A Level Psychology Miss KL McKaig

Pre course preparation booklet

Maximise your success

Welcome to Psychology!

What is Psychology?

Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour. It is concerned with how people think, feel, develop and act, and tries to explain why people behave the way they do.

What topics will I be studying?

The course is divided into three modules. You will study modules one and two in year twelve, and the final module in year thirteen.

Module one: Introductory topics

Cognitive Psychology

• Memory o Models of short term memory o False memories and eyewitness

testimony o Forgetting

Developmental Psychology

• Attachment o How babies bond with parents o What happens if babies don’t form

attachments

Social Psychology

• Social Influence o Why people conform and why they

obey others o Why people refuse to conform or

obey o Social change and minority

influence

Module two: Psychology in context

Approaches to psychology

• Psychodynamic, humanist, behavioural, cognitive and biological

• Biopsychology

Psychopathology

• Abnormality o What is abnormality? o Explanations of abnormality o Treatments for abnormality

Research Methods

• How to conduct research and experiments in Psychology

In year thirteen we study Forensic Psychology, Relationships, and Schizophrenia.

What do I need to do to prepare?

You have three important tasks to complete before I see you in September:

1. Complete the activities in this booklet. Start it as soon as possible so that if there are any tasks you don’t understand you can contact me to clarify what you need to do. You can find me in the Psychology room in school or email me on kelly.mckaig@thebicesterschool.org.uk . This is a compulsory pre-course informal assessment - Non completion could mean non acceptance onto the course.

2. Get organised – get an A4 notepad, coloured pens, highlighters, an AQA revision guide, record cards, calculator etc.

3. Please note that there is a £15 charge to cover all resources for the two-year course and a prepared lever arch file with dividers, worksheets and trackers included. Please return to KMc in an envelope, clearly labelled with your name. This must be handed in during the first week on return to school in September.

What can I learn from Psychology to help me to be successful?

Psychologists can tell us a lot about how to study more effectively and more successfully. We can use what they tell us about memory and cognition to enhance our learning capabilities.

Read the information below and explain how we can use it to help us study more effectively.

Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

The Ebbinghaus Retention Curve, also known as

the forgetting curve, shows the rate at

which memories are lost over time. It is named

after Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneering

researcher of human memory. He showed that

we start to forget items rapidly once we stop

rehearsing the material; then the rate of

forgetting (or memory decay) slows. He also

showed that the more time we initially spend

rehearsing information, the less time it takes to

relearn it later, and information we spend more

time rehearsing decays at a slower rate.

What does this suggest about how and when you should revise the new information that you learn

in psychology classes?

Bower’s Organisational Hierarchies

Bower et at (1969) demonstrated

the power of organisation.

Participants in his experiment had

112 words to learn, presented in 4

trials, 28 words a trial. Half the

participants were presented with

the words organised into conceptual

hierarchies (see left), the other half

were simply shown lists of words.

They found that subjects presented

with the organised lists

remembered around 47% more words than subjects presented a list without organisation.

What does this suggest about how you take notes and revise in Psychology?

Mental Imagery

This technique involves linking item that are to-be-remember with a mental image, so that

the two words are interacting in some way. For example Bower (1972) showed that asking

participants to form a mental image of unrelated nouns (e.g. dog and hat, so that they

imagined a dog wearing a bowler hat) resulted in significantly better recall than when

participants were instructed merely to memorise the words. Bower considered that the more

unusual the image the better.

How can you use this information to help you to study more effectively in Psychology?

Levels of Processing

The levels-of-processing effect, identified by Craik and Lockhart in 1972, describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing. Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer lasting, and stronger memory traces than shallow levels of analysis.

In 1975, the Craik and Tulving conducted an experiment in which participants were shown a list of 60 words. They were then asked to recall certain words by being shown one of three questions, each testing a different level of processing, similar to:

• Was the word in capital letters or lower case? (Tests structural processing: shallow processing) • Does the word rhyme with (another word)? (Tests phonemic/auditory processing, as the participant

has to listen to the word judge whether it rhymes with another word) • Does the word fit in the following sentence...? (Tests semantic processing; understanding the

meaning of the word: deep processing/ elaborate rehearsal)

Out of another larger list, the participants were asked to pick out the appropriate word, as the original words had been mixed into this list. Craik & Tulving found that participants were better able to recall words which had been processed more deeply - that is, processed semantically, supporting level of processing theory.

