Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Psychology Comprehensive Study Notes

Topic 1: Development – How Did You Develop?

• Background to Development

  • Development is fundamental to understanding humans, underpinning everything we do, say, our attitudes, and beliefs throughout our lifetime.
  • Our development is determined by both nature (what we are born with) and nurture (our upbringing and experiences).
  • Psychology suggests that while we develop new abilities as we age, our knowledge of our own strengths can sometimes hinder progress; however, effort and practice generally lead to improvement.

• Early Brain Development

  • ### Foetal Development of the Brain
  • At 3 to 4 weeks old, the foetus develops a long tube in the brain divided into three sections: forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain.
  • By 5 weeks old, the forebrain splits into anterior (front) and posterior (behind) sections; the hindbrain splits through the middle; the midbrain does not divide.
  • The cerebellum ("little brain") is visible at 6 weeks and triples in size by one year after birth. It controls motor movements (muscle activity), processes sensory information, and is involved in responses like fear.
  • The medulla oblongata (in the hindbrain) controls involuntary, automatic responses such as breathing, sneezing, heart rate, and blood pressure. It forms by 20 weeks and connects the brain to the spinal cord.
  • ### Neural Connections and Growth
  • From birth to 3 years old, 700–1000 new neural connections form every second, allowing fast communication between brain parts.
  • The brain doubles in size during the first year and reaches $80\%$ of its final size by age 3.

• Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

  • ### Key Concepts
  • Cognitive Development: The development of thinking, problem-solving, and reasoning.
  • Schema: Mental representations of the world based on one’s own experiences.
  • Adaptation: Using assimilation and accommodation to make sense of the world.
  • Assimilation: Incorporating new experiences into existing schemas (e.g., calling an aeroplane a "bird").
  • Accommodation: Changing a schema to deal with a new experience (e.g., realizing birds are alive and planes are metal).
  • Equilibrium: A state of mental balance when schemas explain everything experienced.
  • ### Four Stages of Development
  1. Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years): Infants learn through senses and movements. Reflexes develop into controlled actions. Around 6 months, they develop object permanence (knowing things exist even when out of sight).
  2. Pre-operational Stage (2 to 7 years):
     • Symbolic Function (2–4 years): Imitation, symbolic play (using a box as a stool), and language development. Features egocentrism (unable to see other viewpoints) and animism (believing objects are alive).
     • Intuitive Thought (4–7 years): Start of reasoning. Features centration (focusing on one factor only) and lack of conservation or irreversibility.
  3. Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 12 years): Applying rules to concrete objects. Abilities include seriation (sorting by size), classification, reversibility, and decentration (taking multiple views).
  4. Formal Operational Stage (12+ years): Control over thoughts. Understanding abstract consequences, sequences of events, and time changes.
  • ### Role in Education
  • Focus on the child's thinking process rather than the right answer.
  • Encouragement of discovery learning through engagement with the environment.
  • Recognition that children develop at different rates and do not think like adults.

• Dweck’s Mindset Theory

  • ### Mindset Types
  • Fixed Mindset: Believing abilities are innate and unchangeable. Failure leads to giving up.
  • Growth Mindset: Believing practice and effort improve abilities. Challenges and feedback are embraced.
  • ### Influence of Praise
  • Person Praise: Praising the individual (e.g., "You are good at maths") leads to a fixed mindset.
  • Process/Effort Praise: Praising the work done (e.g., "You worked hard on that sum") leads to a growth mindset.
  • ### Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Strength: Practical applications for parents and teachers to improve achievement.
  • Weakness: Focusing on the child's mindset may ignore the quality of teaching.

• Willingham’s Learning Theory

  • ### Key Principles
  • Factual knowledge precedes skill: Knowing facts frees up working memory for problem-solving.
  • Practice and Effort: Skills must be repeated until automatic to reduce the load on working memory.
  • Support for Development:
    • Cognitive: Use problems within ability but requiring effort.
    • Physical: Order and practice movements consciously.
    • Social: Build on the child's ability to see other viewpoints (which Willingham argues starts as early as 18 months).

• ## Studies in Development

  • ### Piaget and Inhelder (1956) ‘Three Mountains’ Task
  • Aim: To see the extent to which children of different ages can take the view of another person.
  • Procedure: 100 children (ages 4–12) viewed a 3D model of three distinct mountains. A doll was placed at different positions. Children picked from pictures or cards to show what the doll could see.
  • Results: Children aged 4–6.5 (pre-operational) showed egocentrism, choosing their own view. Children aged 7–9 (concrete operational) began to understand the doll's view. By 9–10, they were fully non-egocentric.
  • Conclusion: Support for stages of development and the decline of egocentrism with age.
  • ### Gunderson et al. (2013) Parent Praise Study
  • Aim: To see if parent praise in a natural home environment predicts a child’s motivational framework 5 years later.
  • Procedure: 53 caregiver-child pairs (Chicago) observed at 14, 26, and 38 months old. At age 7–8, children answered questionnaires on beliefs about intelligence and morality.
  • Results: Process praise correlated with an incremental (growth) framework ($r = 0.35$). There was no relationship between person praise and a fixed framework.
  • Conclusion: Types of praise in early childhood affect later reasoning, with boys generally receiving more process praise than girls.

