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.

This guide basically gives you a dedicated step-by-step overview on how the subject can be approached and broken down complimented by the content we have created on in our books and online content. Is psychology a hard GCSE? 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. Mark Jones is Head of A Level Psychology at a large and successful FE college in Bristol. Mark has many years' examining experience and has also worked as an advanced practitioner, liaising with teachers and colleges to help improve performance. For example, children may be encouraged to play with water and discover for themselves which objects float and sink. Children may also be given science problems to solve either on their own or in a group to allow them to learn from their experiences. Teachers can also look to present opportunities for children to learn new concepts only when they are at the right stage of intellectual development and ready to learn. Children may be provided with materials and taught in a child-centred way where they discover answers for themselves. Piaget's Four Stages of Development This book has everything I would need as a teacher. It provides ideas/inspiration for teaching by providing a range of ‘getting started’ activities and ‘building skills’ activities that will save hours of planning time and allow teachers to embed an interesting range of practical activities into their lessons.Willingham agreed that visual and auditory memory may be better within students but this did not help in the classroom environment. Willingham argued this was because teachers want students to learn the meaning of things rather than what they sound or look like. Regardless of whether the information was presented visually, actively or audibly, the student still needed to extract the information and its meaning to effectively learn. This would then explain why teaching in a students preferred learning style appears to have no effect on their exam results. After some trials, the actual experiment was conducted but this time with two policeman dolls with the child tasked with placing the boy doll in such a way that neither police doll could see it. The experiment was conducted three times so that a different section of the grid was left as the only hiding place each time. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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! Method: The children were shown a model with two intersecting walls that formed a cross with a policeman doll placed on the model. The child was asked to hide a “boy doll” and position it in such a way the policeman would not be able to see him. The policeman was placed in different positions on the model, and the child was then tasked with hiding the boy doll each time. If the child made mistakes, although rare, they were told of this and allowed to try again.

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.... 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.

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. Other researchers have found evidence to support McGarrigle and Donaldson’s findings when replicating Piaget’s conservation of numbers study. In one such study psychologists asked the children only once in terms of how many counters there were and the study was conducted in complete silence. They showed children two rows of counters and then spread one row out asking the child only once “is there the same amount in each row?”. This study found that more 6yr olds got the answer correct than Piaget had found demonstrating that children can conserve before the age of seven (7). 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. We've included exercises and practice application based questions across each topic at the end of every textbook to help students improve their understanding. Perfect For Studying or Teaching 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.

Is psychology a hard GCSE?

This meta study demonstrated that even when identical twins were reared apart, they displayed very similar IQ levels and this was stronger than siblings reared together. 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. 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.

Results: 90% of the children aged between 3.5yrs and 5yrs were able to hide the boy doll from the two policeman dolls.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. Newborn babies are useful to study as there is little chance for nurture (environmental influences) to have impacted the child. Psychologists have found that besides being able to cry, they can also recognise faces. This would suggest that nature is responsible for these abilities. Despite these criticisms, Piaget’s theory has enjoyed a lot of mainstream support. His experiments were easy to replicate and his research had a major impact on early years education where his ideas are still used to this day.