI interviews with 36 killers it was built from.
- Explain the organised and disorganised types by planning, choice of victim, the scene and social competence.
- Explain Canter's bottom-up method through interpersonal coherence, the significance of time and place, and forensic awareness.
- Apply circle theory to classify an offender as a marauder or a commuter from where the offences fall.
- Evaluate top-down profiling using organised features found in every case and Copson's 3% identification rate.
Forensic Psychology
Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation; differential association theory; psychodynamic explanations.
- Outline Eysenck's criminal personality as high extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, and why such a person conditions poorly.
- Apply Kohlberg's preconventional level to an offender who says they acted to avoid punishment or to take a reward.
- Explain whether a given account shows hostile attribution bias or minimalisation, using what the offender does with the harm.
- Describe differential association and Blackburn's weak, deviant and over-harsh superegos as two further routes into offending.
- Evaluate Eysenck using Farrington's finding of high neuroticism and psychoticism in offenders but not high extraversion.
- Discuss whether cognitive distortions cause offending or are rationalisations produced after the act.
Gender
Atypical gender development: gender dysphoria; biological and social explanations for gender dysphoria.
- Explain what gender dysphoria is as distress from a mismatch, separating it from sexual orientation and from being transgender.
- Describe brain-sex theory using the BSTc findings of Zhou and the heritability estimate from Coolidge's twin study.
- Apply a social explanation to the lower distress reported in societies recognising a third gender such as fa'afafine.
- Evaluate the BSTc evidence using Hulshoff Pol's finding that cross-sex hormone therapy itself alters brain volume.
Gender
Cognitive explanations of gender development, Kohlberg’s theory, gender identity, gender stability and gender constancy; gender schema theory.
- Describe Kohlberg's three stages with their ages and what the child can and cannot yet judge at each.
- Explain why constancy matters to Kohlberg, using Slaby and Frey's split-screen finding on watching same-sex models.
- Apply in-group and out-group schemas to explain why a child distorts a gender-inconsistent picture a week later.
- Evaluate Kohlberg using gender-typed preferences appearing before constancy in Bussey and Bandura's four-year-olds.
Gender
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development, Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Oedipus complex; Electra complex; identification and internalisation.
- Describe the Oedipus complex from desire for the mother through castration anxiety to identification with the father.
- Explain how identification and internalisation differ as the two steps by which a child takes on a gender role.
- Apply Freud's reading of Little Hans to show how a horse phobia was treated as evidence of the Oedipus complex.
- Evaluate the psychodynamic account using the single father-reported case of Little Hans and the theory's unfalsifiability.
Gender
Sex and gender. Sex-role stereotypes. Androgyny and measuring androgyny including the Bem Sex Role Inventory.
- Explain the difference between sex and gender, using cross-cultural variation as evidence that gender is partly learned.
- Describe how the Bem Sex Role Inventory works, from sixty items and a seven-point scale to its four categories.
- Apply the idea of a sex-role stereotype to an advertisement and say what expectation it transmits.
- Evaluate the Bem Sex Role Inventory using its 1970s American sample and the social desirability self-report invites.
Gender
Social learning theory as applied to gender development. The influence of culture and media on gender roles.
- Describe modelling, vicarious reinforcement and the four mediational processes as the route by which gender behaviour is learned.
- Explain how Smith and Lloyd's baby-dressing study shows differential treatment starting before the child acts.
- Apply social learning theory to the change in Notel children's gender views in the two years after television arrived.
- Evaluate social learning theory by weighing its account of rapid cultural change against gender-typed behaviour in infants.
Gender
The role of chromosomes and hormones (testosterone, oestrogen and oxytocin) in sex and gender. Atypical sex chromosome patterns: Klinefelter’s syndrome and Turner’s syndrome.
- Describe how the SRY gene on the Y chromosome triggers the testes and prenatal testosterone.
- Explain what testosterone, oestrogen and oxytocin each do, giving one distinct function for each.
- Apply the chromosome pattern of Klinefelter's or Turner's syndrome to predict the physical and cognitive profile expected.
- Evaluate what atypical patterns prove about biology, given unrepresentative samples and social reactions to being unusual.
Graphs
Plot two variables from experimental or other data (to include: sketching a scatter diagram using two sets of data from a correlational investigation)
- Demonstrate how to plot two variables from experimental or other data using appropriate graphical formats like bar charts and line graphs.
- Accurately sketch a scatter diagram using two sets of data from a correlational investigation.
- Interpret scatter diagrams to determine the direction and strength of the association between two co-variables.
Graphs
Translate information between graphical, numerical and algebraic forms (to include: using a set of numerical data (a set of scores) from a record sheet to construct a bar graph)
- Construct a bar graph from a set of numerical data (a set of scores) on a record sheet, ensuring bars have equal widths and gaps.
- Translate information between graphical and numerical forms by reading frequencies from a chart and calculating percentages.
- Translate numerical findings into algebraic forms using appropriate mathematical symbols and formula substitutions, such as for the sign test.
- Explain why a bar graph is appropriate for discrete categorical data.
Handling data
Calculate standard deviation.
- Calculate population or sample standard deviation from raw data and show each stage of the method.
- Explain why standard deviation is a more sensitive measure of dispersion than the range for interval data.
