AQA A2 Psychology PSYA3/PSYA4 Revision Thread 2016

I guess the only comfort is that the grade boundaries seem to be quite low for psych! 😬

That's perfectly OK! how did you find it overall

I did Sz and addiction too! I loved the psychological intervention and biological approach but not media

and from what people are saying on here, people are not particularly that confident so i am so hoping for low

This is in response to anyone who did SCHIZOPHRENIA and ADDICTION.

Here are the questions (in terms of how I remember them) and the brief points I made / studies I used. (Note not all the stuff I wrote may be right!)

SCHIZOPHRENIA

1.) Outline and evaluate one or more biological therapies of schizophrenia. (8 + 16)

POINT #1 – DRUGS

(AO1)

☻ Typical drugs, Atypical drugs
☻ Amphetamines and Antipsychotics

(AO2)

☻ Davis et al. (Relapse rates compared to placebo, 55% vs 19%)
☻ Ross and Read (Misleading figures)
☻ Ross and Read (Not a fair comparison, placebo patients in drug withdrawal state)


POINT #2 – ECT

(AO1)

☻ Anaesthetic, Unilateral ECT
☻ Nerve-blocking agent
☻ 0.6 amps, 1 min seizure

(AO2)

☻ Tharyan and Adams (Sham / Simulated ECT)
☻ Read (ECT has significant risks, e.g. Brain damage, death + Decline in use in UK)


ADDICTION

1.) Media Influences of Tony, in terms of Initiation, Maintenance and/or Reduction (10 marks)

☻ STEM: Addiction to both smoking and gambling; watched a lot of film and TV; smoked the brands endorsed by his idols; went into debt; stopped smoking since a month but still has gambling addiction.

☻ SLT - Models in the films (Bandura, Waylen et al)
☻ Campaigns
☻ Prevention - Youth gambling (Deverensky and Gupta??)


2.) Outline one biological approach to the initiation of smoking. (4 marks)

☻ Genetics; Vink et al.


3.) Outline and evaluate one psychological intervention for reducing addictive behaviour. (4 + 6)

☻ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - Faulty maladaptive thinking
☻ AO2: Ladoucer et al. - Shows effectiveness of CBT; 66 pathological gamblers; 2 conditions; 86% no longer fulfilled DSM criteria for gambling.


Hope this helps

I used single and double blind? not sure if thats internal validity !!

Thank you for this! In the media question I only used two studies and everything was a bit muddled. How many marks do you think they would deduct?

No problem! I only used 2 studies for Media Influences too. I've been told that the structure for a 10-marker is 3 paragraphs - one AO1, two AO2. Having 2 studies should be enough to get you a high mark in the question.

I did Sz and addiction too! I loved the psychological intervention and biological approach but not media

Thank you for replying! Oh dear, I wrote about 6 smaller paragraphs. My teachers never went through structure haha :/

Overall how did people find the paper? It looks as if most found the research section good, but what about the other sections??

1. Anxiety scores will decrease after partaking in the anxiety management class
2. Design question; introduced myself, method, right to withdraw, confidentiality (think i missed out aims :/)
3. Reliability is how consistent something is
Internal validity refers to whether something measures what it is intended to
4. Methods of assessing internal validity;
- Content (explanation)
- Concurrent (explanation)
- Face (explanation)
5. Found data to be significant (explanation)

Hi anomalistic people!
Will I get any credit at all for talking about coincidence for the explanation of superstition?

My answers were almost identical!