Psychology (Y12-Y13)

Vision

To explore the different reasons why human beings think and behave the way they do.

To develop and apply your mathematical and scientific skills and build your knowledge of Psychology as a scientific discipline. I.e. develop your own research.

Analyse different perspectives and theorists within Psychology and compare their views on human behaviour.

To critically evaluate human behaviour and see the benefit that psychology and its research value have on the economy.

Psychology is an excellent subject to have as it is helpful to understand how and why people behave in every-day life. For example, is it part of the environment or our genetics that certain individuals are more likely to break the law?

The image above is still (not a Gif.). However, when we look at this image our eyes perceive it to be moving. Why? This is an optical illusion where Psychologists are interested in researching why humans see this still image move. It really is a still image, if you stare at one point on the image it should stop moving for you.

Psychologists conduct a variety of different research depending on the human behaviour they are interested in. In the perception of moving images case laboratory experiments in controlled settings have been used to gather evidence to support a hypothesis (a scientifically testable prediction).

Possible findings from research into the above illusion are:

The colour white turns our retinas receptors “on” while black shuts them “off”. Having black and white colours in patterns near each other confuses our brain and makes the image appear to flicker or move.
The arrangement of colour bands repeated in an asymmetric pattern could also play a role in the perceived motion (Ming-Te Chi, 2008).
High contrast colours make the illusion more effective, such as pairing black and white or blue and yellow. (Ming-Te Chi, 2008).

Throughout the course students will look at existing theory and models within Psychology, and be able to build their own views of human behaviour to understand why we behave the way we do. Please click on the hyperlinks to access knowledge organisers.

	Year 12	Year 13
Term 1	Key Approaches what are the main areas of Psychology? Who are the main theorists? What do they believe? Research Methods what are the different elements of Psychological research? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these methods? Memory what are the different stores within memory? How do they function? How does our knowledge of memory affect eye witness testimony? Psychopathology what are different conditions such as OCD and Anxiety disorder? How can we treat these?	Schizophrenia Biological explanations, treatments, Psychological explanations and therapy. Management of schizophrenia. Gender development Is gender a product of nature or nurture?
Term 2	Social influence what factors influence human behaviour when we are in a group? Why do we act differently in a group compare to being alone? Attachment Why and how to humans create attachments? What happens if we do not form the correct attachments as a child? Research Methods further development into the different types of research and conducting it ourselves. Biopsychology How does the brain impact human behaviour?	Forensic Psychology what makes a criminal? How can we help to catch a criminal? How can we stop people from committing criminal acts? Issues and Debates Issues within Psychology that we develop critical arguments for. This area of the course requires knowledge evidence from all other areas of the curriculum.
Assessment	Mock exams	Mock exams
Term 3	Research Methods A level element where we look at inferential statistics. Key approaches A level element of the approaches including the comparison of approaches. Biopsychology A Level element of the brain and human behaviour.
Assessment	Assessment week/ resit mock exams	Resit mock exams