- Interpret what a larger or smaller standard deviation shows when comparing data sets.
Handling data
Construct and interpret frequency tables and diagrams, bar charts and histograms (to include: selecting and sketching an appropriate form of data display for a given set of data)
- Describe the conventions of a bar chart and of a histogram, including why only the histogram's bars touch.
- Identify the right display for a given set of data by asking whether the horizontal scale is categorical or continuous.
- Explain how raw scores are tallied into a frequency table and why the frequencies must sum to the number of scores.
- Suggest why a frequency scale starting above zero misleads a reader about the size of a difference.
Handling data
Distinguish between levels of measurement (to include: stating the level of measurement (nominal, ordinal or interval) that has been used in a study)
- Distinguish nominal, ordinal, and interval data by determining whether the numbers represent unordered category counts, ranks, or equal defined units.
- State the level of measurement used in a described study and justify it using the specific measure applied in the research.
- Identify which measure of central tendency and which inferential statistical test follow from a stated level of measurement.
Handling data
Find arithmetic means (to include: calculating the means for two conditions using raw data from a class experiment)
- Calculate the mean for each condition by totalling that condition's scores and dividing by the number of scores in it.
- State both means with their unit and the difference between them as one sentence comparing the two conditions.
- Explain why the mean suits interval data with no extreme scores, since it takes account of every value collected.
Handling data
Know the characteristics of normal and skewed distributions (to include: being presented with a set of scores from an experiment and being asked to indicate the position of the mean (or median, or mode))
- Describe the normal distribution as symmetrical and bell shaped with mean, median and mode at the same central point.
- Identify the positions of the mode, the median and the mean on a drawn skewed curve, reading from left to right.
- State whether a distribution is positively or negatively skewed from the direction of the long tail rather than the hump.
- Explain why the median represents a skewed set better, since the mean is dragged out towards the extreme scores.
Handling data
Make order of magnitude calculations (to include: estimating the mean test score for a large number of participants on the basis of the total overall score)
- Calculate an estimated mean by rounding the overall total and the number of participants, dividing, and giving the unit.
- Express an estimated result in scientific notation and identify its order of magnitude.
- Use an estimated mean to assess whether a precise result is plausible.
- Identify possible arithmetic, decimal-position or unit errors when an estimate and a calculated value differ substantially.
Handling data
Select an appropriate statistical test (to include: selecting a suitable inferential test for a given practical investigation and explaining why the chosen test is appropriate)
- Identify the inferential test for a given investigation from the hypothesis, the design and the level of measurement.
- Explain the choice in three parts, naming difference or correlation, related or unrelated, and nominal, ordinal or interval.
- State the design from the procedure, since two separate groups is unrelated even when the stem calls them conditions.
- Explain the extra condition Chi Square carries, that frequencies are independent and each participant falls in one cell only.
Handling data
Understand measures of dispersion, including standard deviation and range (to include: explaining why the standard deviation might be a more useful measure of dispersion for a given set of scores, eg where there is an outlying score)
- Calculate the range from a set of scores by taking the smallest from the largest.
- Explain why standard deviation is a more useful measure of dispersion than the range when a set of scores contains an outlying score.
- Interpret standard deviation values to compare the consistency of participants across different conditions.
- State what a specific standard deviation value shows about the spread of data, keeping the original unit.
Handling data
Understand simple probability (to include: explaining the difference between the 0.05 and 0.01 levels of significance)
- Define simple probability and express it as a number between 0 and 1, a fraction, or a percentage.
- Define a significance level as the threshold probability for rejecting the null hypothesis.
- Distinguish the 0.05 and 0.01 levels by the percentage risk of a Type 1 error each tolerates and which is more stringent.
- Explain why moving to 0.01 cuts the risk of a Type 1 error and raises the risk of a Type 2 error.
- Justify a stricter criterion by naming the consequence in that study, such as a drug licensed on a false positive.
Handling data
Understand the difference between primary and secondary data (to include: stating whether data collected by a researcher dealing directly with participants is primary or secondary data)
- State whether data in a described study is primary or secondary, using who gathered it and for what purpose.
- Distinguish primary from secondary data, since the split is about origin and purpose and not numbers against words.
- Explain one strength and one limitation of secondary data in context, such as a large cheap sample that may be outdated.
- Outline why a meta analysis rests entirely on secondary data, combining findings the researcher never gathered.
Handling data
Understand the differences between qualitative and quantitative data (to include: explaining how a given qualitative measure (for example, an interview transcript) might be converted into quantitative data)
- Distinguish quantitative from qualitative data by whether the record is a numerical measurement or material in words or images.
- Describe content analysis in stages: sample the material, set the coding categories, apply them, then count the frequencies.
- Suggest a coding category for a named transcript so the conversion is anchored in that study rather than described in general.
- Explain what the conversion buys in comparison and statistical testing and what it costs in depth and context.
Handling data
Understand the principles of sampling as applied to scientific data (to include: explaining how a random or stratified sample could be obtained from a target population)
- Explain the procedure for obtaining a random sample using a sampling frame and random number generator.
- Calculate the required number of participants for each subgroup in a stratified sample based on population proportions.
- Evaluate the strengths and limitations of random and stratified sampling in relation to researcher bias and representativeness.