What does this suggest about how you can learn effectively?

Reading Ahead

The Most Effective Pre-reading Strategies for Comprehension (Marinaccio, 2012). Abstract: This study aimed to compare different pre-reading strategies that improve students’ comprehension. This research determined that teachers who activated students’ prior knowledge before reading enhanced their students’ comprehension. Data was collected through observation of students utilizing three different prereading strategies, an interview with a classroom teacher, and a multiple-choice comprehension quiz. The study reveals that students benefited from the book feature walk pre-reading strategy the greatest because students’ prior knowledge and peer interaction were used the greatest.

What does this suggest you should do before lessons?

Which areas of Psychology interest me?

Psychology is a massive subject with lots to discover. It’s great to research independently into areas you are interested in as there is a lot that we don’t cover in lessons.

Here are some useful places to start:

The British Psychological Society (BPS) http://www.bps.org.uk/

The American Psychological Association www.apa.or/monitor/

Research Digest http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/ - You can subscribe to receive this fortnightly by e-mail (free of charge) and each brief article is linked to the relevant A level specifications.

ClickPsych.com http://www.clickpsych.com/ - Useful links for ‘A’ level Psychology, e.g. general psychology, evolutionary psychology, PGCE in psychology, physiological psychology, psychology@uni, etc.

PsyOnline http://www.psyonline.org.uk/ - It has a Student Room which contains a large section of links and information linking to the specification.

BBC www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/allinthemind.shtml - All in the Mind BBC R4 regular psychology programme

Evolutionary Approach www.becominghuman.org/

Behavioural Approach http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/

My personal favourite: Crash Course Psychology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 or Google ‘Crash Course Psychology’

Task: visit Crash Course Psychology and watch a few videos that you think might interest you.

Which episode/s did you watch?

What did you learn?

Which topics did you find most interesting?

Why?

The History of Psychology

Psychology has an interesting history – it starts a long time ago with thinkers like Aristotle, but has only been recognised as an academic area of study in the last 200 years or so. Find out about the history of psychology and work out which 10 events are the most influential in your opinion. Remember to justify your choices!

Record them in chronological order in the timeline below.

Date Event Why it is important

Debates in Psychology

What are the debates?

In psychology, there are four main debates/issues which run through out everything you learn

about. They are debates because people disagree about them, and there is no simple answer

about what is right or wrong. To be able to evaluate or compare and contrast, you need to get a

good grasp of what these debates are, and how they relate to the approaches you learn about.

The four debates are:

1. Nature or Nurture 2. Determinism or free will 3. Reductionism or holism 4. Idiographic or nomothetic

1: Nature or Nurture?

The nature/nurture debate suggests that people are either the product of their

genes and innate biological factors (nature) or a product of their environment

(nurture). Nature does not just mean all the things that are present at birth, but

also those things that come about through maturation (over time). For example,

having a gene for tallness does not mean you will be born tall, but that as you

mature, you will grow taller than average. Nurture is everything that is learned

through interactions with your environment, both physical and social, as well as

your upbringing. Some approaches may take a strong nature or strong nurture

stance. Others may see behaviour as a combination of the two. This is known as an

interactionist approach (is it refers to the interaction of genes and environment).

This debate was previously seen as an either-or debate. Nature and nurture were seen as independent factors.

However, modern psychology takes more of an interactionist approach, coming to the conclusion that the two

processes are entwined, reacting with each other.

Evaluating with the nature/nurture debate

If an approach takes a strong stance on either end of the nature/nurture

debate, it may not be providing a full explanation of behaviour, ignoring

important factors that may make a contribution. If an approach has a strong

nature stance, it may ignore the role of environmental factors. Likewise, if it takes a strong nurture stance it may

ignore the role of innate factors such as genes. Both of these can be seen as weaknesses.

2: Determinism or Free Will?

