Section B: Option 1 Child psychology — OCR A-Level Psychology
Test yourself on Section B: Option 1 Child psychology with OCR A-Level practice questions.
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Section B: Option 1 Child psychology explained
Intelligence is usually defined operationally as whatever an intelligence test measures, often a general factor running through performance on various tasks.
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The biological question is which part of the variation between people tracks biology. Candidates include inherited genetic differences, brain volume, and prenatal influences like maternal nutrition. The key research is an extended twin-family design, asking whether parents pass ability on through genes, the home environment, or both. Methods of assessment and their limits are crucial, because every claim about heritability rests on the specific instrument that produced the score, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices.
Pre-adult brain development (Biological) – Brain development and the impact of this on risk taking behaviour. Barkley-Levenson and Galván (2014) Neural representation of expected value in the adolescent brain. At least one strategy to reduce risk taking behaviours using knowledge of brain development.
The adolescent brain develops unevenly. The limbic reward system, including the ventral striatum, becomes highly responsive around puberty. Meanwhile, prefrontal regions that weigh consequences and inhibit responses mature into the mid-twenties, alongside myelination and synaptic pruning. This mismatch forms the dual systems model, proposing why risky choices peak in adolescence, especially when rewards are immediate and peers are present. Barkley-Levenson and Galván (2014) scanned teenagers and adults gambling for real money to investigate this. The applied requirement asks you to design a strategy to reduce risk-taking that works with this biological model, rather than relying on warnings.
Perceptual development (Cognitive) – Perceptual development in children and how this can be studied in babies and animals. Gibson and Walk (1960) The visual cliff. At least one play strategy to develop perception in young children.
Studying perceptual development requires measuring observable behaviours, as infants cannot report what they see. Techniques like preferential looking and habituation turn perception into measurable responses. Comparative animal studies examine newly mobile species where learning has had minimal time to act. Nativist evidence includes early preferences for face-like patterns and avoidance of apparent drops. Empiricist evidence includes effects of restricted visual environments. Gibson and Walk (1960) used the visual cliff to test depth perception, though they acknowledged limitations regarding innate claims in humans. The application requires suggesting a play strategy to develop perception in young children.
Cognitive development and education (Cognitive) – Cognitive development in children and the impact of this on education. Wood et al. (1976) The role of tutoring in problem-solving. At least one cognitive strategy to improve revision or learning.
Two cognitive accounts influence education. Piaget describes children revising schemas through assimilation and accommodation, passing through stages characterised by object permanence, egocentrism, conservation, and abstract reasoning. His legacy emphasises readiness and discovery learning. Vygotsky views development as social, proposing the zone of proximal development—the gap between independent and assisted performance—as the optimal space for teaching. Wood et al. (1976) operationalised this gap into observable tutor actions, introducing the concept of scaffolding in problem-solving. The application requires suggesting a cognitive strategy to improve revision or learning, providing a theoretical justification for the technique.
Development of attachment (Social) – The development of attachment in babies and the impact of failure to develop attachments. Ainsworth and Bell (1970) Attachment, Exploration and Separation: Illustrated by the Behavior of One-year-olds in a Strange Situation. At least one strategy to develop an attachment friendly environment.
Attachment is the enduring emotional tie turning a caregiver into a secure base, developing from indiscriminate responsiveness to separation anxiety. Ainsworth and Bell (1970) supplied the standardised laboratory procedure making individual differences measurable, using short separation and reunion episodes to observe if a baby uses the caregiver as a base for exploration. The impact of failure to develop attachments is studied through delinquency research and institutionalised children. The applied question asks what a nursery, hospital ward or foster placement should do differently to create an attachment friendly environment once this evidence is applied.
Impact of advertising on children (Social) – The influence of television advertising on children and the stereotyping in such advertising. Johnson and Young (2002) Gendered voices in children’s advertising. At least one strategy to reduce impact of advertising which is aimed at children.
