Neuroscience
This post is for students and teachers following the AQA spec B, 2008 specification for psychology. It provides a selection of links to material from the Research Digest blog and The Psychologist magazine (marked with a 'P') that ties in with the AS/A2 syllabus for this exam board. This list is far from comprehensive: students and teachers looking for more material are urged to use the Digest blog's search facility (see box to the right) and The Psychologist magazine's search facility (see box in top left-hand corner), and remember that new material is being added all the time.
AS topics
Biopsychology
Cognition and the law
- How Thinking About The Future Can Cause Us To Forget The Past
We routinely envision future events, whether that be fantasising about next month’s beach retreat, or planning whether to hit the gym this afternoon before or after picking up the dry cleaning. New research supports the idea that we are able to conjure...
- Women's Memories Are More Speech-filled Than Men's
To gasps of surprise from some quarters, a spate of recent studies have shown that women don't talk any more than men do. But now Richard Ely and Elizabeth Ryan have looked at people's autobiographical memories and found that while women may not...
- Fresh Doubt Cast On Memories Of Abuse Recovered In Therapy
Memories of child abuse, long buried, but suddenly recovered in therapy, have been a source of controversy for some time now. The fear is that such memories are false; that they are the product of suggestion, hypnosis, visualisation or other therapeutic...
- Tapping Into People's Earliest Memories
When it comes to psychologists identifying people's earliest memories, the approach they take matters a lot. That's according to New Zealand psychologists Fiona Jack and Harlene Hayne who say their finding helps explain some of the mixed opinion...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...
Neuroscience
Resources for A-level teachers and students following the AQA spec B syllabus
This post is for students and teachers following the AQA spec B, 2008 specification for psychology. It provides a selection of links to material from the Research Digest blog and The Psychologist magazine (marked with a 'P') that ties in with the AS/A2 syllabus for this exam board. This list is far from comprehensive: students and teachers looking for more material are urged to use the Digest blog's search facility (see box to the right) and The Psychologist magazine's search facility (see box in top left-hand corner), and remember that new material is being added all the time.
AS topics
Biopsychology
- Scanning techniques: Neuroimaging reveals brain's memory bouncer.
- Genetics: Why psychologists study twins. Twin study investigates the genetics of reading and maths ability. Behavioural genetics (P).
- Localisation of function: Left and right brain, Insights from neural networks (P).
- Influence of hormones on behaviour: Testosterone fuels entrepreneurship.
- Sex-role stereotypes: Women need female role models. Gender stereotypes can distort our memories. The trouble with doing boy (P).
- Cultural variations in gender related behaviour: Daughters of tradition (P).
- Just how representative are the people who volunteer for psychology experiments?
- Special issue on Research Methods (P).
- Defiance of authority: Milgram reproduced in virtual reality. Questioning the banality of evil (P).
- Prejudice: seeing others as less than human. Intergroup contact, a panacea for prejudice (P)?
- Autobiographical memories: Tapping into people's earliest memories. Infantile amnesia: Where did all the memories go? Autobiographical memory and depression (P).
- Forgetting: How remembering can lead to forgetting. How to improve your memory (P). Collaborative memory (P).
- Autism: Children with autism are immune to contagious yawning. The way children with autism draw people. A new therapy for autism (P). Theories of the autistic mind (P).
- Phobias: More evidence that fear of snakes is hardwired.
Cognition and the law
- The false memory debate: Fresh doubt cast on memories of abuse recovered in therapy. Recovered and false memories (P).
- Eyewitness testimony: Identifying people caught on video (P).
- Children as eye witnesses: Adults are unable to tell when children are lying.
- Socio-cultural and cognitive explanations for schizophrenia: Who doesn't suffer from paranoia? Shadow illusion casts light on psychotic experiences.
- Special issue on mental illness and diagnosis.
- The health costs of a hostile disposition.
- Stress management: Protection from the stress of being a long-term carer. Coping with stress in the workplace (P).
- Noise increases the risk of having a heart attack.
- Treatment: Alternative rewards could help the battle against addiction. Action plan - illegal drug problems and their treatment (P).
- Smokers ignore "what might have been".
- Treatments: Turning bad boys good. Helping yobs.
- Special issue: Nipping criminality in the bud (P).
- Free will: Libet redux: free will takes another hammering.
- Animal experiments: Why perform experiments on rats?
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- How Thinking About The Future Can Cause Us To Forget The Past
We routinely envision future events, whether that be fantasising about next month’s beach retreat, or planning whether to hit the gym this afternoon before or after picking up the dry cleaning. New research supports the idea that we are able to conjure...
- Women's Memories Are More Speech-filled Than Men's
To gasps of surprise from some quarters, a spate of recent studies have shown that women don't talk any more than men do. But now Richard Ely and Elizabeth Ryan have looked at people's autobiographical memories and found that while women may not...
- Fresh Doubt Cast On Memories Of Abuse Recovered In Therapy
Memories of child abuse, long buried, but suddenly recovered in therapy, have been a source of controversy for some time now. The fear is that such memories are false; that they are the product of suggestion, hypnosis, visualisation or other therapeutic...
- Tapping Into People's Earliest Memories
When it comes to psychologists identifying people's earliest memories, the approach they take matters a lot. That's according to New Zealand psychologists Fiona Jack and Harlene Hayne who say their finding helps explain some of the mixed opinion...
- Where Did All The Memories Go?
What’s your earliest memory? If you’re an adult, it’s unlikely to be from before you were three and half to four years old. So what happens to your memories from before that age? It’s not that you never had any: two and three-year-olds gladly...