Aqa a-level psychology: Paper 1 unofficial mark scheme *04/06/18

Just a few quick questions, before I start with the mark scheme

1) How did you find the exam today?

2) How you feeling for paper 2?

3) What are your predictions for paper 2?

4) What topics did your school pick for paper 3?

*I'm not fully writing up all the answers because that's long and I don't want to put evaluation points and people get worried about not putting the same evaluation points as me. If you want me to explain some of my A03 point please do let me know! So read at your own risk****

Social Influence section:

1) Describe the term 'agentic state' (2 marks)
- The agentic state as proposed by Milgram was the shift from autonomy (which is the state of being free and independent, where the individual is responsible for their actions) to 'agency' (when the individual hands over their control to someone else, so they are no longer responsible for their actions)

2) Gave a description about Jenny- it basically said that Jenny did not believe in grading papers because children talked when given written feedback, she proposed that the school no longer graded papers. The members of the department did not agree with her view, but said they were willing to change their view, if Jenny persuaded them.

Using your knowledge on minority influence, explain how Jenny might persuade the department members to stop grading papers? (6 marks I think)

- for this question you needed to talk about 3 elements: consistency, commitment and flexibility and they apply this to the question. I believe to get the full 6 marks you need to give a small description of each of the 3 elements and then apply to Jenny. For example, for flexibility you could have said Jenny needed to accept reasonable counter-arguments from the department members so she wouldn't see off-putting and rigid. etc etc.

3) Discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform? (16 marks)

- I can't lie, this question gave me some thought because at first I didn't understand what it was asking me for. At first, I did think to talk about Zimbardo but then I disregarded this because thats about conformity to social roles not conformity. Then I thought let me go down the path of Asch's conformity, so I outlined things about Asch's research.
-Then I thought what does it tell me about why people conform so I then linked it to NSI and ISI and a bit of compliance.

- For A03, I normally put 3 well explained, instead of 4/5:
- I put that Asch's research lacks ecological validity because it uses artificial stimulus, but I counter that by saying that there was real-life application such as Lucas et al (2006) with the easy/hard maths questions- which showed ISI.
- Perrin & Spencer (1980) study who replicated Asch's study with engineering student who found just 1 conforming student in 396 trials- engineering students were stronger precision so didn't feel the need to conform to the 'right view of majority'- shows individual differences when it came to normative social influence
- lacks temporal validity- conducted during a conformist time in America- subsequent decades wouldn't be this conformist, shows people may conform due to the time period- example of compliance, as they change public behaviour but not private beliefs.


Memory section:
1) What two components of the working memory is being tested in each of the conditions? (2 marks)

- condition 1: phonological loop condition 2: visuo spatial sketchpad

2) Discuss two ways in which the experiment described above be improved? (4 marks)

- I said change the way they recruited participants i.e. not do volunteer sample but instead something like stratified sampling as it a better representation of the population
- I said instead of independent group design which have used, they could of instead used repeated measures as this would have controlled extraneous variables e.g. participant variables

3) Give one strength of the working memory model? (4 marks)

- support for the existence of the visuo spatial sketchpad due to the dual task performance- Baddeley (1975) found that participants had difficulty performing 2 visual tasks (tracking a light + describing the letter F) than one visual and one verbal task. This is because the 2 visual tasks have to compete for space in the VSS whereas the visual and verbal task doesn't have to do this.

4) Outline the cognitive interview? (4 marks)

- context reinstatement: revisit the scene of the crime in their mind eye- based off context-dependent forgetting
- report everything: reporting every detail no matter how trivial, as it may trigger more meaningful memories
- order reverse: reporting events of the crime in a different order to prevent expectation and negative schema
- perspective change: viewing crime for the perspective of another e.g. victim to consider other points of view/motivation

5) Gave a little scenario about poor Aaron leaving an exam feeling bad because he did his exam in an unfamiliar room and he had studied both Spanish and French and felt like he mix up a lot of the words. Discuss one explanation of forgetting a refer to Adam and his situation? (4 marks)

- I said retrieval failure, but leaned more of my explanation on context-dependent forgetting. I pick up on the 'unfamiliar room' meaning he didn't have the same contextual cues he had at learning and at recall, then I applied it to his scenario.

4) Briefly evaluate the explanation for forgetting you just stated previously? (4 marks)

-Godden and Baddeley (1980) replicated their study but instead of testing recall they tested recognition. Found no context-dependent effects in any of the 4 performance categories, shows context dependent effects only occur when tested with recall rather than recognition.