Handling data
Understand the terms mean, median and mode (to include: explaining the differences between the mean, median and mode and selecting which measure of central tendency is most appropriate for a given set of data)
- Explain the differences between the mean, median and mode based on their calculation and sensitivity to extreme scores.
- Select the most appropriate measure of central tendency for a given set of data, justifying the choice using levels of measurement or outliers.
- Calculate the mean, median and mode for a given data set, including finding the midpoint for an even-numbered median.
Handling data
Use a scatter diagram to identify a correlation between two variables (to include: plotting two variables from an investigation on a scatter diagram and identifying the pattern as a positive correlation, a negative correlation or no correlation)
- Plot two variables from an investigation on a scatter diagram, ensuring axes are accurately labelled and scaled.
- Identify the pattern on a scatter diagram as a positive correlation, a negative correlation, or no correlation.
- Explain why a correlation between two variables does not establish causation, referencing the potential impact of a third variable.
Handling data
Use a statistical test (to include: calculating a non-parametric test of differences using data from a given experiment)
- Calculate the Sign test by finding the signs of differences, discarding zeros, and identifying the less frequent sign.
- Identify the correct statistical test based on the aim (difference or relationship), experimental design, and level of measurement.
- Compare calculated values to critical values correctly, including using absolute values for tests like Spearman's rho.
Handling data
Use an appropriate number of significant figures (to include: expressing a correlation coefficient to two or three significant figures)
- Determine the correct number of significant figures in a given dataset by counting from the first non-zero digit.
- Express a calculated correlation coefficient accurately to two or three significant figures.
- Select an appropriate number of significant figures for reporting descriptive statistics based on the precision of the raw data.
Handling data
Use statistical tables to determine significance (to include: using an extract from statistical tables to say whether or not a given observed value is significant at the 0.05 level of significance for a one-tailed test)
- Identify the correct cell of a table from the criterion, the number of tails and the degrees of freedom or the value of N.
- State the degrees of freedom for a Chi Square contingency table as rows minus one multiplied by columns minus one.
- Explain whether the named test needs the observed value equal to or greater than, or equal to or less than, the critical value.
- Outline the conclusion in full, quoting both values and saying whether the null hypothesis is rejected at that level.
Inferential testing
Factors affecting the choice of statistical test, including level of measurement and experimental design. When to use the following tests: Spearman’s rho, Pearson’s r, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney, related t-test, unrelated t-test and Chi-Squared test.
- Outline the three questions that choose a test, difference or correlation, related or unrelated, and level of data.
- Identify the correct test for a described study, from the sign test and chi-squared through to Pearson's r.
- Justify a chosen test by quoting the design and the level of measurement of the study in front of you.
- Explain the extra requirements a parametric test carries, interval data, a normal distribution and similar variance.
Inferential testing
Introduction to statistical testing; the sign test. When to use the sign test; calculation of the sign test.
- State the three conditions for a sign test, a predicted difference, a related design and nominal data.
- Calculate S as the count of the less frequent sign once ties are discarded, and state N as the participants left.
- Apply the critical value table by checking that S is equal to or less than it and stating the decision on the null.
Inferential testing
Probability and significance: use of statistical tables and critical values in interpretation of significance; Type I and Type II errors.
- Explain what p less than or equal to 0.05 means and name the three things needed to read a critical value table.
- Apply the right direction of comparison, less than for the sign test and greater than for chi-squared.
- Discuss the trade-off between Type I and Type II errors and when a stricter level such as 0.01 is worth it.
Inferential testing
Students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of inferential testing and be familiar with the use of inferential tests.
- Explain how inferential statistics move a claim from the sample to the population by way of probability.
- Apply the decision rule by comparing a calculated value with a critical value and stating what happens to the null.
- Discuss why a significant result is never proof, since a large enough sample makes a trivial effect significant.
Issues and debates in Psychology
Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity.
- Explain how ethical implications differ from ethical issues by naming who each one protects, the participant or the wider group.
- Apply Sieber and Stanley's four concerns to a given study and identify which group beyond the participants its findings could harm.
- Evaluate whether psychologists should avoid socially sensitive questions, weighing Burt's misuse against Loftus's gains for witnesses.
Issues and debates in Psychology
Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations.
- Outline hard and soft determinism and the biological, environmental and psychic varieties with a named source for each.
- Apply the right type of determinism to a described behaviour, from MAOA through reinforcement history to Freud.
- Discuss Libet's readiness potential and the counter that it may signal readiness to act rather than the decision.
Issues and debates in Psychology
Gender and culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
- Explain alpha bias, beta bias, androcentrism, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism with one example of each.
- Explain which bias a given piece of research shows, using its sample and the claim made from it as the test.
- Discuss universality using Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg finding more variation within countries than between them.
Issues and debates in Psychology
Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in Psychology. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism.
- Outline the levels of explanation from socio-cultural down to neurochemical using one behaviour throughout.
- Explain the same disorder at five levels, as a deviation from social norms, as a visible act, as a thought, as a neural circuit and as a neurotransmitter.
- Discuss why reductionism is not automatically a criticism, given that drug treatments came out of the lowest level.
Issues and debates in Psychology
Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation.
