Module/Unit 1: Social and Cognitive Psychology: Students should know, understand, apply, critically analyse and evaluate the content, including performing procedures and making connections where appropriate. Topic A: Social psychology Students must show an understanding that social psychology is about aspects of human behaviour that involve the individual’s relationship to other persons, groups and society, including cultural influences on behaviour. Topic B: Cognitive psychology Students must show an understanding that cognitive psychology is about the role of cognition/cognitive processes in human behaviour. Processes include perception, memory, selective attention, language and problem solving. The cognitive topic area draws on how information is processed in the brain. There are opportunities for students to develop mathematical skills throughout the content. Students are required to apply the skills to relevant psychological contexts.
● The assessment is 1 hour and 30 minutes. ● The assessment is out of 64 marks. ● Students must answer all questions from three sections. ● Section A: Social psychology, totals 26 marks and comprises short-answer questions and one eight-mark extended open-response question. ● Section B: Cognitive psychology, totals 26 marks and comprises short-answer questions and one eight-mark extended open-response question. ● Section C: comprises one 12-mark extended open-response question on either social or cognitive psychology. ● The formulae and statistical tables given in Appendix 8: Formulae and statistical tables will also be given in the paper. ● Calculators may be used in the examination. Please see Appendix 6: Use of calculators. ● Students may be required to respond to stimulus material using psychological concepts, theories and/or research from across topic areas. ● Students may be asked to consider issues of validity, reliability, credibility, generalisability, objectivity, and subjectivity in their evaluation of studies and theories. ● Students should be able to define any terms given in the specification.
The guide below has been published to give you a summary of the things you need to know for this module, including the method/design issues (which can be found in the Module 4 section of this website under 'skills') :