AQA Psychology for GCSE: Student Book

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Identical twins may have twins that appear to have similar characteristics and it can be easily thought to be down to nature but this may not be the case.

Results: 90% of the children aged between 3.5yrs and 5yrs were able to hide the boy doll from the two policeman dolls. They were found to be very similar when they met for the first time when aged 39. Both of them drove the same car, went on holiday to the same place as well as bit their nails. Willingham disagreed with this and believed that learning styles do not exist in the ways suggested. As part of his learning theory, he pointed out that there was no experimental support for their existence or effectiveness. Other research studies have also shown that teaching in a students preferred learning style has no effect on their exam results. Ruth Jones is a practised teacher with examining experience and is Head of Psychology at a school ranked 'outstanding' by Ofsted in its last two inspections. Ruth also has a Masters Degree in Education.

AQA GCSE Psychology answers

With all the uncertainly that the new GCSE specifications are bringing, this book will be a very useful tool in any GCSE Psychology teacher's toolkit. It directly follows the new AQA specification in a logical and well thought-out format. The clear layout and format will be a hit with both students and teachers alike. It really is a dual purpose textbook, a starting point for teachers preparing materials for their lessons and a student resource book too. Aim: McGarrigle and Donaldson conducted a study to see if children developed conservation skills at an age that was earlier than Piaget’s theory predicted if the change to the materials (counters) was accidental. For AQA GCSE Psychology students, teachers and parents, our outstanding resources cover the latest 9-1 specification in immense detail and depth for the entire course. McGarrigle and Donaldson’s Naughty Teddy study was important as it demonstrated that children younger than the age of seven (7) could conserve which contradicted Piaget’s theory. There were limitations however as over 30% of children still failed to conserve when Naughty Teddy made the changes. Subsequent replication of the study has also found similar findings although the results were not as high as McGarrigle and Donaldson’s original findings. Our AQA Psychology Textbooks for GCSE have been designed with students and teachers in mind and are ultimate study tools for mastering the subject and achieving success in exams!

This book is extremely useful to students taking the new AQA specification. The layout and presentation of the book is stunning: each chapter is explicitly linked to the specification in the form of logical learning objectives. The book summarises the content in a user-friendly manner for students while providing an interesting range of discussion points and depth of content for high achieving students. This book provides a series of ‘building skills’ activities designed to help the students apply their knowledge while carrying out a range of interesting and related practical experiments.

Praise for AQA GCSE Psychology Second Edition

People believe that if you teach a student in a way they learn best based on their preferred learning style, they should learn better.

Dave Berry is an experienced psychology teacher and examiner. He regularly leads face-to-face and online training courses for a major awarding body. Dave teaches psychology at Bolton School, Lancashire. We've created a detailed study guide on how GCSE psychology students can study for the subject here. Jean Piaget believed that a child’s intelligence developed from them discovering things for themselves and they needed to explore objects and situations to learn about them. Piaget also believed that children needed to be ready to learn and that they could only gain new concepts and understanding if they were at the right stage of their development as predicted by his stage theory of cognitive development.

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This textbook provides an excellent balance of information, application and evaluation that will allow students and teachers to access the course content, while still accessing those top grades. I would definitely recommend this textbook to anyone studying psychology and in my opinion it is a must have to achieve the highest possible grades. Some research studies have shown that IQ between identical twins is very similar which implies nature plays a significant role in intelligence. Other research studies have found personality is also shaped by nature; one study compared the behaviours of identical twins who were raised apart.

The development of the human brain is one of the most fascinating subjects you can study in GCSE psychology. Humans are distinctively different from all the other animals on the planet and that is solely down to how the human brain has evolved. Identical twins may be treated similarly by people such as parents or peers and therefore their behavioural similarities may be due to nurture (and being treated the same) rather than their genes. The layout is very student friendly and the activities and suggestions for further reading will really consolidate a student's knowledge and ensure they are well prepared for the examination. It is written with students in mind and the language and layout are very student friendly.... A students ability to store the information is ultimately more important than how they learn this information. Willingham believed that students should be taught using the best method based on the content they were being taught. Animal studies have been used to demonstrate how nurture is important for early brain development. One study compared two groups of rats with one group having toys to stimulate them while the other did not. The results found that the rats that lived with the stimulating toys developed bigger brains and showed better problem-solving skills compared to rats living on their own without stimulation. This shows how nurture can affect brain development.

Psychology updates

Piaget’s cognitive development theory and its stages have been heavily criticised. Other psychologists have shown that the ages Piaget said children could learn certain tasks we're incorrect. More recent studies have shown how babies develop object permanence before eight months (Hughes “Policeman Doll” study 1978) and children can lose their egocentric thinking and conserve before the age of seven (McGarrigle and Donaldson’s Naughty Teddy study 1974). There is also now the belief that children enter the formal operational stage much later than age 11, and some never reach this stage at all. There is also criticism of the way Piaget collected his data. Small samples were used and a lot of research was done using his own children. Some argue small samples may be unrepresentative of most children and the questions he asked children were not standardised as each child was treated differently. Therefore the way in which the questions were asked could be a confounding variable for the results. Many potential students often ask "is psychology a hard GCSE subject?". The tutorial above will hopefully answer this question but in short, the answer is no, GCSE psychology is not a particularly hard subject to learn provided you revise sufficiently and learn the key theories and how to evaluate them. Cara Flanagan is one of the best-known and most respected authors for A Level Psychology. A practised teacher with examining experience and a well-known conference presenter, Cara is renowned for creating resources that students love to use.