- Describe the idiographic and nomothetic approaches by their methods and by what each one generalises to.
- Explain Radford and Kirby's three kinds of law with an example of classifying, of principles and of dimensions.
- Discuss whether the two approaches are genuinely opposed, given that most approaches in psychology use both.
Issues and debates in Psychology
The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach.
- Explain heritability as the share of population variation that is genetic, not half of any one person's IQ.
- Apply diathesis-stress to a described case by naming the inherited vulnerability and the environmental trigger.
- Discuss whether the question can be answered as posed, given that inherited temperament shapes the environment received.
Issues and options in Psychology
In answering questions on Issues and Debates in Psychology students will be expected to illustrate their answers with knowledge and understanding of topics studied elsewhere in the specification as appropriate.
- Explain why evidence from another topic scores as description until a sentence states what it shows about the debate.
- Apply a study met elsewhere to a stated debate in three moves, the issue, the example, then what it demonstrates.
- Evaluate which of two remembered examples better illustrates a given debate and say what makes it the stronger.
Memory
Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference and retrieval failure due to absence of cues.
- Explain proactive and retroactive interference in the right direction and name similarity as what makes each worse.
- Describe retrieval failure and separate context-dependent from state-dependent forgetting, with a study for each.
- Apply the two explanations to a scenario, deciding whether the loss is competition between memories or a missing cue.
- Evaluate interference research on artificial word lists, given that forgotten material returns once a cue is supplied.
Memory
Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: misleading information, including leading questions and post-event discussion; anxiety.
- Describe Loftus and Palmer's verb manipulation and quote the speed estimates and the broken glass percentages.
- Explain why post-event discussion distorts testimony through conformity rather than through a damaged memory trace.
- Apply weapon focus and the inverted-U account to predict how anxiety would affect a witness in a described incident.
- Evaluate laboratory research on anxiety using Yuille and Cutshall's accurate real witnesses and the lack of consequences.
Memory
Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of the cognitive interview.
- Describe the four techniques of the cognitive interview and the memory principle each one exploits.
- Explain what the enhanced version adds through rapport, fewer interruptions and open questions.
- Apply the four techniques to a witness account, choosing which one would recover a particular missing detail.
- Evaluate the cognitive interview using Kohnken's 41% gain in correct detail against the rise in incorrect detail.
Memory
The multi-store model of memory: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory. Features of each store: coding, capacity and duration.
- Describe the three stores in order and name the process that carries information between each pair.
- Explain the coding, capacity and duration of each store, citing Sperling, Baddeley, Miller, Peterson and Bahrick.
- Evaluate the model using patient KF and the evidence that rehearsal alone does not guarantee a lasting memory.
Memory
The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
- Describe the four components of working memory and state the coding and capacity of each.
- Explain why two visual tasks interfere with each other while a visual and a verbal task do not.
- Evaluate the model using dual-task evidence against the charge that the central executive is too vague to test.
Memory
Types of long-term memory: episodic, semantic, procedural.
- Describe episodic, semantic and procedural memory, giving the feature that identifies each and an example.
- Apply the three types to behaviours in a scenario, stating the feature that decides each classification.
- Evaluate the three-way division using Clive Wearing and HM against Cohen and Squire's declarative split.
Psychopathology
Definitions of abnormality, including deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, statistical infrequency and deviation from ideal mental health.
- Describe the four definitions of abnormality and the criterion each one uses to draw the line.
- Apply each definition to a described behaviour and say whether it counts as abnormal on that criterion.
- Evaluate the definitions on cultural relativism, arbitrary cut-off points and the risk of labelling nearly everyone.
Psychopathology
The behavioural approach to explaining and treating phobias: the two-process model, including classical and operant conditioning; systematic desensitisation, including relaxation and use of hierarchy; flooding.
- Explain the two-process model, with classical conditioning acquiring the phobia and negative reinforcement maintaining it.
- Describe systematic desensitisation and flooding and state what makes the exposure work in each.
- Apply conditioning terms to a case such as Little Albert, labelling the NS, UCS, CS and conditioned response.
- Evaluate the two therapies using Gilroy's follow-up against flooding's dropout rate and ethical cost.
Psychopathology
The behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
- Describe phobias, depression and OCD separately by their behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics.
- Identify from a scenario whether a named symptom is behavioural, emotional or cognitive and which disorder it fits.
- Explain why an obsession is a cognition while a compulsion is the behaviour performed to reduce the anxiety it causes.
- Apply diagnostic detail such as the two-week persistence rule to judge whether described symptoms would meet DSM criteria.
Psychopathology
The biological approach to explaining and treating OCD: genetic and neural explanations; drug therapy.
- Outline the genetic explanation of OCD, naming candidate genes and quoting Nestadt's twin concordance rates.
- Describe the neural explanation, covering low serotonin and the orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia worry circuit.
- Explain how an SSRI keeps serotonin in the synaptic cleft and how long a course usually takes to work.
- Evaluate drug therapy using Soomro's trial evidence against side effects and drug company sponsorship.
Psychopathology
The cognitive approach to explaining and treating depression: Beck’s negative triad and Ellis’s ABC model; cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), including challenging irrational thoughts.
- Describe Beck's negative triad and Ellis's ABC model, expanding each letter and naming each part of the triad.
