The 3-step active recall method

Re-reading notes is a futile process when your aim is to remember the information and successfully apply it in exam settings. Active recall is the method you use to ensure the information sticks for a long period of time.

But even active recall can be futile unless you have a structured way of implementing it. This is where the 3-step active recall method comes in, a structured method that is signature to the Levo Learning guides.

1. Step 1

   Answer up to 10 questions cold, closed book, even if you are unsure on the topic.

2. Step 2

   Answer the same questions again, but open book. Write the correct answer down even if it seems pointless.

3. Step 3

   Repeat as step 1 and answer the questions closed book again.

Worked across the Eduqas A-Level Psychology specification, one subtopic at a time.

The subject, and what is assessed

Eduqas A-Level Psychology is assessed by three components, each lasting 2 hours 15 minutes, carrying 100 marks and worth a third of the qualification. Component 1 covers the five psychological approaches from past to present.

Component 2 covers investigating behaviour, including research planning and data handling. Component 3 covers implications in the real world through applied behaviours.

Research methods are examined in Component 2 and again through the personal investigations.

Memorisation, then application

Marks are given for applying content to the question that has been set, which cannot happen while the content is still being looked up. Step 1 shows what is actually held.

Step 2 puts the correct wording in front of you while the gap is still fresh. Step 3 repeats the cold test, and the difference between the first and third attempt is the part that has moved.

Every question in the guide is paired with its answer in the same document, so step 2 is done from the guide itself rather than from a separate set of notes.

What is inside the guide

Questions are grouped by topic and then by subtopic, following the Eduqas specification. Open a topic to see its subtopics.

Sample questions

Taken from the Eduqas A-Level Psychology guide. Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

1. Component 1: Biological Approach

   What does the biological approach claim is the ultimate origin of every thought, feeling and behaviour?

   Show the answer

   It claims they all arise from physical processes in the body, chiefly the brain, the nervous system, genes and biochemistry.

2. Component 1: Psychodynamic Approach

   What does the approach claim about the causes of adult behaviour?

   Show the answer

   Freud claimed that adult behaviour is driven by unconscious conflicts and by experiences in early childhood rather than by conscious choice.

3. Component 1: Behaviourist Approach

   What does the behaviourist approach mean when it describes the mind at birth as a blank slate?

   Show the answer

   It assumes a baby is born with no innate ideas or pre-formed behaviour, so everything a person becomes is written onto them by experience.

4. Component 1: Cognitive Approach

   In the computer analogy, what corresponds to hardware and what to software?

   Show the answer

   The brain is the hardware and the mental processes running on it are the software.

5. Component 1: Positive Approach

   Which three assumptions is the positive approach built on?

   Show the answer

   The acknowledgement of free will, the authenticity of goodness and excellence, and a focus on 'the good life'.

6. Component 1: Comparing the Five Approaches (Synoptic)

   On the free will and determinism debate, which of the five approaches is the odd one out, and why?

   Show the answer

   The positive approach is, because it is the only one to make free will an explicit founding assumption. Of the other four, the biological, psychodynamic and behaviourist approaches are hard determinist, while the cognitive approach is usually classed as soft determinist: thinking is shaped by schemas and processing limits, but people can consciously change how they think.

7. Component 2: Core Studies in Social and Developmental Psychology

   What was the aim of Milgram's 1963 obedience study?

   Show the answer

   He wanted to find out how far an ordinary person would go in obeying an authority figure who ordered them to inflict pain on another person, and to create a laboratory procedure that could measure obedience directly.

8. Component 2: Planning Psychological Research

   What is the aim of a piece of research?

   Show the answer

   It is a general statement of what the researcher intends to investigate and why, written before any prediction is made.

Questions about this guide

All Eduqas A-Level guides · All A-Level guides