Behaviourists suggest commercials influence young viewers through modelling; children below eight rarely recognise persuasive intent. Johnson and Young (2002) content analysed 478 commercials broadcast during American children's programming, coding verbs and voice-over sex to examine stereotyping. Boy-directed commercials featured power and destruction language; girl-directed ones used feeling and nurturing language. Male voices narrated the majority across all categories. Pine and Nash found children watching more commercial television requested more branded items. Marks require judging the method, linking stereotyping to social learning, and suggesting at least one strategy to reduce the impact of advertising aimed at children.
Your focus
- Explain what psychologists mean by intelligence and identify biological factors that could affect it.
- Describe the design and findings of Van Leeuwen et al. (2008) regarding the heritability of general IQ.
- Evaluate at least one method of assessing intelligence, including its scoring and limitations.
Show all 18 objectives
- Describe the dual systems model of adolescent brain development.
- Outline the procedure and findings of Barkley-Levenson and Galván (2014).
- Suggest one strategy to reduce risk-taking behaviour based on brain development.
- Explain how perceptual development can be studied in babies and animals.
- Describe the procedure and findings of Gibson and Walk (1960).
- Suggest a play strategy to develop perception in young children.
- Describe Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development.
- Outline the procedure and findings of Wood et al. (1976) on tutoring.
- Suggest a cognitive strategy to improve revision or learning with theoretical justification.
- Describe the development of attachment in babies and the impact of failure to develop attachments.
- Explain the procedure and findings of Ainsworth and Bell's (1970) Strange Situation study.
- Suggest at least one strategy to develop an attachment friendly environment in a childcare setting.
- Explain the theoretical influence of television advertising on children and the stereotyping present in such advertising.
- Describe the procedure and findings of Johnson and Young's (2002) content analysis of children's advertising.
- Suggest and evaluate at least one strategy to reduce the impact of advertising aimed at children.
Section B: Option 1 Child psychology exam tips
Marking Points
- Credit for Van Leeuwen et al. (2008) described as an extended twin design: Dutch twin pairs around nine years old were tested alongside their siblings and both parents on Raven's progressive matrices.
- Credit for the findings: the best-fitting model attributed roughly 67% of the variation in children's scores to genetic factors, found no evidence of cultural transmission from parent to child, and explained spousal resemblance through assortative mating.
- Credit for describing one method of assessment with its scoring, such as a matrices test of inductive reasoning chosen because it is non-verbal, or a Wechsler scale yielding a deviation score set against a population mean of 100 with a standard deviation of 15.
- Credit for stating that heritability is a property of a population in a particular range of environments, so a high estimate in a country where schooling is broadly uniform does not transfer to a population with wide differences in schooling.
- Credit for biological factors affecting intelligence, such as cortical thickness, neural processing efficiency, or prenatal exposure to toxins and poor nutrition.
- Credit for Barkley-Levenson and Galván (2014) procedure: adolescents and adults were scanned using fMRI while deciding whether to accept or reject mixed gambles played for real money, with the expected value systematically varied.
- Credit for Barkley-Levenson and Galván (2014) results: adolescents showed greater ventral striatum activation than adults as the expected value of a gamble rose and accepted more gambles. The age difference lay in reward sensitivity, not an inability to calculate odds.
- Credit for linking to the dual systems model: an early-maturing reward system and a later-maturing control system together propose why risk-taking rises through adolescence and then declines.
- Credit for a strategy to reduce risk-taking: graduated driver licensing restricting night driving and peer passengers. This removes conditions where reward sensitivity might overwhelm control, applying knowledge of brain development.
- Credit for methodological evaluation: real monetary stakes offer better task validity than hypothetical questionnaires, though fMRI samples are often small, and activation correlates with choice rather than proving the striatum caused it.
- Credit for Gibson and Walk (1960) procedure: a glass-topped table with patterned material directly under the glass on one side and far below it on the other. 36 infants were placed on a central board and called by their mothers from each side.