- Apply the ABC model to a described event, showing that the belief and not the event produces the consequence.
- Explain how CBT challenges irrational thoughts by empirical and logical disputing plus homework tasks.
- Evaluate cognitive treatment using March's 81% improvement against the risk of blaming the client for the illness.
Relationships
Factors affecting attraction in romantic relationships: self-disclosure; physical attractiveness, including the matching hypothesis; filter theory, including social demography, similarity in attitudes and complementarity.
- Describe self-disclosure, the halo effect and filter theory as three separate routes to attraction rather than one process.
- Explain why a disclosure only raises attraction when it is reciprocated and met with responsiveness.
- Apply filter theory to a given couple by naming which of the three filters is operating at their stage.
- Evaluate the matching hypothesis using Walster's computer dance result and the missing risk of rejection in its design.
Relationships
Parasocial relationships: levels of parasocial relationships, the absorption addiction model and the attachment theory explanation.
- Describe Maltby's three levels of parasocial relationship in order of intensity and the behaviour marking each.
- Apply the absorption addiction model to a described fan and state which level their behaviour places them at.
- Evaluate the attachment explanation using McCutcheon's failure to link attachment type to parasocial relationships.
Relationships
The evolutionary explanations for partner preferences, including the relationship between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour.
- Explain how anisogamy produces intersexual and intrasexual selection, and state which sex each predicts will be choosy or competitive.
- Apply sexual selection to predict which partner traits men and women will prioritise, using Buss's 37-culture findings as the test.
- Evaluate the evolutionary account using the gap between stated preference and actual partners, and the economic alternative to genes.
Relationships
Theories of romantic relationships: social exchange theory, equity theory and Rusbult’s investment model of commitment, satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment. Duck’s phase model of relationship breakdown: intra-psychic, dyadic, social and grave dressing phases.
- Describe social exchange theory using rewards minus costs, comparison level and comparison level for alternatives.
- Explain why Rusbult's model predicts a partner stays when profit is negative, using alternatives and investment.
- Apply Duck's four phases to a described break-up and name the phase a given behaviour belongs to.
- Evaluate the economic metaphor using Clark and Mills on communal partners who do not monitor rewards.
Relationships
Virtual relationships in social media: self-disclosure in virtual relationships; effects of absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships.
- Describe reduced cues theory and the hyperpersonal model, stating the opposite prediction each makes about online disclosure.
- Explain how absence of gating lets a relationship form on attitudes, naming gates such as looks, shyness or age.
- Apply the two models to a given online exchange and say which better explains what happened to intimacy.
- Evaluate the claim that cues are absent online, using timing, emoji and writing style as counter-evidence.
Research methods
Case studies.
- Describe what a case study involves, naming the methods combined and the kind of data each one produces.
- Explain how HM and KF each forced a change to memory theory that a large-sample study could not have delivered.
- Evaluate the case study by setting its unique richness against the impossibility of generalising or replicating it.
Research methods
Content analysis.
- Describe the order of a content analysis from sampling the material through operationalising coding units to counting.
- Apply coding to given material such as adverts by proposing categories and saying what the tallies would show.
- Evaluate content analysis by weighing the absence of demand characteristics against observer bias in choosing categories.
Research methods
Correlations. Analysis of the relationship between co-variables. The difference between correlations and experiments.
- Explain why a correlation has co-variables rather than an IV and a DV, and what that costs it in causal claims.
- Identify from coefficients such as -0.76 and 0.31 which relationship is the stronger and which way each one runs.
- Evaluate a reported correlation by naming a plausible third variable from the scenario that could produce both results.
- Explain why a coefficient near zero does not prove that two variables are unrelated.
Research methods
Experimental method. Types of experiment, laboratory and field experiments; natural and quasi-experiments.
- Describe the defining features of an experiment, naming the manipulated variable, the measured variable and the controls.
- Distinguish laboratory, field, natural and quasi-experiments by who manipulates the variable and where it happens.
- Identify the type of experiment used in a stem and justify the choice from how the variable came to vary.
- Evaluate natural and quasi-experiments, which allow no random allocation, so participant variables may confound results.
Research methods
Observational techniques. Types of observation: naturalistic and controlled observation; covert and overt observation; participant and non-participant observation.
- Describe what changes between naturalistic and controlled, covert and overt, and participant and non-participant observation.
- Apply the three pairs to a described study by naming which type it used and quoting the detail in the stem that shows it.
- Evaluate a chosen observation type by trading its control and its ethics against realism and reactivity.
Research methods
Self-report techniques. Questionnaires; interviews, structured and unstructured.
- Outline how questionnaires, structured interviews and unstructured interviews differ in how much is fixed before data collection.
- Write closed and open items on a given topic that avoid leading, double-barrelled and emotive wording.
- Evaluate a self-report study by explaining how social desirability and interviewer effects could have shaped its answers.
Research methods
Students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the following research methods, scientific processes and techniques of data handling and analysis, be familiar with their use and be aware of their strengths and limitations.
- Explain the trade between control and realism by contrasting internal validity with ecological validity.
- Apply the level of measurement and data distribution to select the correct measure of central tendency.
- Select appropriate graphs based on data type and whether investigating a difference or correlation.
