AS/A Level Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behaviour.

Psychology is a multifaceted discipline and includes many sub-fields of study such as:

• human development
• sports, health
• clinical
• social behaviour
• cognitive processes.

Psychology is really a very new science, with most advances happening over the past 150 years or so.

However, it is fast becoming one of the most popular subject choices!

Due to the subject being so vast there is something for everyone and anyone to enjoy.

Within A-level Psychology at Gateshead College we cover the following sub-fields:

• Social
• Cognitive
• Biological
• Learning
• Clinical
• Criminal Psychology.

It can lead to an array of careers from being a psychologist (clinical, health, sport etc.) to social work, police force, human resources and teaching.

On this course, you will cover a broad range of topics and explore the different theories and thinking of psychology.

Year 1 - AS Level

Social psychology

You'll study obedience, prejudice and discrimination:

• Agency theory
• Social Impact theory
• Social Identity theory
• Realistic conflict theory
• Cognitive psychology

You'll study memory including the case study of patient HM and investigate disorders such as dyslexia and dementia.

Some of the memory models you'll cover include:

• Working memory model
• Multi-store memory
• Reconstructive memory
• Biological psychology

During this unit, you'll look at the mechanisms within our body and learn how they affect our behaviour, specifically focusing on aggression.

• Brain structure, neurotransmission and hormone theories of aggression
• Evolutionary theories of aggression
• Freud's psychodynamic theory of aggression

Learning Theories

Learning theories are about learning from the environment and the effects of conditioning, reinforcement, punishment, the role of reward and social learning on the organism.

Year 2 - A Level

Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychology is about explaining and treating mental health issues and the different ways of treating them, including counselling and drug treatments.

Individual differences and developmental psychology must be considered when learning about links between personality factors and mental disorders and genetic influences (nature) or environmental influences (nurture) within different explanations for mental health disorders

The disorders you'll study include:

• Schizophrenia
• Depression
• Anorexia
• Obsessive compulsive disorder

There are 3 optional modules, we'll cover the one module the class find the most interesting.

• Criminological psychology
• Child psychology
• Health psychology
• Psychological skills

You'll develop an understanding of how to use theories and evidence from many areas of psychology and apply them to issues to present an argument or research a topic.