Attachment section:

1) Outline two effects of institutionalisation? (2 marks)

- disinhibited attachment: orphans showed were overly friendly and affectionate to both strangers and people they know
- physical underdevelopment: reported to be smaller and weigh less

2) Outline how Lorenz and Harlow carried out their research? (6 marks)

- for this question, I don't believe you talk about their findings, because its simply asking you for their procedure- that is important because they often see if you are reading the question properly
- Lorenz: investigated imprinting, had 12 geese eggs which he split in half, half were raised with the mother, half was raised with Lorenz in incubator, he then mixed the geese up when they were older to see who the geese would follow- Lorenz or the mother goose
- Harlow: 10 orphan rhesus monkeys he had caged since infancy, he provided 2 surrogate mothers (one was a wire monkey that dispensed milk, the other was a cloth covered monkey), he recorded how long the orphan monkeys spent with each surrogate mother and who they would go to when faced with a frightening situation

3) Gave a scenario about 2 mothers talking about their children: One mother was like because she breastfeed, her husband felt that the baby was as attached to him. The other mother was like its all about the mothers love and that having an impact on future relationships.

Discuss the learning theory and Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment. (16 marks)

- I can't lie when I first read the question I thought about Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory, but I didn't write about that. I was speaking to some people in my class and it was sad because some said they didn't talk about learning theory. I believe the marks who have been split: 6 for A01, 4 for A02, 6 for A03.

- learning theory: talked about classical conditioning and how infants form an association between mother and food, then maintained through operant conditioning- applied this to the first mother about breastfeeding
-Bowlby's theory: talked about social releasers, monotrophic theory, and internal working model- applied it to the second mother who talked about mothers care and future relationships
A03:
- Bowlby's theory better explains attachment than learning theory, as it can explain why attachment are formed e.g. for survival purposes- explained by supporting research
- the continuity hypothesis: found a link better early attachment and later attachment
- research support for the existence of social releasers- Brazleton (1975)
- animal studies don't support that food is the reason why attachments are formed
- learning theory has explanatory power
Psychopathology:

1) Please someone help: I can't remember the actually question but it was about the characteristic of one of the disorders: 'irrational thinking or obsessions' and asked you to pick whether it was cognitive, emotional or behavioural. (1 mark)

- Even though I can't remember the question, I know the answer was cognitive.

2) Draw an appropriate graphical representation of the research findings and give the graph a name? (2 marks)

- This graph demonstrates the relationship between negative schema scores and self-esteem scores.
- scatter graph, you didn't need to actually plot but you did need to label axis and draw a line of best fit which would help you answer question 3) about the co-efficient that should be used.

3) A Spearman's rho test was used. Outline two reasons why this statistical test was used? (2 marks)

- the level of measurement used in the experiment was ordinal and it was a test of correlation.

4) Estimate the correlational co-efficient that would be appropriate. Gave 4 different options. (1 mark)

- this question has had a lot of debate, I personally put +0.70.

5) Discuss the cognitive approach for treating depression? (16 marks)

-A01: Ellis REBT and the extension of his ABC model to D.E.F.
- Beck's CBT: Homework, Behavioural Activation, Unconditional positive regard

- AO3: support for the role of irrational thinking
- cognitive approach is reductionist doesn't recognise biological influence, suggests that drug therapies may be more effective than CBT
- CBT is relatively successful, but it requires a lot of effort from the patients but depressed people lack motivation so wouldn't be able to put in time and commitment to the the therapy

i think that graph was 4 marks wasn’t it ?

Hi yeah just on the question about why a spearmans rho it wasnt what you said it was. The question was something like “with reference to the level of measurement, explain why spearmans rho was the most appropriate statistical test”

i think that graph was 4 marks wasn’t it ?

Yes the graph was definitely 4 marks

Thanks for letting me know, I knew I was missing marks somewhere. How did you find the exam?

Really disliked the 16 mark SI question - the wording totally threw me. Other than that I thought the exam was fine - memory was a great section, attachment wasn't bad other than the reappearance of learning theory (although I liked having two points to discuss in a 16 mark question). Research methods part was fine for me but I do stats, thought it was a bit mean to ask for an estimation of the coefficient value from the table though. Shame there was only one real psychopathology question too. Overall really happy with it though How about you?