- Evaluate a study described in a stem by tying each strength and limitation to its details and conclusion.
Schizophrenia
Biological explanations for schizophrenia: genetics and neural correlates, including the dopamine hypothesis.
- Describe Gottesman's concordance figures for identical twins, fraternal twins and siblings against population risk.
- Explain the original and revised dopamine hypothesis, stating where dopamine is too high and where too low.
- Apply the difference between a correlate and a cause to Juckel's ventral striatum finding on negative symptoms.
- Evaluate the genetic explanation given concordance of 48% rather than 100% in twins who also share an environment.
Schizophrenia
Classification of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including speech poverty and avolition. Reliability and validity in diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia, including reference to co-morbidity, culture and gender bias and symptom overlap.
- Describe hallucinations, delusions, speech poverty and avolition, and state which are additions and which are losses.
- Explain how Cheniaux's study shows low inter-rater reliability and disagreement between DSM and ICD on the same patients.
- Apply symptom overlap and co-morbidity to explain why one patient may be called schizophrenic by ICD and bipolar by DSM.
- Evaluate the validity of diagnosis using African-Caribbean diagnosis rates and Loring and Powell's gender bias figures.
Schizophrenia
Cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Token economies as used in the management of schizophrenia.
- Explain how CBT for psychosis changes what a patient makes of their voices rather than removing them.
- Describe what family therapy targets in the home and what Pharaoh's meta-analysis found it improved.
- Explain how a token economy uses secondary reinforcers to change behaviour that institutionalisation produced.
- Apply the distinction between treating and managing to place CBT, family therapy and token economies correctly.
- Evaluate token economy evidence using Glowacki's handful of quality studies and the file-drawer problem.
Schizophrenia
Drug therapy: typical and atypical antipsychotics.
- Explain how typical antipsychotics act as dopamine antagonists and why that reduces positive symptoms.
- Describe how clozapine and risperidone differ from typical drugs in the receptors acted on and the dose needed.
- Apply the side effect profile to justify prescribing clozapine to a suicidal patient despite the blood tests needed.
- Evaluate drug therapy using Thornley's placebo comparison against tardive dyskinesia and neuroleptic malignant syndrome.
Schizophrenia
Psychological explanations for schizophrenia: family dysfunction and cognitive explanations, including dysfunctional thought processing.
- Describe the schizophrenogenic mother and the double bind as two family accounts of disordered thinking.
- Explain why expressed emotion predicts relapse rather than onset, and what counts as high expressed emotion.
- Explain Frith's metarepresentation and central control faults and which symptom each of them produces.
- Apply central control dysfunction to explain why patients took twice as long as controls on Stirling's Stroop task.
- Evaluate family dysfunction explanations as socially sensitive accounts that blame parents on retrospective evidence.
Schizophrenia
The importance of an interactionist approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis-stress model.
- Explain the diathesis-stress model as a vulnerability needing a trigger, using Meehl's original single-gene version.
- Describe how the modern model widens the diathesis to polygenic and traumatic and stress to include cannabis.
- Apply the model to explain why a highly vulnerable person who meets no trigger does not become ill.
- Evaluate combined treatment using Tarrier's three-group trial and the treatment-causation fallacy.
Scientific processes
Aims: stating aims, the difference between aims and hypotheses.
- Distinguish an aim from a hypothesis by what each states and by which one carries operationalised variables.
- Write an aim and a matching hypothesis for a given study, naming both IV conditions and a countable DV.
- Identify what is missing from a poorly written aim or hypothesis and state the correction it needs.
Scientific processes
Control: random allocation and counterbalancing, randomisation and standardisation.
- Describe random allocation, counterbalancing, randomisation and standardisation as four separate procedures.
- Apply the right control to a stated problem, counterbalancing for order effects and random allocation for participant variables.
- Explain why counterbalancing shares order effects between the conditions rather than removing them.
Scientific processes
Demand characteristics and investigator effects.
- Explain how a cue that reveals the aim, and the researcher's own expectancy, can change the DV without the IV moving.
- Identify the cue in a described procedure that would reveal the aim and suggest a single or double blind remedy.
- Evaluate what these effects do to the internal validity of a study and how far standardised instructions repair it.
Scientific processes
Ethics, including the role of the British Psychological Society’s code of ethics; ethical issues in the design and conduct of psychological studies; dealing with ethical issues in research.
- Outline the BPS principles and name the issues of consent, deception, harm, privacy and the right to withdraw.
- Identify the ethical issue raised by a described study and state the specific remedy that it calls for.
- Discuss whether a study such as Milgram's would pass an ethics committee by weighing its cost against its benefit.
Scientific processes
Experimental designs: repeated measures, independent groups, matched pairs.
- Outline who takes part in which condition under repeated measures, independent groups and matched pairs.
- Identify the design used in a described study and state the control it needs, counterbalancing or random allocation.
- Justify choosing one design over another for a given study by naming the variable each trade-off protects.
Scientific processes
Features of science: objectivity and the empirical method; replicability and falsifiability; theory construction and hypothesis testing; paradigms and paradigm shifts.
- Outline objectivity, the empirical method, replicability and falsifiability as the demands a scientific claim must meet.
- Explain the cycle of theory construction and hypothesis testing in developing scientific explanations.
