Some links and resources for students looking to apply for psychology at university, and wish to demonstrate some 'outside learning' for interview and/or UCAS purposes, or for students who are just generally interested in learning a bit more about different areas of psychology outside of the AQA specification.
Also some help and advice on applying to psychology at university.
Specification
- Definitions of abnormality, including deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, statistical infrequency and deviation from ideal mental health.
- The behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
- 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.
- 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.
- The biological approach to explaining and treating OCD: genetic and neural explanations; drug therapy.
Specification
- Caregiver-infant interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony. Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer. Multiple attachments and the role of the father.
- Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz and Harlow.
- Explanations of attachment: learning theory and Bowlby’s monotropic theory. The concepts of a critical period and an internal working model.
- Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure- resistant. Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.
- Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation. Romanian orphan studies: effects of institutionalisation.
- The influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships, including the role of an internal working model.
Specification
- 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).
- Conformity to social roles (as investigated by Zimbardo).
- Explanations for obedience: agentic state and legitimacy of authority, and situational variables affecting obedience including proximity, location and uniform (as investigated by Milgram). Dispositional explanation for obedience - the Authoritarian Personality.
- Explanations of resistance to social influence, including social support and locus of control.
- Minority influence including reference to consistency, commitment and flexibility.
- The role of social influence processes in social change.
Specification
- The multi-store model of memory: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory.
- Features of each store: coding, capacity and duration.
- Types of long-term memory: episodic, semantic, procedural.
- The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
- Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference and retrieval failure due to absence of cues.
- Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: misleading information, including leading questions and post-event discussion; anxiety.
- Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of the cognitive interview.
Specification
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The origins of psychology: Wundt, introspection and the emergence of psychology as a science.
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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. -
The basic assumptions of learning approaches: the behaviourist approach, including classical conditioning and Pavlov’s research, operant conditioning, types of reinforcement and Skinner’s research; social learning theory including imitation, identification, modelling, vicarious reinforcement, the role of mediational processes and Bandura’s research.
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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. -
The basic assumptions of 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.
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The basic assumptions of the biological approach: the influence of genes, biological structures and neurochemistry on behaviour. Genotype and phenotype, genetic basis of behaviour, evolution and behaviour.
- Comparisons between the approaches.
Specification
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:
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Experimental method: Types of experiment, laboratory and field experiments; natural and quasi- experiments.
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Observational techniques: Types of observation: naturalistic and controlled observation; covert and overt observation; participant and non-participant observation.
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Self-report techniques: Questionnaires; interviews, structured and unstructured.
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Case studies.
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Content analysis and coding. Thematic analysis.
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Correlations. Analysis of the relationship between co-variables. The difference between correlations and experiments. Analysis and interpretation of correlation, including correlation coefficients
Students should understand the following scientific processes:
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Aims: stating aims, the difference between aims and hypotheses.
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Hypotheses: directional and non-directional.
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Sampling: the difference between population and sample; sampling techniques including: random, systematic, stratified, opportunity and volunteer; implications of sampling techniques, including bias and generalisation.
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Pilot studies and the aims of piloting.
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Experimental designs: repeated measures, independent groups, matched pairs.
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Observational design: behavioural categories; event sampling; time sampling.
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Questionnaire construction, including use of open and closed questions; design of interviews.
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Variables: manipulation and control of variables, including independent, dependent, extraneous, confounding; operationalisation of variables.
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Control: random allocation and counterbalancing, randomisation and standardisation.
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Demand characteristics and investigator effects.
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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.
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The role of peer review in the scientific process.
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The implications of psychological research for the economy.
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Reliability across all methods of investigation. Ways of assessing reliability: test-retest and inter-observer; improving reliability.
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Types of validity across all methods of investigation: face validity, concurrent validity, ecological validity and temporal validity. Assessment of validity. Improving validity.
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Features of science: objectivity and the empirical method; replicability and falsifiability; theory construction and hypothesis testing; paradigms and paradigm shifts.
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Reporting psychological investigations. Sections of a scientific report: abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and referencing.
Students should understand, and be able to perform where appropriate, the following data handling and analysis techniques.
- Quantitative and qualitative data; the distinction between qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques.
- Primary and secondary data, including meta-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.
- Presentation and display of quantitative data: graphs, tables, scattergrams, bar charts.
- Distributions: normal and skewed distributions; characteristics of normal and skewed distributions.
- Introduction to statistical testing; the sign test.
- Levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal and interval.
- Probability and significance: use of statistical tables and critical values in interpretation of significance;
- Type I and Type II errors.
- 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.