Areas and Perspectives in Psychology | OCR A-Level Psychology (H567)

Areas and Perspectives in Psychology

210 questions
21 subtopics
Component 02: Psychological themes through core studies
Component 02

Areas and Perspectives in Psychology is examined on component 02 of OCR Psychology, Psychological themes through core studies.

210 recall questions across 21 subtopics.

Sample questions from Areas and Perspectives in Psychology

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

The social area: defining principles, Milgram and Bocchiaro et al.

Why do social psychologists often choose field settings over laboratories?

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Real social settings preserve the genuine social pressures that an artificial laboratory task would strip away.
The social area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison

How can Milgram's findings be applied in institutions such as hospitals or the military?

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Staff can be trained to question instructions, given procedures for challenging a senior figure, and reminded that they remain personally responsible for what they do.
The cognitive area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison

What is machine reductionism, and why is it a weakness of this area?

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It is the habit of describing the mind as though it were a computer, which leaves out the emotion, motivation and social context that also shape thinking.
The developmental area: Chaney et al., Kohlberg and Lee et al.

What did Lee et al. compare in Chinese and Canadian children?

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Their moral evaluations of lying and truth-telling in short stories about a good deed and about a misdeed, in children aged seven, nine and eleven.
The biological area: Casey et al., Blakemore and Cooper and Maguire et al.

Which two brain regions distinguished high from low delayers on the brain scans?

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The inferior frontal gyrus, more active in high delayers, and the ventral striatum, more active in low delayers.
The individual differences area: defining principles and Freud's Little Hans

Describe the phobia at the centre of the Little Hans case.

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Hans was afraid to go into the street because he feared that a horse would bite him or would fall down.
The behaviourist perspective: conditioning, reinforcement and observational learning

Explain classical conditioning.

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A neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with a stimulus that already produces a reflex eventually comes to produce that response by itself.
The behaviourist perspective: weaknesses, applications and comparison with the psychodynamic perspective

How do the two perspectives differ in their view of what a child is born with?

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The behaviourist perspective treats the newborn as a blank slate, whereas the psychodynamic perspective holds that the child arrives with innate drives already present in the id.