- Discuss, using Kuhn, whether psychology's lack of a shared paradigm leaves it a pre-science.
Scientific processes
Hypotheses: directional and non-directional.
- State what a directional hypothesis adds to a non-directional one and where the null hypothesis sits alongside both.
- Write a directional and a non-directional version of the same prediction with both IV levels and an operationalised DV.
- Justify choosing a direction or leaving it out by whether previous findings on the topic are consistent or mixed.
Scientific processes
Observational design: behavioural categories; event sampling; time sampling.
- Describe what makes a behavioural category usable, being observable, clearly defined and not overlapping another.
- Suggest behavioural categories and an event or time sampling method for a stated behaviour, giving the interval.
- Evaluate event against time sampling by what each one misses and how both affect inter-observer agreement.
Scientific processes
Pilot studies and the aims of piloting.
- Outline what a pilot study is and state that its data are not reported as results or used to test the hypothesis.
- Suggest what a pilot would check in a given study, such as instructions, timings, ceiling effects or the IV manipulation.
- Explain the economic and ethical gain of finding a design fault before a full sample has been put through it.
Scientific processes
Questionnaire construction, including use of open and closed questions; design of interviews.
- Describe what closed and open questions each yield and how structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews differ.
- Write questionnaire items and an interview schedule for a stated aim, avoiding leading, jargon and double-barrelled wording.
- Evaluate a draft questionnaire by identifying the items that would bias the answers and saying how to rewrite them.
Scientific processes
Reliability across all methods of investigation. Ways of assessing reliability: test-retest and inter-observer; improving reliability.
- Describe test-retest and inter-observer reliability and state the correlation of 0.80 treated as acceptable.
- Suggest how to raise reliability in a given study, by training observers, tightening categories or rewriting items.
- Evaluate a reported coefficient such as 0.62 against the accepted threshold and say what the researcher should change.
Scientific processes
Reporting psychological investigations. Sections of a scientific report: abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and referencing.
- Outline the six sections of a scientific report in order and state what each one contains.
- Identify which section a given piece of information belongs in, such as a critical value or a limitation.
- Explain why the method is written in subsections detailed enough for another researcher to repeat the study.
Scientific processes
Sampling: the difference between population and sample; sampling techniques including: random, systematic, stratified, opportunity and volunteer; implications of sampling techniques, including bias and generalisation.
- Describe how random, systematic, stratified, opportunity and volunteer samples are each actually drawn.
- Suggest how a named technique would be carried out for a stated target population and say what the sampling frame is.
- Evaluate a chosen technique for the bias it introduces and what that does to generalising back to the population.
Scientific processes
The implications of psychological research for the economy.
- Explain what economic implications mean in terms of working time, sick pay and money gained or lost.
- Apply a named area such as attachment, therapy for depression or circadian rhythms to a stated cost or saving.
- Evaluate how firm the chain is from a psychological finding to the figure that is claimed to be saved.
Scientific processes
The role of peer review in the scientific process.
- Describe how peer review works and name its three functions of allocating funding, validating quality and improving the work.
- Explain what a reviewer checks, from originality to whether the statistics actually support the conclusion drawn.
- Evaluate peer review using anonymity, rivalry and the file drawer burial of replications and null results.
Scientific processes
Types of validity across all methods of investigation: face validity, concurrent validity, ecological validity and temporal validity. Assessment of validity. Improving validity.
- Describe face, concurrent, ecological and temporal validity by what each one checks or generalises to.
- Explain how concurrent validity is assessed by correlating a new measure against an established one at the same time.
- Discuss whether a study such as Asch's still holds today, using temporal validity and Burger's replication.
Scientific processes
Variables: manipulation and control of variables, including independent, dependent, extraneous, confounding; operationalisation of variables.
- Explain the difference between an extraneous and a confounding variable in terms of whether it varies with the IV.
- Identify the IV with both its levels and the operationalised DV from a described study, with units where possible.
- Suggest a confounding variable in a given procedure and explain why it makes the result impossible to interpret.
Social influence
Conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo.
- Describe Zimbardo's mock prison procedure and what guards and prisoners did up to the study ending on day six.
- Explain why Zimbardo concluded the role rather than the personality caused the behaviour, referring to deindividuation.
- Evaluate the study using Fromm on the third of guards who were brutal and Zimbardo's own dual role as superintendent.
Social influence
Explanations for obedience: agentic state and legitimacy of authority, and situational variables affecting obedience including proximity and location, as investigated by Milgram, and uniform. Dispositional explanation for obedience: the Authoritarian Personality.
- Explain the agentic state and legitimacy of authority, naming the binding factors that keep a person obeying under strain.
- Describe what happened to obedience when Milgram varied proximity, location and uniform, quoting a figure for each.
- Apply the Authoritarian Personality to a described person, naming the F-scale traits and the parenting Adorno traced them to.
- Evaluate the dispositional explanation using the correlational Elms and Milgram data and acquiescence bias in the F-scale.
Social influence
Explanations of resistance to social influence, including social support and locus of control.
- Explain how a dissenter enables resistance by breaking unanimity rather than by being credible, using Allen and Levine.
- Outline the difference between an internal and an external locus of control and say why internals resist pressure more.