Topic 2: Memory – How Does Your Memory Work?

• Memory and Information Processing

  • Input: Sensory information from the environment (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell).
  • Encoding: Transforming sensory stimuli into an electrochemical trace (Acoustic, Visual, or Semantic).
  • Storage: Retention of the memory trace over time.
  • Output: Information recalled (retrieval) or behavioral responses.

• Multi-store Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)

  • ### The Sensory Register
  • Immediate memory of sensory data. Very brief duration (Iconic memory: $< 1\text{ second}$; Echoic memory: a few seconds).
  • ### Short-term Memory (STM)
  • Capacity: $7 \pm 2$ chunks of information (George Miller, 1956).
  • Duration: $18–30\text{ seconds}$ without rehearsal.
  • Encoding: Primarily acoustic.
  • Forgetting: Through displacement (pushed out) or decay.
  • ### Long-term Memory (LTM)
  • Capacity: Potentially limitless.
  • Duration: Minutes to a lifetime.
  • Encoding: Primarily semantic (meaning).
  • Forgetting: Through decay, interference, or retrieval failure.

• Reconstructive Memory (Bartlett, 1932)

  • Memories are not exact records; they are active reconstructions based on Schemas (packets of knowledge based on past experience).
  • Distortion types:
  • Omissions: Leaving out unfamiliar or unpleasant details.
  • Transformations: Changing details to make them more rational.
  • Familiarisation: Changing details to align with personal culture.
  • Rationalisation: Adding details to explain why things happened.

• Amnesia

  • Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to create new long-term memories after a brain injury. STM remains intact.
  • Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to recall memories from before the brain injury.

• Memory Studies

  • ### Bartlett (1932) ‘War of the Ghosts’
  • Aim: To test how schemas influence memory for an unfamiliar story.
  • Procedure: Participants read a North American folk tale and used serial or repeated reproduction to recall it over time.
  • Results: Participants rationalized the story (e.g., " Something black" became "foaming at the mouth") and familiarized it (e.g., "Canoe" became "boat").
  • Conclusion: Memory is active and influenced by our cultural schemas.
  • ### Peterson & Peterson (1959) Duration of STM
  • Aim: To test the duration of STM without rehearsal.
  • Procedure: 24 students recalled consonant trigrams (e.g., BFP) after delays of 3–18 seconds, while counting backwards to prevent rehearsal.
  • Results: After 3 seconds, $> 80\%$ recall; after 18 seconds, $< 10\%$ recall.
  • Conclusion: STM has a very limited duration when rehearsal is interrupted.

• ## Issues and Debates: Reductionism vs. Holism

  • Reductionism: Explaining behavior by breaking it down into simple parts (e.g., the Multi-store Model).
  • Holism: Understanding behavior as a whole, taking multiple factors into account (e.g., Bartlett’s qualitative analysis).

Topic 3: Psychological Problems – How Would They Affect You?

• Unipolar Depression

  • ### Symptoms (ICD-10)
  • Main symptoms: Lowering of mood, lack of energy, lack of motivation.
  • Other: Poor sleep/appetite, low self-esteem, guilt, suicidal thoughts.
  • ### Incidence and Influence
  • 1 in 15 people suffer every year. Twice as many females as males.
  • High levels of social media and modern life stress are linked to increases among young adults.
  • Cost to NHS: Approximately £$1.7\text{ billion}$ in 2007.
  • ### Genetic Explanation
  • Twin studies: Monozygotic ($46\%$ concordance), Dizygotic ($20\%$ concordance).
  • 17 gene variations linked to depression (Hyde et al., 2016).
  • Diathesis-stress model: Biological predisposition triggered by stressful life events.
  • ### Cognitive Theory (Beck & Ellis)
  • Beck’s Negative Triad: Negative views of Self, World, and Future.
  • Ellis’s ABC Model: Activating event ($A$) leads to Beliefs ($B$) which cause Consequences ($C$).
  • ### Treatments
  • CBT: Functional analysis and challenging irrational thoughts.
  • Drug Therapy: SSRIs, SNRIs, MAOIs, and Tricyclics. Work by increasing neurotransmitter levels (Serotonin, Noradrenaline).

• Addiction

  • ### Symptoms
  • Tolerance, withdrawal, difficulty stopping, ignoring harm, replacing fun activities with substance use.
  • ### Explanations
  • Genetic: DDR2 A1 gene variation affects brain reaction to pleasure.
  • Learning Theory:
    • Classical Conditioning: Association with positive feelings.
    • Operant Conditioning: Positive/Negative reinforcement (avoiding withdrawal).
    • Social Learning: Imitating role models.
  • ### Treatments
  • CBT: Functional analysis (identifying triggers) and skills training (coping with cravings).
  • Drug Therapy: Methadone (opiates), Nicotine replacement, Naltrexone (alcohol/gambling).