- Credit for Gibson and Walk (1960) results: nearly all infants who moved crossed the shallow side, while very few ventured over the apparent drop. Newly hatched chicks, lambs, and kids avoided the deep side almost from birth.
- Credit for animal findings on empiricism and nativism: dark-reared kittens did not initially avoid the deep side of the visual cliff, demonstrating they required visual experience, whereas dark-reared rats did avoid it, showing innate depth perception.
- Credit for a limitation of the human data: human babies can only be tested once they can crawl, by which point they have had months of visual experience, meaning the human data cannot definitively establish that depth perception is innate.
- Credit for a play strategy application: suggesting high-contrast patterned mobiles for a newborn's limited contrast sensitivity, or using textured sensory mats to develop tactile and visual integration, explicitly stating the perceptual developmental rationale.
- Credit for Wood et al. (1976) procedure: 30 children aged 3, 4, and 5 were tutored individually to build a pyramid from interlocking wooden blocks. The tutor followed a graded sequence from verbal hints to direct demonstration.
- Credit for Wood et al. (1976) findings: 3-year-olds largely ignored verbal prompts and needed blocks placed for them; 4-year-olds acted on verbal direction but needed assembly help; 5-year-olds mostly needed confirmation. This indicates support must match the learner's level.
- Credit for scaffolding functions: recruiting interest, reducing the number of choices, keeping the child on task, marking critical features, controlling frustration, and demonstrating an idealised solution.
- Credit for educational application of theories: Piaget implies waiting for readiness and facilitating discovery, whereas Vygotsky implies teaching just ahead of the child's current ability with support that is gradually withdrawn.
- Credit for a cognitive revision strategy: spacing study sessions is proposed to improve retention because the effort required to retrieve partially forgotten information is theorised to strengthen the memory trace, unlike massed practice.
- Credit for Ainsworth and Bell (1970) described as a controlled observation: 56 American one-year-olds from middle-class Baltimore families were observed through a fixed series of short episodes in an unfamiliar playroom involving a stranger, two separations from the mother and two reunions.
- Credit for the behaviours coded and the overall pattern, that exploration and play were highest while the mother was present and fell sharply once she left, that crying rose across the separation episodes, and that the reunion proved the most informative episode of all.
- Credit for the three patterns described through reunion behaviour: secure infants protested but were comforted and went back to play, avoidant infants showed little distress and ignored or turned away from the mother, and resistant infants were highly distressed and then both sought and angrily rejected contact.
- Credit for evidence on failure to attach, such as Bowlby's juvenile thieves, in which the small group he called affectionless were overwhelmingly those who had experienced prolonged early separation, and the Romanian adoptee research, in which children adopted after about six months in institutional care showed persisting difficulties including indiscriminate friendliness.
- Credit for an attachment friendly application with its mechanism, such as a named key person for every child, staggered settling in visits with the parent present, and consistent staffing so that a distressed child repeatedly meets the same familiar adult.
- Credit for naming Johnson and Young and giving the method as a content analysis of 478 broadcast commercials, with verb categories and voice-over sex as the coding frame, rather than a vague claim that they watched adverts.
- Credit for the direction of the results: power and destruction verbs clustered in boy-oriented commercials, feeling and nurturing language in girl-oriented ones, and predominantly male voices across both.
- Credit for explaining influence through a named theoretical mechanism, such as vicarious reinforcement in social learning, the limited grasp of persuasive intent before about the age of eight, and pester power exerted on parents.
- Credit for one strategy worked through, for example a statutory ban on commercials aimed at under-thirteens as in Quebec, restricting food high in fat, salt and sugar around children's programmes, or teaching advertising literacy so children can name the techniques being used on them.
- Evaluation credit for the strengths of content analysis, which are real broadcast material, a replicable coding frame and checkable inter-rater reliability, set against subjective coding decisions and a sample tied to one country and one period.
Examiner Tips
- 💡Application questions ask for a method of assessing intelligence, so learn one test well enough to say what the child is actually asked to do and how the result is expressed.