The 21 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
The social area: defining principles, Milgram and Bocchiaro et al.	Recall questions on the central assumption and situational focus of the social area, the agentic state, field settings, and illustrative research from Milgram's obedience study and Bocchiaro et al.'s whistle-blowing study, including its personality findings.	11
The social area: Piliavin et al. and Levine et al.	Recall questions on Piliavin et al.'s subway study setting, its findings on ill and drunk victims, the arousal: cost-reward model and diffusion of responsibility, and Levine et al.'s helping measures, most and least helpful cities, economic productivity and simpatía.	8
The social area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison	Recall questions on strengths of the social area including field experiments, optimism and cultural diversity, its weaknesses in ethics, situational explanations and dated findings, applications of Bocchiaro et al. and Milgram, and comparisons with the biological, behaviourist and individual differences approaches.	11
The cognitive area: defining principles, Loftus and Palmer and Grant et al.	Recall questions on the cognitive area's assumptions, the computer analogy and indirect study of processes, and illustrative research from Loftus and Palmer's eyewitness experiments and Grant et al.'s context-dependent memory study, including its main finding.	11
The cognitive area: Moray and Simons and Chabris	Recall questions on shadowing and dichotic listening, Moray's findings on the rejected ear and his conclusions, inattentional blindness, and Simons and Chabris's task, noticing rates and the effect of task difficulty.	8
The cognitive area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison	Recall questions on the cognitive area's methodological strength and applicability, criticisms of ecological validity, machine reductionism and inference, applications to police questioning, revision and road safety, and comparisons with the behaviourist, biological and psychodynamic approaches.	11
The developmental area: defining principles and Bandura et al.	Recall questions on the developmental area's focus on change, maturation and learning, critical periods, nature and nurture, stage theories, and Bandura, Ross and Ross's study of the transmission of aggression.	9
The developmental area: Chaney et al., Kohlberg and Lee et al.	Recall questions on the Funhaler and Chaney et al.'s method, findings and learning principle, Kohlberg's sample, levels and stages of moral development, and Lee et al.'s cross-cultural comparison of lying and truth-telling.	12
The developmental area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison	Recall questions on practical and nature/nurture strengths of the developmental area, ethical, longitudinal and cultural weaknesses, applications of Bandura et al. and Chaney et al., and comparisons with the social and biological areas.	9
The biological area: defining principles and Sperry	Recall questions on the biological area's assumptions, biological factors, animal research, localisation of function, brain plasticity and determinism, and Sperry's split-brain procedure and conclusions about the two hemispheres.	10
The biological area: Casey et al., Blakemore and Cooper and Maguire et al.	Recall questions on Casey et al.'s go/no-go task, participants and brain findings for high and low delayers, Blakemore and Cooper's kitten rearing and cortical recordings, and Maguire et al.'s taxi driver sample and hippocampal findings.	10
The biological area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison	Recall questions on the scientific and clinical strengths of the biological area, reductionism, sampling and animal ethics as weaknesses, correlation in Maguire et al., applications of Maguire et al. and Casey et al., and comparisons with the social and individual differences areas.	10
The individual differences area: defining principles and Freud's Little Hans	Recall questions on the questions that define the individual differences area, idiographic approaches, psychometric tests, abnormality and internal explanations, and Freud's case of Little Hans, his phobia and its explanation and resolution.	10
The individual differences area: Baron-Cohen et al., Gould and Hancock et al.	Recall questions on Baron-Cohen et al.'s Eyes Task, groups, control tasks and conclusions, Gould's analysis of army intelligence testing and its criticisms, and Hancock et al.'s analysis of psychopaths' language and linguistic findings.	12
The individual differences area: strengths, weaknesses, applications and comparison	Recall questions on strengths of the individual differences area including case studies and clinical usefulness, weaknesses of generalisation, biased measures and social sensitivity, applications of Baron-Cohen et al. and Hancock et al., and comparison with the social area.	8
The behaviourist perspective: conditioning, reinforcement and observational learning	Recall questions on the behaviourist perspective's central claim, the blank slate, observable behaviour, classical and operant conditioning, positive and negative reinforcement, vicarious reinforcement, observational learning, animal research and behaviour modification.	10
The behaviourist perspective: Bandura et al., the Funhaler study and strengths	Recall questions on how Bandura et al.'s study supports the behaviourist perspective and adds to conditioning accounts, how Chaney et al.'s Funhaler illustrates operant conditioning, and the scientific and practical strengths of behaviourism.	10
The behaviourist perspective: weaknesses, applications and comparison with the psychodynamic perspective	Recall questions on criticisms of the behaviourist perspective including environmental determinism, reductionism, animal studies and ethics, applications in health care and token economies, and similarities and differences with the psychodynamic perspective.	10
The psychodynamic perspective: personality structure, psychosexual stages and defence mechanisms	Recall questions on the psychodynamic perspective's central claim, the id, ego and superego, Freud's psychosexual stages, fixation, defence mechanisms, displacement and the Oedipus complex.	10
The psychodynamic perspective: Little Hans, Kohlberg and Hancock et al.	Recall questions on early childhood in the psychodynamic perspective, Little Hans as evidence of displacement and symbolism, case studies, Kohlberg's links to psychodynamic ideas and his longitudinal method, and psychodynamic readings of Hancock et al.	9
The psychodynamic perspective: strengths, weaknesses and comparison with the behaviourist perspective	Recall questions on strengths of the psychodynamic perspective in therapy, case studies and developmental psychology, criticisms of its scientific status, interpretation, sampling and gender bias, and comparisons with the behaviourist perspective on phobias, free will and treatment.	11

Areas and Perspectives in Psychology is 210 of the 3,537 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.