Really disliked the 16 mark SI question - the wording totally threw me. Other than that I thought the exam was fine - memory was a great section, attachment wasn't bad other than the reappearance of learning theory (although I liked having two points to discuss in a 16 mark question). Research methods part was fine for me but I do stats, thought it was a bit mean to ask for an estimation of the coefficient value from the table though. Shame there was only one real psychopathology question too. Overall really happy with it though How about you?

*I'm not fully writing up all the answers because that's long and I don't want to put evaluation points and people get worried about not putting the same evaluation points as me. If you want me to explain some of my A03 point please do let me know! So read at your own risk****

Social Influence section:

1) Describe the term 'agentic state' (2 marks)
- The agentic state as proposed by Milgram was the shift from autonomy (which is the state of being free and independent, where the individual is responsible for their actions) to 'agency' (when the individual hands over their control to someone else, so they are no longer responsible for their actions)

2) Gave a description about Jenny- it basically said that Jenny did not believe in grading papers because children talked when given written feedback, she proposed that the school no longer graded papers. The members of the department did not agree with her view, but said they were willing to change their view, if Jenny persuaded them.

Using your knowledge on minority influence, explain how Jenny might persuade the department members to stop grading papers? (6 marks I think)

- for this question you needed to talk about 3 elements: consistency, commitment and flexibility and they apply this to the question. I believe to get the full 6 marks you need to give a small description of each of the 3 elements and then apply to Jenny. For example, for flexibility you could have said Jenny needed to accept reasonable counter-arguments from the department members so she wouldn't see off-putting and rigid. etc etc.

3) Discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform? (16 marks)

- I can't lie, this question gave me some thought because at first I didn't understand what it was asking me for. At first, I did think to talk about Zimbardo but then I disregarded this because thats about conformity to social roles not conformity. Then I thought let me go down the path of Asch's conformity, so I outlined things about Asch's research.
-Then I thought what does it tell me about why people conform so I then linked it to NSI and ISI and a bit of compliance.

- For A03, I normally put 3 well explained, instead of 4/5:
- I put that Asch's research lacks ecological validity because it uses artificial stimulus, but I counter that by saying that there was real-life application such as Lucas et al (2006) with the easy/hard maths questions- which showed ISI.
- Perrin & Spencer (1980) study who replicated Asch's study with engineering student who found just 1 conforming student in 396 trials- engineering students were stronger precision so didn't feel the need to conform to the 'right view of majority'- shows individual differences when it came to normative social influence
- lacks temporal validity- conducted during a conformist time in America- subsequent decades wouldn't be this conformist, shows people may conform due to the time period- example of compliance, as they change public behaviour but not private beliefs.


Memory section:
1) What two components of the working memory is being tested in each of the conditions? (2 marks)

- condition 1: phonological loop condition 2: visuo spatial sketchpad

2) Discuss two ways in which the experiment described above be improved? (4 marks)

- I said change the way they recruited participants i.e. not do volunteer sample but instead something like stratified sampling as it a better representation of the population
- I said instead of independent group design which have used, they could of instead used repeated measures as this would have controlled extraneous variables e.g. participant variables

3) Give one strength of the working memory model? (4 marks)

- support for the existence of the visuo spatial sketchpad due to the dual task performance- Baddeley (1975) found that participants had difficulty performing 2 visual tasks (tracking a light + describing the letter F) than one visual and one verbal task. This is because the 2 visual tasks have to compete for space in the VSS whereas the visual and verbal task doesn't have to do this.

4) Outline the cognitive interview? (4 marks)

- context reinstatement: revisit the scene of the crime in their mind eye- based off context-dependent forgetting
- report everything: reporting every detail no matter how trivial, as it may trigger more meaningful memories
- order reverse: reporting events of the crime in a different order to prevent expectation and negative schema
- perspective change: viewing crime for the perspective of another e.g. victim to consider other points of view/motivation

5) Gave a little scenario about poor Aaron leaving an exam feeling bad because he did his exam in an unfamiliar room and he had studied both Spanish and French and felt like he mix up a lot of the words. Discuss one explanation of forgetting a refer to Adam and his situation? (4 marks)

- I said retrieval failure, but leaned more of my explanation on context-dependent forgetting. I pick up on the 'unfamiliar room' meaning he didn't have the same contextual cues he had at learning and at recall, then I applied it to his scenario.

4) Briefly evaluate the explanation for forgetting you just stated previously? (4 marks)

-Godden and Baddeley (1980) replicated their study but instead of testing recall they tested recognition. Found no context-dependent effects in any of the 4 performance categories, shows context dependent effects only occur when tested with recall rather than recognition.

