Unit 2: Biological psychology, learning theories and development: Students should know, understand, apply, critically analyse and evaluate the content, including performing procedures and making connections where appropriate. Topic C: Biological psychology Students must show an understanding that biological psychology is about the mechanisms within our body and how they affect our behaviour, focusing on aggression and body rhythms. Topic D: Learning theories and development Students must show an understanding that learning theories are about learning from the environment and the effects of conditioning, reinforcement, punishment, the role of reward and social learning. Students must also show an understanding of learning theories as theories of development and psychodynamic ideas and concepts as different explanations for development, as well as focusing on individual differences. 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 2 hours. ● The assessment is out of 96 marks. ● Students must answer all questions from three sections. ● Section A: Biological psychology, totals 34 marks and comprises short-answer questions and one eight-mark extended open-response question. ● Section B: Learning theories and development, totals 34 marks and comprises short-answer questions and one eight-mark extended open-response question. ● Section C: comprises one 12-mark and one 16-mark extended open-response question. The 12-mark question covers either biological psychology or learning theories and development and the 16-mark question covers both biological psychology, and learning theories and development. ● 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. ● Research methods from Topic A and Topic B may be assessed in the written examination for this unit.
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') :