Child Psychology | Edexcel A-Level Psychology (9PS0)

Child Psychology

293 questions
22 subtopics
Paper 2: one application of three
Paper 2 and Paper 3

One of the three Paper 2 applications.

It covers Bowlby and Ainsworth on attachment, deprivation, privation and day care, cross-cultural research, and autism, together with the observation, self-report, cross-cultural and ethical methods that research with children requires.

Sample questions from Child Psychology

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Bowlby's theory of attachment

What did Bowlby mean by a critical period for attachment?

Show the answer
That attachment must form within roughly the first two and a half years, and becomes very difficult after about five.
Research into deprivation

Who described the protest-despair-detachment response to short-term separation?

Show the answer
James and Joyce Robertson, working with Bowlby.
Cross-cultural research into attachment

How do cross-cultural similarities in attachment support the nature side of the debate?

Show the answer
The finding that secure attachment is most common across all cultures suggests an innate, universal basis for attachment.
Individual differences in child psychology

How might gender act as an individual difference in reaction to day care?

Show the answer
Some studies report boys showing more externalising behaviour after long hours in care, though findings are inconsistent.
Questionnaires and interviews in child psychology

What is a limitation of structured interviews regarding depth of data?

Show the answer
They lack depth because the fixed format does not allow exploration of responses.
Cross-cultural research methods

How is meta-analysis used in cross-cultural Strange Situation research?

Show the answer
It is used to assess whether attachment types are universal across cultures by combining and analysing findings from multiple studies conducted in different cultural settings.
Classic study: van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

How many infants were covered by van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg's meta-analysis?

Show the answer
About 1,990.
Contemporary study: Gagnon-Oosterwaal et al. (2012)

Give one strength of Gagnon-Oosterwaal et al. (2012).

Show the answer
It used both child and parent reports, so the finding does not rest on a single perspective.

The 22 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Bowlby's theory of attachment	Recall questions on monotropy, the internal working model, the critical period, social releasers, maternal deprivation and the 44 Thieves study.	12
Ainsworth and the Strange Situation	Recall questions on the eight episodes of the Strange Situation, the four behaviours coded, secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant infants, Ainsworth's maternal sensitivity hypothesis and Baltimore study, De Wolff and van IJzendoorn's meta-analysis, and the temperament criticism.	24
Research into deprivation	Recall questions on protest, despair and detachment, the Robertsons' films, and how substitute emotional care reduces the effects.	11
Research into privation	Recall questions on Genie and the Czech twins, Rutter's Romanian adoptees, age at adoption, and disinhibited attachment.	12
Research into day care	Recall questions on the EPPE and NICHD findings, what distinguishes good from poor quality provision, and the effect of long hours.	9
Cross-cultural research into attachment	Recall questions on the nature-nurture question, variation between and within cultures, and the imposed etic criticism of the Strange Situation.	8
Autism: features, explanations and therapies	Recall questions on sensory differences, impaired social communication and interaction, restricted and repetitive behaviours, genetic and twin evidence, Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory, applied behaviour analysis, social skills and speech and language therapy, and early intervention.	28
Individual differences in child psychology	Recall questions on Kagan's temperament hypothesis, why attachment type differs by parent, and why day care suits some children and not others.	10
Developmental psychology in child psychology	Recall questions on the effects of day care, deprivation and privation on development, the continuity hypothesis, and the internal working model.	10
Observation in child psychology	Recall questions on qualitative and quantitative observational data, tallying frequency counts, the strengths and limitations of participant, non-participant, overt and covert observation, and how the four types combine.	16
Questionnaires and interviews in child psychology	Recall questions on how questionnaires and interviews gather quantitative and qualitative data, structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews and their reliability, closed questions, sampling through gatekeepers and parental consent, and which method suits young children.	27
Issues with self-report in child research	Recall questions on social desirability in parent reports, demand characteristics with children, and open against closed questions.	8
Cross-cultural research methods	Recall questions on using the Strange Situation across cultures, what similar and differing distributions say about nature and nurture, cross-sectional and longitudinal designs and cohort effects, meta-analysis, and the imposed etic and misclassification.	13
The ethics of researching with children	Recall questions on parental consent and child assent, children's rights and the UNCRC (1989), and participation and protection.	19
Analysing data in child psychology	Recall questions on why attachment type needs the mode, frequency tables, range and standard deviation, thematic analysis, bar charts, inter-rater reliability, and when chi-squared, Spearman's rho, Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon are used.	16
Classic study: van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)	Recall questions on the meta-analysis of 32 studies in 8 countries, the country patterns, and why within-culture variation was the larger.	10
Contemporary study: Cassibba et al. (2013)	Recall questions on the Italian meta-analysis, how the distribution compared with the global norm, and what explained the difference.	10
Contemporary study: Gagnon-Oosterwaal et al. (2012)	Recall questions on the international adoptees, pre-adoption adversity, internalising and externalising problems at seven, and why cause cannot be shown.	10
Contemporary study: Li et al. (2013) child care timing	Recall questions on the NICHD data, the comparison of infancy against pre-school care, and why timing mattered for the outcomes measured.	10
Key question in child psychology	Recall questions on choosing a key issue such as day care or adoption timing, and applying research to answer it.	10
Practical investigation in child psychology	Recall questions on designing an observation of children, defining categories, obtaining consent, and reporting the analysis.	10
Issues and debates in child psychology	Recall questions on ethics with children, nature and nurture in attachment, cultural bias in the Strange Situation, and social sensitivity.	10

Child Psychology is 293 of the 2,738 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.