- 💡Keep nature and nurture in the language of interaction, because the key research itself reports both a genetic component and a social one in partner choice (assortative mating).
- 💡Application questions often use 'suggest', so name the strategy, describe how it operates, and close with a sentence linking it back to the brain development evidence.
- 💡Determinism is a relevant debate here; be prepared to discuss whether an immature cognitive control system should reduce a young person's responsibility in law.
- 💡When asked how perception can be studied in babies, describe methods like preferential looking or habituation, and state what each infers from looking time.
- 💡For play strategy questions, name the target age group first, as appropriate strategies for a newborn differ significantly from those for a toddler.
- 💡For 'suggest' questions, provide the strategy, outline the procedure, and explicitly link it to cognitive theory using three distinct points.
- 💡When comparing Piaget and Vygotsky, prepare one clear point of agreement (e.g., both see children as active learners) and two distinct differences (e.g., the role of social interaction).
- 💡Where the stimulus describes a nursery, a hospital ward or a foster home, suggestion marks need details of that setting rather than a general list of good practice.
- 💡Learn the reunion behaviour for each pattern, because questions ask you to classify a described infant and the reunion is what separates the types.
- 💡Questions name the key research and ask for procedure and results as separate demands, so rehearse the coding categories and the voice-over result as two distinct chunks.
- 💡Application stems put a toy company, a broadcaster or a school in front of you; quote a finding and then say what that organisation should do differently.
Common Mistakes
- Writing that the study shows a child's intelligence is 67% genetic. Heritability partitions variation within a group; no individual has a percentage.
- Treating an intelligence test as a direct reading of innate intelligence rather than as a sample of behaviour with its own reliability, standardisation sample and cultural loading.
- Naming twin studies without explaining how the comparison of identical with non-identical pairs is supposed to separate genetic from environmental resemblance.
- Claiming adolescents take risks because they do not understand danger. Evidence suggests they estimate risk similarly to adults but weigh potential rewards more heavily.
- Describing the prefrontal cortex as absent or completely undeveloped. It is functional but still maturing, representing a difference of degree rather than kind.
- Treating an fMRI scan as a direct photograph of a decision. The signal is a blood oxygenation proxy for activity, averaged over many trials and participants, not a direct measure of neural firing.
- Concluding that the visual cliff proves depth perception is innate in humans. It only shows depth perception is present by crawling age in humans, though present at birth in several other species.
- Stating the babies were in danger of falling. The glass ran across the entire table, so the drop was only apparent and posed no physical danger.
- Suggesting cognitive play strategies, such as hiding games for object permanence, instead of strategies that specifically target perceptual development like sensory mats or high-contrast toys.
- Using the zone of proximal development and scaffolding as exact synonyms. The zone is the conceptual space between independent and assisted performance; scaffolding refers to the specific actions the tutor takes within it.
- Listing Piaget's stages with ages but omitting the cognitive characteristics. Credit requires describing the reasoning typical of each stage, such as failing conservation tasks because appearance dominates logic.
- Recommending highlighting or rereading as effective revision strategies. Evidence suggests these methods feel fluent but produce less durable learning compared to retrieval practice.
- Writing that the procedure measures how much a baby loves its mother. It classifies the pattern of one relationship, and the same child can be classified differently with a different caregiver.
- Reading avoidant behaviour as no attachment at all, when it is interpreted as an organised strategy for managing a caregiver who has been consistently unresponsive to distress.
- Confusing deprivation, which is the loss of an attachment already formed, with privation, which is never having formed one.
- Describing the research as an experiment with an independent variable. Nothing was manipulated; the category of commercial was an observation, so no cause and effect statement is available.
- Writing that the study proved advertising makes children sexist. A content analysis shows what is in the message, not what it does to the viewer, so effects evidence has to be brought in from elsewhere.
- Offering 'parents should monitor viewing' as the whole strategy. A strategy needs a mechanism and some evidence, such as why a broadcasting restriction changes what children request.