This debate concerns the issue of whether we have free will over our behaviour, or

whether our behaviour is determined by forces beyond our control. Determinism is the

view that an individual’s behaviour is controlled by external or internal forces rather

than the individual’s will to do something. This means that behaviour is predictable and

lawful. Free will on the other hand sees people as being able to choose their own actions, and being

self-determining. Free will assumes that individuals are free to choose their behaviour, and are not constrained

by other factors (biology, environment etc.).

Evaluating with the free will/determinism debate

If an approach is deterministic, it is scientific as it assumes all behaviour

is a product of cause and effect. All sciences take a deterministic

stance, as the point of science is to find the cause of things. If

psychology aims to be a science, then determinism is vital. Free will on

the other hand is unscientific, as it suggests that behaviour is

unpredictable, and therefore we cannot ascertain causes. If this is the

case, then there is no way to study human behaviour in a scientific

way.

Another issue is that a deterministic approach would imply that people

have no control over their behaviour. This raises some important

ethical issues. If a person’s behaviour was determined by forces

beyond their control can we hold them accountable for their actions?

The legal system is built on the assumption of free will. However, if we

accept free will, then people can be held accountable for their actions, and people can also be empowered to

shape their own lives.

3. Reductionism or holism?

This debate looks at the best way to produce explanations of human behaviour. Reductionism argues that the

best way to explain behaviour is by breaking down complex phenomena into simple components. Reductionists

would argue that this is preferable as complex phenomena are best understood in

terms of its smaller parts. From a reductionist point of view, behaviour is best

explained by going to the lowest unit of explanation. Holism on the other hand argues

the opposite. A holistic view would argue that human behaviour is too complicated to

be broken down into smaller components. Holism says that to best understand human

behaviour, we need to look at the system as a whole, and that we cannot predict how

the whole system will behave from knowledge of the individual components.

A simple example of this debate would be to look at a car. A reductionist

may explain how a car works by talking about the nuts and bolts that make

up the engine, or how combustion works at a chemical level, or the physical

forces that keep the tyres on the road. A holist would instead see the car as

a whole, and explain how all the smaller components work together to

produce the car’s movement and speed. While the reductionist approach

may have a greater explaining power, it fails to explain the “car-ness” of

the car; something which the holistic approach maintains.

Evaluating with the reductionism/holism debate

Reductionist explanations are very scientific, and the principle of reductionism underlies nearly all psychological

research. Without reductionism, we would not be able to reduce complex behaviour to a set of variables which

can then be tested. Holistic theories are much less scientific and it can be difficult to investigate the interaction

of different components of a whole. It is also difficult to make predictions with holistic theories.

However, a reductionist approach can oversimplify complex behaviour. Reductionist explanations often ignore

the interaction of phenomena, and so can be limited in terms of its ability to explain. Holistic explanations take

into account these complex interactions of phenomena; for holism, the whole is greater than the sum of its

parts.

4. Nomothetic or Idiographic?

This debate looks at the best way to investigate human behaviour. The

nomothetic approach involves the study of large numbers of people with the aim

of making laws/theories which can be generalised to all people. The nomothetic

approach to studying behaviour makes an assumption that there are similarities

between people, and that theories developed on one group of participants can

be generalised to everyone else. The idiographic approach on the other hand

involves he study of individuals and the unique insights this can give us into

human behaviour. The assumption behind this approach is that while there may

be similarities between people, behaviour can only be really understood on a person by person basis.

Evaluating with the idiographic/nomothetic debate

The nomothetic approach is in line with scientific principles, as it means that rules can be

generated that allow us to compare between groups of people, as well as making

testable predictions. However, the nomothetic approach does not take into account the

uniqueness of each person, meaning that it can only give a superficial understanding of

an individual.

The ideographic approach allows for a greater understanding of the individual, treating

each person as distinct and unique. It also can give us a deeper insight into behaviour, and a better

understanding that the nomothetic method. The ideographic approach however does not produce results that

can be generalised to all people, which limits its usefulness.

Why do you think that these approaches might be important in psychology?

Approaches in Psychology

What is an approach in psychology? An “approach” is a way of addressing the problem of explaining behaviour. Different psychologists prefer different approaches in the same way that you may be politically liberal whereas someone else is politically conservative. We all find that different things make sense. In terms of psychology, the situation is not as straightforward as in politics, as most people might favour one kind of approach when explaining, say, aggression, whereas they might favour another approach when offering an account of why some individuals develop mental disorders.

