psychology -year 2..risky exam technique?

is it risky to only revise a few of the exam topics..givin me less choice with essay qs but then at least i can revise those sections properly. The quantity of material is just too much to revise sufficiently in depth i think

Reply 1

La Trampa

You didn't need to start a thread, you could have just pmed me.

Anyways, I would suggest learning everything then learning say 2 topics for each section in depth. I tried to just ignore other topics and learnt a few in depth at the last minute and paid for it. If you look at past questions you'll see there's always a trend (I'm talking about the essay bits here now)

I have to say though that stats is the easiest exam, once you get the critique section and the results section (which is all of 10 lines at the most) then all you have to worry about is learning the little things for Bibby's and Eamon's MCQ. Bibby's tend to be easier then Eamon's, so read up on his stuff properly.

CHIP & PIN. For Bibby, there's always going to be something about empiricism vs the other one i've forgotten (he practically told us it'd be there last year). Last year there was that question and then one on consciousness which I'd also loved and read but in the end went with the empiricism one. for eamon's section there will always be one on the models of personality eysenck or grey's model and the Big 5. so know these because it could be talking about each one in depth or comparing them, again these are easy. I actually found CHIP & PIN easy too.

For cog, they always always ask a question on parsing. It's really difficult though so you can choose to learn it and perfect or not. Last year I think they asked about taste but I can't remember 100% (i didn't do it). there's always a memory question, i suggest you learn memory because it's quite easy as well. there's always a question about how to read, last year I think we had something about word recognition and using context. but yeh, memory and reading are the best/easiest to study for the exam.

For NAB, they always ask about classical conditioning and those other models. there's always a schizophrenia question (easy one!), there's always an animal studies question, there's always a sex question but i didn't study that, there's always a memory and amnesia question (another easy one!) and last year we had a numbers question and/or category/concept question. I suggest though that you probably learn the conditioning topics because that normally has 2 questions and it always 100% comes out. It's a big topic but once you know it, you're sorted for the second essay question.

SADP - Theory of mind is a great one, it's easy and makes sense. You should download peter mitchell's journal from his webpage as he studies theory of mind and truly, it's a godsend!
there's always an attribution question and an attitudes one if i'm correct. last year there was a question about persuasiveness and attitudes.

that's everything off the top of my head. like i said, it's best to read everything to some detail so that if you're faced with the situation that what you studied thoroughly doesn't come out, then you can still answer a question and get some marks. this happened with SADP for me, I studied something and it didn't come out in the essays and that morning i'd literally flipped through persuasiveness for the MCQ and that's what i wrote my essay on. it didn't have much depth but i still got marks for it and it was the difference for me between a pass and fail. if you have any questions, just pm me.