AS
AS Paper 6: Full Course Practice
Conformity and minority influence, obedience and social change, caregiver-infant interactions and attachment types, explanations of attachment and cultural variations, the approaches in psychology, the nervous system and the brain, plus research methods and statistics.
Questions
Question 1 [2 marks]
Research Methods and Statistics
State one difference between a directional and a non-directional hypothesis.
Question 2 [3 marks]
Explanations of Attachment and Cultural Variations
Outline the 'critical period' as proposed by Bowlby's theory of attachment.
Question 3 [3 marks]
Caregiver-Infant Interactions and Attachment Types
Outline what is meant by 'secure base behaviour' in attachment.
Question 4 [4 marks]
Conformity and Minority Influence
Distinguish between compliance and identification as explanations for conformity, giving an example of each.
Question 5 [4 marks]
Obedience and Social Change
Outline the key findings of Milgram's original obedience study.
Question 6 [4 marks]
Caregiver-Infant Interactions and Attachment Types
State two features of insecure-resistant attachment as identified in the Strange Situation.
Question 7 [4 marks]
Biopsychology: Nervous System and Brain
Explain the role of the endocrine system in responding to stress, with reference to adrenaline.
Question 8 [4 marks]
Approaches in Psychology
In Bandura's Bobo doll research, children who watched an adult model behave aggressively towards an inflatable doll and saw the model praised for it later imitated more aggressive acts than children who saw the model punished.
Use your knowledge of social learning theory to explain this finding.
Question 9 [4 marks]
Explanations of Attachment and Cultural Variations
A child was briefly hospitalised for two weeks at age two, with limited contact with her parents during visiting hours. She was distressed for a while afterwards, but recovered fully within a few months once reunited with consistent, sensitive care at home.
Use your knowledge of the distinction between deprivation and privation to explain why this child's outcome differs from the severe, lasting effects Bowlby predicted.
Question 10 [4 marks]
Biopsychology: Nervous System and Brain
After a road accident, a patient has damage to the area at the back of the brain responsible for processing visual information.
Identify the brain area most likely affected and explain the effect this damage is likely to have.
Question 11 [4 marks]
Explanations of Attachment and Cultural Variations
Explain the difference between privation and deprivation, with reference to institutional care.
Question 12 [5 marks]
Obedience and Social Change
During a historical inquiry, soldiers who took part in following unlawful orders during a wartime atrocity commonly stated afterwards that they were 'only following orders' and did not feel personally responsible.
Use your knowledge of the agentic state explanation of obedience to explain this common response.
Question 13 [5 marks]
Explanations of Attachment and Cultural Variations
A study of attachment in an Italian city finds a lower proportion of infants classified as securely attached than an earlier Italian study conducted several decades before, alongside a rise in the proportion of mothers working long hours outside the home.
Use your knowledge of cultural variations in attachment to explain this finding.
Question 14 [6 marks]
Caregiver-Infant Interactions and Attachment Types
Discuss Ainsworth's Strange Situation as a way of assessing individual differences in attachment.
Question 15 [6 marks]
Obedience and Social Change
Discuss the situational variables that Milgram found affected obedience, using research evidence.
Question 16 [6 marks]
Caregiver-Infant Interactions and Attachment Types
Discuss temperament as an alternative explanation for the individual differences in attachment identified by the Strange Situation.
Question 17 [6 marks]
Biopsychology: Nervous System and Brain
Discuss localisation of function in the brain, with reference to language, including Broca's area and Wernicke's area.
Question 18 [6 marks]
Caregiver-Infant Interactions and Attachment Types
Discuss the concept of a critical period in animal studies of attachment, including reference to Lorenz's research on imprinting.
