Unit Three Syllabus

* central nervous system
* brain
* spinal cord
* peripheral nervous system
* somatic nervous system
* autonomic nervous system – sympathetic, parasympathetic

* process of neural transmission

* role of synapses
* role of neurotransmitters – serotonin, dopamine

* roles of the four lobes of the cerebral cortex

* frontal lobe – Broca's area, primary motor cortex
* parietal lobe – primary sensory cortex
* occipital lobe – primary visual cortex
* temporal lobe – Wernicke's area, primary auditory cortex

* factors that affect behaviour, emotion and thought, including:

* heredity – the role of genetics
* hormones – the effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline
* psychoactive drugs – the effects of depressants, stimulants and hallucinogens\

#### **Cognition**

* psychological concepts and processes associated with memory and their relationship to behaviour
* multi store model of memory – Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968
* sensory register
	+ duration, capacity, encoding
* short-term memory (working memory)
	+ duration, capacity and encoding
	+ working memory model – Baddeley and Hitch, 1974
* long-term memory
	+ duration, capacity and encoding
	+ procedural memory
	+ declarative memory – semantic and episodic
* recall, recognition, re-learning
* forgetting: retrieval failure, interference, motivated forgetting, decay
* theories and processes of learning
* classical conditioning
* operant conditioning
* observational learning
* techniques for modifying behaviour
* token economies
* systematic desensitisation
* Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
* positive and negative reinforcement, including rewards and punishment

### **Others**

#### **Relational influences**

* ====types of solutions to resolve conflict====
* imposed
* distributive
* integrative
* techniques for resolving conflict
* mediation
* negotiation
* counselling
* socialisation processes observed within families
* attachment – Harlow, Bowlby, Ainsworth
* features of different parenting styles – authoritative, authoritarian and permissive

#### **Communication**

* communication styles
* impact of social background – Bernstein, Labov
* examples of gender differences – Tannen
* features of persuasive communication
* source of the message
* nature of the communication
* characteristics of the audience
* features and limitations of theories of language development
* innate and learned behaviours – Chomsky, Bruner

### **Research methods**

#### **Planning and conducting psychological research**

* research terminology
* experimental, non-experimental
* scientific, non-scientific
* sample
* population
* ethics in psychology research
* role of the experimenter
* participants’ rights – privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, voluntary participation and withdrawal rights
* informed consent procedures
* deception in research
* professional conduct
* practical issues associated with planning and conducting research
* difference between sample and population data
* features of experimental research methods
* independent and dependent variables
* operational hypotheses
* controlled and uncontrolled variables
* experimental and control groups
* placebo and experimenter effects
* reliability and validity
* longitudinal and cross-sectional designs
* features of non-experimental (descriptive) research methods
* case studies, surveys, correlational studies and archival research
* behavioural variables (not dependent and independent variables) in correlational studies
* qualitative methods of data collection
* objective quantitative measures in research – physiological measures
* subjective quantitative measures in research – checklists and rating scales, such as Likert scales

#### **Processing and evaluating psychological research**

* methods of displaying quantitative data – tables, graphs and diagrams
* data interpretation
* measures of central tendency – mode, mean and median
* measures of dispersion – normal curve, range, variance and standard deviation
* role of probability
* use of correlation to establish association between variables
* sources of error in data and ways of reducing these
* the concept of statistical significance
* evaluation of and ways of improving research