- Apply both explanations to a scenario, deciding whether the person resisted because of an ally or because of disposition.
- Evaluate locus of control using Twenge's finding that people grew more external while growing more resistant to authority.
Social influence
Minority influence including reference to consistency, commitment and flexibility.
- Explain how consistency, commitment and flexibility each make a minority more persuasive, naming the augmentation principle.
- Outline Moscovici's slide procedure and quote the agreement rates for the consistent and inconsistent minorities.
- Apply the three factors to a described campaign, identifying which one the minority is failing to show.
- Evaluate minority influence research using Martin's deeper-processing evidence against the triviality of naming slide colours.
Social influence
The role of social influence processes in social change.
- Explain how drawing attention, consistency, augmentation and the snowball effect convert a minority position into law.
- Outline how normative influence drives social norms campaigns and how gradual commitment works in obedience.
- Apply the processes to a real campaign, naming which process each event in it illustrates.
- Evaluate the applied evidence using Foxcroft's weak social norms results and Bashir on minorities provoking resistance.
Social influence
Types of conformity: internalisation, identification and compliance. Explanations for conformity: informational social influence and normative social influence, and variables affecting conformity including group size, unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch.
- Describe how compliance, identification and internalisation differ in depth and in whether the change outlasts the group.
- Outline what happened to conformity in Asch's study when group size, unanimity and task difficulty were varied.
- Explain whether a given scenario shows informational or normative influence, using the ambiguity of the task as the test.
- Evaluate Asch's findings using Perrin and Spencer, the triviality of the line task and the all-American male sample.
Stress
Individual differences in stress: personality types A, B and C and associated behaviours; hardiness, including commitment, challenge and control.
- Describe the components of Type A, Type B and Type C personality and the behaviour that marks each.
- Explain Friedman and Rosenman's prospective design and the doubled coronary heart disease rate in Type A men.
- Explain hardiness by saying what commitment, challenge and control each mean rather than listing them.
- Apply the finding that hostility is the pathogenic component to judge which Type A person is most at risk.
- Evaluate personality type research using male American samples and categories imposed on continuous traits.
Stress
Managing and coping with stress: drug therapy (benzodiazepines, beta blockers), stress inoculation therapy and biofeedback. Gender differences in coping with stress. The role of social support in coping with stress; types of social support, including instrumental, emotional and esteem support.
- Explain how benzodiazepines enhance GABA and how beta blockers act only on the body rather than on thoughts.
- Describe the three phases of stress inoculation therapy in order and what the client does in each.
- Explain how biofeedback brings autonomic arousal under voluntary control using a live physiological readout.
- Apply instrumental, emotional and esteem support to say which type a given offer of help provides.
- Discuss drug therapy against stress inoculation therapy on cause, speed, effort and side effects.
Stress
Measuring stress: self-report scales (Social Readjustment Ratings Scale and Hassles and Uplifts Scale) and physiological measures, including skin conductance response.
- Describe how the Social Readjustment Rating Scale and the Hassles and Uplifts Scale differ in content and time window.
- Calculate a respondent's total life change units from a year of ticked events and state what a high total predicts.
- Explain how skin conductance measures sympathetic arousal through eccrine sweat gland activity between two electrodes.
- Evaluate self-report against physiological measures, weighing social desirability against a lack of specificity.
Stress
Sources of stress: life changes and daily hassles. Workplace stress, including the effects of workload and control.
- Describe the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, using marriage at 50 and bereavement at 100 to explain life change units.
- Explain why Kanner argued daily hassles predict psychological symptoms better than discrete life events.
- Explain how Johansson's sawmill workers and Marmot's civil servants separate workload from job control.
- Apply the control finding to explain why a junior employee may be more at risk than a busier senior one.
- Evaluate life events research using retrospective recall coloured by current illness and Rahe's correlation of 0.118.
Stress
The physiology of stress, including general adaptation syndrome, the hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal system, the sympathomedullary pathway and the role of cortisol.
- Describe the sympathomedullary pathway in order from hypothalamus to adrenal medulla and the effects of adrenaline.
- Describe the HPA axis through CRH, ACTH and cortisol, and state what cortisol does to glucose and immunity.
- Explain which pathway a given stressor recruits by judging whether the threat is acute or prolonged.
- Explain Selye's alarm, resistance and exhaustion stages and where stress-related illness appears.
- Evaluate general adaptation syndrome using Mason's stressor-specific hormones and Taylor's tend-and-befriend criticism.
Stress
The role of stress in illness, including reference to immunosuppression and cardiovascular disorders.
- Explain how sustained cortisol suppresses immunity through lymphocyte numbers and natural killer cell activity.
- Describe Kiecolt-Glaser's exam and wound-healing studies and state the direction of each finding.
- Explain the cardiovascular route from repeated adrenaline surges to artery damage, plaque and clotting.
- Apply the indirect behavioural route to explain why a stressed smoker's illness may not be immunosuppression.
- Evaluate the stress-illness link given correlational evidence in which illness may precede the stress.
Regulatory & Verification Details
- Qualification Number (QN)
- 601/4838/X
- Regulated Status
- Available to learners
- Awarding Body
- AQA
- Qualification Type
- GCE A Level
- Operational Start
- Sept 2015