Model solutions
| Question 1[2 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying that a directional hypothesis predicts the direction of a difference or relationship, e.g. that one group will score higher than another | 1 |
| identifying that a non-directional hypothesis predicts only that there will be a difference or relationship, without stating the direction | 1 |
| Final answer: A directional hypothesis states the direction of the expected difference/relationship; a non-directional hypothesis states only that one exists. | |
| Question 2[3 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the critical period as a specific, limited window of time in early development | 1 |
| stating that attachment must form within this period, around the first two and a half years, or it may not form/be more difficult | 1 |
| noting the idea has since been softened to a 'sensitive period', where attachment is merely more likely rather than only possible in this window | 1 |
| Final answer: Bowlby proposed a critical, later softened to sensitive, period of around the first two and a half years, in which attachment must, or is most likely to, form. | |
| Question 3[3 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying secure base behaviour as the infant using the caregiver as a base from which to explore the environment | 1 |
| elaborating that the infant periodically returns to the caregiver for reassurance/comfort before continuing to explore | 1 |
| noting that showing this behaviour appropriately is generally taken as a sign of secure attachment | 1 |
| Final answer: Secure base behaviour is using the caregiver as a safe base to explore from, returning periodically for reassurance; it is generally taken as a sign of secure attachment. | |
| Question 4[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying compliance as publicly agreeing with a group while privately disagreeing | 1 |
| a suitable example of compliance, e.g. laughing at a joke you do not find funny to fit in with friends | 1 |
| identifying identification as adopting a group's views because group membership is valued, without necessarily agreeing in every other context | 1 |
| a suitable example of identification, e.g. behaving like the rest of a sports team only while wearing the kit and playing | 1 |
| Final answer: Compliance is public agreement without private belief change (e.g. laughing at an unfunny joke to fit in); identification is adopting a group's views because membership is valued (e.g. acting like teammates only while part of the team). | |
| Question 5[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| stating that all 40 participants obeyed to at least 300 volts | 1 |
| stating that 65% (26 of 40) of participants obeyed to the maximum 450 volts | 1 |
| noting that many participants showed signs of extreme stress/tension during the procedure, e.g. sweating or trembling | 1 |
| concluding that ordinary people are capable of high levels of obedience to a legitimate authority figure, even when it conflicts with their conscience | 1 |
| Final answer: All 40 participants obeyed to at least 300 volts and 65% obeyed to the maximum 450 volts, despite visible signs of stress, showing ordinary people can obey a legitimate authority even against their conscience. | |
| Question 6[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying high stranger anxiety as a feature of insecure-resistant attachment | 1 |
| elaborating that the infant is highly distressed by the presence of a stranger | 1 |
| identifying that insecure-resistant infants both seek and resist comfort from the caregiver at reunion | 1 |
| elaborating that the infant may remain difficult to soothe/settle even once comforted | 1 |
| Final answer: Insecure-resistant attachment shows high stranger anxiety and, at reunion, the infant both seeks and resists comfort from the caregiver, often remaining difficult to settle. | |
| Question 7[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the endocrine system as a network of glands that communicate using hormones released into the bloodstream | 1 |
| identifying the adrenal glands as releasing adrenaline in response to stress | 1 |
| explaining that adrenaline prepares the body for fight or flight, e.g. increasing heart rate and blood flow to the muscles | 1 |
| noting the endocrine system's effects are slower but longer-lasting than the fast electrical signals of the nervous system | 1 |
| Final answer: The endocrine system uses hormones released into the blood to communicate; the adrenal glands release adrenaline under stress, raising heart rate and blood flow to the muscles for fight or flight, producing slower but longer-lasting effects than the nervous system. | |
| Question 8[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying vicarious reinforcement as the key process, children being more likely to imitate a model who was rewarded than one who was punished | 1 |
| explaining observational learning, children learning behaviour by watching and later reproducing a model's actions | 1 |
| noting the role of mediational processes, e.g. the child must attend to and retain the behaviour before it can be reproduced | 1 |
| noting this shows learning can occur without the child being directly reinforced themselves, unlike a purely operant conditioning account | 1 |
| Final answer: Vicarious reinforcement explains the finding: children were more likely to imitate a rewarded model, through observational learning and mediational processes, without needing to be directly reinforced themselves. | |
| Question 9[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying this as deprivation, the temporary loss of an already-formed attachment, rather than privation | 1 |
| noting Rutter's argument that outcomes depend on the quality of care given after separation, not simply on whether separation occurred | 1 |
| explaining that consistent, sensitive care following the separation appears to have limited any long-term harm | 1 |
| concluding that this challenges Bowlby's suggestion that deprivation inevitably causes serious, lasting damage | 1 |
| Final answer: This is deprivation rather than privation; Rutter's argument that the quality of later care matters more than separation itself explains why consistent, sensitive care afterwards limited any lasting harm, challenging Bowlby's claim of inevitable damage. | |
| Question 10[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the occipital lobe as the area at the back of the brain responsible for vision | 1 |
| identifying the visual cortex, located in the occipital lobe, as the specific structure involved | 1 |
| explaining that damage here is likely to impair the processing of visual information | 1 |
| a suitable consequence, e.g. partial or complete loss of vision, depending on the extent and side of the damage | 1 |
| