Psychology Specification

Psychology Specification Check

• The multi-store model, including the concepts of encoding, capacity and 

duration.  Strengths and weaknesses of the model

• The working memory model, including its strengths and weaknesses

• Eyewitness testimony (EWT) and factors affecting the accuracy of EWT, 

including anxiety, age of witness

• Misleading information and the use of the cognitive interview

• Strategies for memory improvement

• Explanations of attachment, including learning theory, and evolutionary 

perspective, including Bowlby

• Types of attachment, including insecure and secure attachment and studies by 

Ainsworth

• Cultural variations in attachment

• Disruption of attachment, failure to form attachment (privation) and the effects 

of institutionalisation

• The impact of different forms of day care on children’s social development, 

including the effects on aggression and peer relations

• Implications of research into attachment and day care for child care practice

• Experimental method, including laboratory, field and natural experiments, adv+wea

• Studies using a correlational analysis, adv+wea

• Observational techniques, adv+wea

• Self-report techniques including questionnaire and interview, adv+wea

• Case studies, adv+wea

• Aims

• Hypotheses, including directional and non-directional

• Experimental design (independent groups, repeated measures and matched 

pairs)

• Design of naturalistic observations, including the development and use of 

behavioural categories

• Design of questionnaires and interviews

• Operationalisation of variables, including independent and dependent variables

• Pilot studies

• Control of extraneous variables

• Reliability and validity

• Awareness of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Code of Ethics

• Ethical issues and ways in which psychologists deal with them

• Selection of participants and sampling techniques, including random, 

opportunity and volunteer sampling

• Demand characteristics and investigator effects

• Presentation and interpretation of quantitative data including graphs, 

scattergrams and tables

• Analysis and interpretation of quantitative data.  Measures of central tendency 

including median, mean, mode. Measures of dispersion including ranges and 

standard deviation

• Analysis and interpretation of correlational data.  Positive and negative 

correlations and the interpretation of correlation coefficients

• Presentation of qualitative data

• Processes involved in content analysis