Attachment section:

1) Outline two effects of institutionalisation? (2 marks)

- disinhibited attachment: orphans showed were overly friendly and affectionate to both strangers and people they know
- physical underdevelopment: reported to be smaller and weigh less

2) Outline how Lorenz and Harlow carried out their research? (6 marks)

- for this question, I don't believe you talk about their findings, because its simply asking you for their procedure- that is important because they often see if you are reading the question properly
- Lorenz: investigated imprinting, had 12 geese eggs which he split in half, half were raised with the mother, half was raised with Lorenz in incubator, he then mixed the geese up when they were older to see who the geese would follow- Lorenz or the mother goose
- Harlow: 10 orphan rhesus monkeys he had caged since infancy, he provided 2 surrogate mothers (one was a wire monkey that dispensed milk, the other was a cloth covered monkey), he recorded how long the orphan monkeys spent with each surrogate mother and who they would go to when faced with a frightening situation

3) Gave a scenario about 2 mothers talking about their children: One mother was like because she breastfeed, her husband felt that the baby was as attached to him. The other mother was like its all about the mothers love and that having an impact on future relationships.

Discuss the learning theory and Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment. (16 marks)

- I can't lie when I first read the question I thought about Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory, but I didn't write about that. I was speaking to some people in my class and it was sad because some said they didn't talk about learning theory. I believe the marks who have been split: 6 for A01, 4 for A02, 6 for A03.

- learning theory: talked about classical conditioning and how infants form an association between mother and food, then maintained through operant conditioning- applied this to the first mother about breastfeeding
-Bowlby's theory: talked about social releasers, monotrophic theory, and internal working model- applied it to the second mother who talked about mothers care and future relationships
A03:
- Bowlby's theory better explains attachment than learning theory, as it can explain why attachment are formed e.g. for survival purposes- explained by supporting research
- the continuity hypothesis: found a link better early attachment and later attachment
- research support for the existence of social releasers- Brazleton (1975)
- animal studies don't support that food is the reason why attachments are formed
- learning theory has explanatory power
Psychopathology:

1) Please someone help: I can't remember the actually question but it was about the characteristic of one of the disorders: 'irrational thinking or obsessions' and asked you to pick whether it was cognitive, emotional or behavioural. (1 mark)

- Even though I can't remember the question, I know the answer was cognitive.

2) Draw an appropriate graphical representation of the research findings and give the graph a name? (4 marks)

- This graph demonstrates the relationship between negative schema scores and self-esteem scores.
- scatter graph, you didn't need to actually plot but you did need to label axis and draw a line of best fit which would help you answer question 3) about the co-efficient that should be used.

3) With reference to the level of measurement give two reasons why a Spearman's rho test was used? (2 marks)

- the level of measurement used in the experiment was ordinal and it was a test of correlation.

4) Estimate the correlational co-efficient that would be appropriate. Gave 4 different options. (1 mark)

- this question has had a lot of debate, I personally put +0.70.

5) Discuss the cognitive approach for treating depression? (16 marks)

-A01: Ellis REBT and the extension of his ABC model to D.E.F.
- Beck's CBT: Homework, Behavioural Activation, Unconditional positive regard

- AO3: support for the role of irrational thinking
- cognitive approach is reductionist doesn't recognise biological influence, suggests that drug therapies may be more effective than CBT
- CBT is relatively successful, but it requires a lot of effort from the patients but depressed people lack motivation so wouldn't be able to put in time and commitment to the the therapy

For question 3, the AO1 marks were for explaining NSI and ISI and AO3 was for linking that to Asch and evaluating ISI and NSI

Did you have any exams tomorrow? My next one is on Wednesday: History British Empire

I think the RM section was in SI last year, personally I thought it'd either be in memory or psychopathology, but that wherever it was there wouldn't be a 16 mark question, so that more of the spec could be covered. That's why I liked the memory section, because it was shorter questions so more of the content was covered.

Aha yeah I left the SI 16 mark until last so I could just splurge information onto the page until time ran out to try and salvage some marks! The other two I did were beautifully organised but that one was just a splat of random points in no particularly order

So you say that A01 was solely for describing NSI and ISI.

I think you could have gotten away with describing actual research so Asch (at least I hope) and yeah I agree for A03 you had to evaluate someone like Asch and link that to NSI and ISI