Ask yourself

• What concepts do biologists use when describing behaviour? • Why are some behaviours naturally selected? • What is a “radical behaviourist”? • How do neo-behaviourists differ from behaviourists? • What experiences in early life motivate adult behaviour? • How do biological drives interact with early experience? • In what way does “social cognition” use the cognitive approach? • What are some of the limitations of the cognitive approach?

Introduction No single explanation is “right” and no one explanation is right for every behaviour. Each of them is appropriate in different contexts. They form part of the psychologist’s “toolkit”. You must choose the psychological explanations that make best sense to you. However, it is important to note that it is not necessary to favour one approach over all others when trying to explain behaviour, because they often all have something to contribute. For example, there is no single cause of mental disorders such as schizophrenia or depression; instead, several biological and psychological factors all play a role.

Use the internet to research the basic assumptions of the following approaches to psychology. Create a summary of the assumptions of each approach below.

Biological approach

Behaviourist approach

Cognitive approach

Psychodynamic approach

Humanist approach

Which approach to psychology do you feel is the most useful? Justify your decision.

To get you thinking, below is a table to encourage you to think about how each of the approaches fits into each of the debates you read about previously. Fill out the boxes with how each approach relates to each debate, for example, is behaviourism more nature or nurture? How do you know? Add as much detail as you can.

Nature/Nurture Determinism/Free Will Reductionism/Holism Nomothetic/idiographic

Behaviourism

Psychodynamic

Cognitive

Biological

Films

There are many films that explore psychological issues, here are just a few…

Film title Topic/issue in psychology 50 First Dates Memory A Beautiful Mind Schizophrenia A Clockwork Orange Conditioning American History X Racial stereotypes and violence As Good As It Gets OCD Awakenings Brain disorder Clockwork Stress Daddy Daycare Daycare (cognitive v social development) Das Experiment Zimbardo Falling Down Environmental stressors Finding Nemo Memory Loss Football Factory Deindividuation Girl, Interrupted Mental Illness Good Will Hunting Attachment disorder Hotel Rwanda Obedience, conformity K-PAX Mental illness – or not! Marnie Disorder due to childhood trauma Matrix/Matrix Reloaded Free-will vs determinism Mean Girls Indirect aggression Memento Memory Mockingbird Don’t Sing Attachment - Genie Natural Born Killers Media violence One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Mental illness, institutionalisation Psycho Mental illness Rain Man Autism Silence of the Lambs Mental profiling The Three Faces of Eve Dissociative identity disorder This is England Aggression, prejudice, stereotypes, conformity Twelve Angry Men Minority influence The Experiment Zimbardo Derren Brown, The Experiments Various Experimenter Milgram, obedience Orange is the New Black Institutional aggression Shawshank Redemption Institutionalisation

Conducting Research in Psychology Conducting research is an essential part of psychology. It is how psychologists form theories and learn about people.

How could you investigate…

1. Whether intelligence is correlated with head size? 2. How to improve memory? 3. Whether babies are attached to their caregivers? 4. What causes schizophrenia? 5. Whether aggression is genetic or learned? 6. Whether women prefer muscular men? 7. How attachments are formed? 8. Whether teenagers are more attached to their mobile phones than their parents? 9. Whether people’s health is suffering from mobile technology? 10. Whether normal people are obedient enough kill another person?

For each topic, work out:

a. What the variables are (independent and dependent) b. How you would measure each of the variables c. Whether there is anything that might affect the results to make it an unfair test (extraneous variables) d. How you would control these e. Why it might be useful to investigate this topic.

Record your ideas below.

Investigation

Independent variable and

how you could measure it

Dependent variable and

how you could measure it

What could make it an unfair test

(extraneous variables)?

How would you control these extraneous variables?

Why might this be useful to investigate?

Investigation

Independent variable and

how you could measure it

Dependent variable and

how you could measure it

What could make it an unfair test

(extraneous variables)?

How would you control these extraneous variables?

Why might this be useful to investigate?

Investigation

Independent variable and

how you could measure it

Dependent variable and

how you could measure it

What could make it an unfair test

(extraneous variables)?

How would you control these extraneous variables?

Why might this be useful to investigate?