England · AQAQ&A
PsychologyQ&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every England Psychology syllabus dot point. Each question and answer is drawn directly from our worked dot-point page, so you can scan key concepts before opening the long-form answer.
3.7 Brain and neuropsychology
- The structure and function of the brain: the four lobes of the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum and the autonomic functions, and the role of the brainstem.3Q&A pairs
- Localisation of function and ways of studying the brain: language areas, the role of neuropsychology, Penfield's work, and scanning techniques such as CT, PET and fMRI.3Q&A pairs
- Neurons and synaptic transmission: the structure of sensory, relay and motor neurons, the electrical impulse, and how neurotransmitters cross the synapse.3Q&A pairs
- The structure and function of the nervous system: the central and peripheral nervous systems, the autonomic nervous system, and the fight or flight response.3Q&A pairs
3.3 Development
- Early brain development: the development of the brain in the womb and early years, the role of nature and experience, and Willatts' study of the development of means-end behaviour in infants.3Q&A pairs
- The application of Piaget's theory to education, the effect of learning styles and Dweck's fixed and growth mindsets, and the role of praise and self-efficacy in learning.3Q&A pairs
- Piaget's stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational, plus key concepts such as schemas, conservation and egocentrism.3Q&A pairs
- The nature-nurture debate in development: the influence of genes (nature) and environment (nurture), and how they interact to shape behaviour and abilities.3Q&A pairs
3.6 Language, thought and communication
- Explanations of non-verbal behaviour: the nature view that it is innate and the nurture view that it is learned, with evidence such as facial expressions in babies and cross-cultural studies.3Q&A pairs
- Differences between human language and animal communication, including features such as displacement, creativity and grammar, with examples such as Von Frisch's bee dance.3Q&A pairs
- Non-verbal communication: functions and types including body language, facial expressions, eye contact, personal space and the differences from verbal communication.3Q&A pairs
- The relationship between language and thought: Piaget's view that thought comes before language and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language shapes thought.3Q&A pairs
3.1 Memory
- Factors affecting the accuracy of memory: interference, context and false memories, plus theories of forgetting including interference and retrieval failure.3Q&A pairs
- Encoding and retrieval in memory: acoustic and semantic encoding, the reconstructive nature of memory (Bartlett's War of the Ghosts), and the effect of context and cues on retrieval.3Q&A pairs
- The multi-store model of memory: sensory, short-term and long-term stores, their capacity, duration and encoding, and the roles of attention and rehearsal.3Q&A pairs
- Types of memory: episodic, semantic and procedural long-term memory, with everyday examples of each and how they are distinguished.3Q&A pairs
3.2 Perception
- Depth cues in perception: monocular cues (height in plane, relative size, occlusion, linear perspective) and binocular cues (retinal disparity, convergence).3Q&A pairs
- Theories of perception: Gibson's direct (bottom-up) theory and Gregory's constructivist (top-down) theory, including the role of inference, expectation and the environment.3Q&A pairs
- The difference between sensation and perception: sensation as raw data from the senses and perception as the brain's interpretation of that data.3Q&A pairs
- Visual illusions and their explanations: ambiguity, misinterpreted depth cues, fiction and size constancy, using examples such as the Muller-Lyer, the Ponzo, the Ames room and the rotating snakes.3Q&A pairs
3.4 Research methods
- Research ethics: the British Psychological Society guidelines including consent, deception, protection from harm, confidentiality and the right to withdraw, and how reliability and validity are assessed.3Q&A pairs
- Experiments and variables: independent and dependent variables, the hypothesis, experimental designs, extraneous variables, and laboratory, field and natural experiments.3Q&A pairs
- Sampling methods: the target population and sample, random, opportunity, systematic and stratified sampling, and their strengths and weaknesses for representativeness.3Q&A pairs
- Types of data: quantitative and qualitative data, primary and secondary data, the use of measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and ways of displaying data.3Q&A pairs
3.5 Social influence
- Bystander behaviour: the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility, and the situational and personal factors that affect whether people help.3Q&A pairs
- Conformity: Asch's study of majority influence, the factors affecting conformity (group size, anonymity and task difficulty), and the reasons people conform.3Q&A pairs
- Obedience: Milgram's agency theory, the factors affecting obedience (proximity, location and uniform), and dispositional factors such as the authoritarian personality.3Q&A pairs
- Prosocial and antisocial behaviour: defining each, the role of deindividuation, and how social factors and the presence of others influence helping and harming behaviour.3Q&A pairs