• ## Key Study: Caspi et al. (2003)

  • Aim: To see if the 5-HTT gene (linked to serotonin) interacts with life stress to cause depression.
  • Procedure: 847 participants from Dunedin study divided into three groups based on gene version (short/long).
  • Results: Those with at least one short version of the 5-HTT gene who experienced stressful life events were most likely to develop depression and suicidal thoughts.
  • Conclusion: Nature and Nurture interact in the development of depression.

Topic 4: The Brain and Neuropsychology

• Brain Structure and Function

  • Frontal Lobe: Decision-making, impulse control, problem-solving, motor cortex.
  • Temporal Lobe: Hearing (auditory cortex), speech understanding, memory.
  • Parietal Lobe: Perception, facial recognition, sense of touch (somatosensory cortex).
  • Occipital Lobe: Vision (visual cortex).
  • Cerebellum: Movement, coordination, balance.

• Lateralisation

  • The two hemispheres have different jobs (Asymmetrical Function).
  • Left Hemisphere: Language processing, writing, logical thinking, Broca’s area (speech production).
  • Right Hemisphere: Spatial awareness, creativity, musical ability, facial recognition.
  • Corpus Callosum: Nerve fibers connecting the two halves.

• Central Nervous System (CNS)

  • Brain and spinal cord. Relays messages via the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS).
  • Neurons: Transmit information.
  • Neurotransmitters: Dopamine (attention), Serotonin (mood), GABA (calming).
  • Synaptic Transmission: Electrical impulse triggers vesicles in the terminal button to release chemicals into the synapse, which are then absorbed by receptors on the next neuron.

• ## Neuropsychological Studies

  • ### Damasio et al. (1994) ‘The Return of Phineas Gage’
  • Procedure: Created a 3D model of Gage’s skull to map the path of the iron rod that passed through his head.
  • Results: Damage was likely confined to the ventromedial region of both frontal lobes.
  • Conclusion: Frontal lobes are critical for decision-making, impulse control, and social behavior.
  • ### Sperry (1968) Split-brain Research
  • Procedure: 11 epilepsy patients with severed corpus callosa performed visual and tactile tasks.
  • Results: Words shown to the Right Visual Field (Left Hemisphere) could be spoken. Objects felt with the Left Hand (Right Hemisphere) could not be named but could be identified tactually.
  • Conclusion: The hemispheres have specialist roles and cannot share information without the corpus callosum.

Topic 5: Social Influence – How Do Others Affect You?

• Key Terms

  • Obedience: Complying with orders from an authority figure.
  • Conformity: Matching behavior to a majority.
  • Compliance (publicly agree, privately disagree).
  • Internalisation (publicly and privately agree).
  • Identification (temporary change while in group).
  • Deindividuation: Loss of personal identity and responsibility in a crowd.

• Bystander Behavior

  • Bystander Effect: Apathy in an emergency.
  • Situational Factors: Diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, cost of helping.
  • Personal Factors: Competence, mood, similarity to victim.

• Obedience to Authority

  • Milgram’s Study (1963): Over $65\%$ of participants gave a lethal electric shock of $450\text{ volts}$ when told by an authority figure.
  • Factors affecting obedience: Proximity of victim/authority, legitimacy of context, personal responsibility.
  • Authoritarian Personality: Rigid beliefs, respect for hierarchy (measured by F-Scale).

• ## Social Influence Studies

  • ### Piliavin et al. (1969) ‘Good Samaritanism’
  • Aim: To test helping behavior on a New York subway.
  • Procedure: Victim (ill or drunk) collapsed. Observers recorded reactions.
  • Results: Ill victim helped $95\%$ of times; drunk victim $50\%$ of times. Larger groups were quicker to help. Men helped more than women.
  • Conclusion: Behavior is influenced by a cost-reward calculus.
  • ### Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) Stanford Prison Study
  • Aim: To see if aggression arises from personalities or situations.
  • Procedure: 22 healthy male students randomly assigned as prisoners or guards in a mock prison.
  • Results: Guards became aggressive; prisoners became passive/distressed. Stopped early after 6 days.
  • Conclusion: Individuals conform to social roles (Identification/Deindividuation).

Topic 11: Research Methods

• Variables and Hypotheses

  • Independent Variable (IV): What you change.
  • Dependent Variable (DV): What you measure.
  • Null Hypothesis: Predicts no effect.
  • Alternative Hypothesis: Predicts an outcome (Directional or Non-directional).

• Statistics and Analysis

  • Mean: Average (Sum of values / n).
  • Median: Middle value.
  • Mode: Most frequent value.
  • Range: Highest minus lowest.
  • Distributions: Normal distribution (Bell curve) means mean, median, and mode are similar.
  • Correlation: Positive (both up) or Negative (one up, one down).

• ## Research Ethics (BPS Code)

  1. Respect (Autonomy, Privacy).
  2. Scientific Integrity.
  3. Social Responsibility.
  4. Maximising Benefit / Minimising Harm.
  • Specific issues: Informed consent, deception, right to withdraw, confidentiality, protection.