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Psychology (A level)

Guru Nanak Sikh Academy
Key Stage 5 Curriculum Overview

Key Stage 5 Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1 Summer 2
Year 12 Introduction to Psychology : Topic 1
Social Influence
To what extent do others in society
influence our behaviour?
1. 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.
2. Conformity to social roles as
investigated by Zimbardo.
3. Explanations for obedience:
agentic state and legitimacy of authority, and situational variables affecting obedience
including proximity and location, as investigated by
Milgram, and uniform. Dispositional explanation for
obedience: the Authoritarian
Personality.
4. Explanations of resistance to
social influence, including social support and locus of
control.
5. Minority influence including
reference to consistency,
commitment and flexibility.
6. The role of social influence processes in social change.		 Topic 2 : Research Methods
What is the best way to investigate
human behaviour?
1. The Experimental method,
2. Types of experiment, laboratory and field experiments; natural
and quasi experiments.
3. Observational techniques Types
of observation: naturalistic and
controlled observation; covert
and over observation;
participant and non-participant observation.
4. Self-report techniques.
Questionnaires; interviews,
structured and unstructured ,
Correlations ,
5. Analysis of the relationship
between co-variables ,
6. The difference between correlations and experiments , Content analysis. and Case studies.		 Topic 3 : Issues and debates
How are the key issues in psychology debated
in modern academia ?

1. Gender and culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including
ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
2. Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism.
3. The scientific emphasis on causal
explanations. The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach.
Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in Psychology.
4. Biological reductionism and
environmental (stimulus-response)
reductionism. •
5. Idiographic and nomothetic
approaches to psychological
investigation.
6. • Ethical implications of research
studies and theory, including
reference to social sensitivity.

Topic 4: Psychopathology

How do we define what constitutes a healthy mental state, when there are issues how should we treat such issues?
1. Definitions of abnormality, including deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, statistical infrequency and
deviation from ideal mental health.
2. The behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
3. 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. •
4. 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.
5. The biological approach to explaining and treating OCD:
genetic and neural
explanations; drug therapy.
Revision for the Mock Exams

 Mock Exams
Topic 5 :Attachment.
How and with whom do we form
relationships with over the course of
our lifespan.
1. Caregiver-infant interactions
in humans: reciprocity and
interactional synchrony.
Stages of attachment
identified by Schaffer.
2. Multiple attachments and
the role of the father.
3. Animal studies of
attachment: Lorenz and
Harlow.
4. Explanations of attachment:
learning theory and
Bowlby’s monotropic
theory.
5. The concepts of a critical
period and an internal
working model.
6. Ainsworth’s ‘Strange
Situation’.
7. Types of attachment:
secure, insecure-avoidant
and insecure-resistant.
8. Cultural variations in
attachment, including
vanIjzendoorn.
9. Bowlby’s theory of maternal
deprivation.
10. Romanian orphan studies:
effects of
institutionalisation.
11. The influence of early
attachment on childhood
and adult relationships,
including the role of an
internal working model.		  
Year 13

Memory
What have we learnt about human
memory? How do these discoveries
influence the real world.
1. The multi-store
model of memory:
sensory register,
short-term memory
and long-term memory.
2. Features of each
store: coding,
capacity and duration.
3. Types of long-term
memory: episodic,
semantic, procedural.

4. The working
memory model:
central executive,
phonological loop,
visuo-spatial
sketchpad and
episodic buffer.
5.
Features of the model:
coding and capacity.
6. Explanations for
forgetting: proactive
and retroactive
interference and
retrieval failure due
to absence of cues.
7. Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: misleading information, including leading questions and post-event discussion; anxiety.
8. Improving the
accuracy of
eyewitness
testimony, including
the use of the
cognitive interview.

 Biopsychology
How does our biology influence our
behaviour?

1. The divisions of the nervous
system: central and peripheral
(somatic and autonomic).

2. The structure and function of
sensory, relay and motor
neurons.

3. The process of synaptic
4. transmission, including
reference to neurotransmitters,
excitation and inhibition.

5. The function of the endocrine
system: glands and hormones.
6. The fight or flight response
including the role of adrenaline..		 Topic 1: Forensic
How does psychology shape the law
and the lives of offenders within the
criminal justice system.
1. Offender profiling: the
top-down approach,
including organised and
disorganised types of
offender;
2. the bottom-up approach,
including investigative
Psychology; geographical
profiling. •
3. Biological explanations of
offending behaviour: an
historical approach
(atavistic form); genetics
and neural explanations.
• Psychological
explanations of
offending
behaviour:
4. Eysenck’s theory of the
criminal personality;
cognitive explanations
5. level of moral reasoning
and cognitive distortions,
including hostile attribution
bias and minimalisation
6. differential association
theory; psychodynamic
explanations.
7. Dealing with offending
behaviour: the aims of
custodial sentencing and
the psychological effects of
custodial sentencing.
Recidivism.
8. Behaviour modification in
custody.
9. Anger management and
restorative justice
programmes.		 Topic 2: Schizophrenia
What is Schizophrenia how can we
improve the lives of those with the
condition?
1. Biological explanations for
schizophrenia: genetics and
neural correlates, including
the dopamine hypothesis.
2. Psychological explanations for
schizophrenia: family
dysfunction and cognitive
explanations, including
dysfunctional thought
processing.
3. Drug therapy: typical and
atypical antipsychotics.
4. Cognitive behaviour therapy
and family therapy as used in
the treatment of
schizophrenia. Token
economies as used in the
management of
schizophrenia.
5. The importance of an
interactionist approach in
explaining and treating
schizophrenia; the
diathesis-stress model.

Revision
Topic 3 : Relationships
How do we choose who we spend
our lives with and what makes a
relationship last ?
1. Evolutionary explanations
for partner selection ,
2. Factors affecting attraction
in romantic relationships
failure to function
adequately
3. statistical infrequency and
theories of romantic
relationships
4. Virtual relationships in
social media
5. parasocial relationship,.

 Exams
 
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