Psychology (Year 13)
See Year 13s Psychology ‘Schedule of Learning’ for the 2025/26 academic year
| Topic | Sub-topic |
|---|---|
| Biopsychology | Biological rhythms: circadian, infradian and ultradian and the difference between these rhythms. |
| Biopsychology | Biological rhythms: The effect of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers on the sleep/wake cycle. |
| Issues & Debates | Gender and culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. |
| Issues & Debates | Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations. |
| Issues & Debates | 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. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism. |
| Issues & Debates | Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation. • Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity |
| Relationships | The evolutionary explanations for partner preferences, including the relationship between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour. |
| Relationships | Factors affecting attraction in romantic relationships: self-disclosure; physical attractiveness, including the matching hypothesis; filter theory, including social demography, similarity in attitudes and complementarity. |
| Relationships | Theories of romantic relationships: social exchange theory, equity theory and Rusbult’s investment model of commitment, satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment. Duck’s phase model of relationship breakdown: intra-psychic, dyadic, social and grave dressing phases. |
| Relationships | Virtual relationships in social media: self-disclosure in virtual relationships; effects of absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships. |
| Relationships | Parasocial relationships: levels of parasocial relationships, the absorption addiction model and the attachment theory explanation. |
| Schizophrenia | Classification of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including speech poverty and avolition. Reliability and validity in diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia, including reference to co-morbidity, culture and gender bias and symptom overlap. |
| Schizophrenia | Biological explanations for schizophrenia: genetics and neural correlates, including the dopamine hypothesis. Drug therapy: typical and atypical antipsychotics. |
| Schizophrenia | Psychological explanations for schizophrenia: family dysfunction and cognitive explanations, including dysfunctional thought processing. Cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Token economies as used in the management of schizophrenia. |
| Schizophrenia | The importance of an interactionist approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis-stress model. |
| Forensic | Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types of offender; the bottom-up approach, including investigative Psychology; geographical profiling. |
| Forensic | Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach (atavistic form); genetics and neural explanations. |
| Forensic | Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation; differential association theory; psychodynamic explanations. |
| Forensic | Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and the psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour modification in custody. Anger management and restorative justice programmes. |
| Revision | NA |
Exam Board – AQA
What will you study?
Biopsychology
Relationships
Issues & Debates
Schizophrenia
Forensic
Revision/ Exams
Useful tips and resources
– There are extended writing / essay questions worth 8 marks and 16 marks
– Psychology is scientific with the study of the brain; structure of the brain and function of different parts, nervous system, neurons, synaptic transmission etc. There are also detailed biological explanations and treatments for disorders and a biopsychology topic
– Psychology is heavily based on research methods which means learning about how experiments are designed and conducted, designing experiments, understanding the features of science
– The key assessment objectives are knowledge, application and evaluation
– You will have end of topic tests as well as termly assessments
– You will be provided with the log-on details for the digital textbook once you start the course
– Tutor2u has brilliant course notes, revision videos, games, activities
– Physics and maths tutor includes past exam questions, mark schemes, tips and advice
– Simply Psychology has brilliant notes that go beyond the specification, it also has articles and information about Psychology in the wider context
– Psych Boost has brilliant content videos
– Uplearn is a revision website that uses questioning to check knowledge
What super curricular activities can KS5 students engage with outside of school for your subject?
Some of my favourite TED Talks:
– Jon Ronson
– Phillip Zimbardo
– Eleanor Longden
– Ben Goldacre
– Elizabeth Loftus
Brilliant books that cover a range of topics from the specification:
– The Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson
– Hidden Valley Road – Robert Kolker
– The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks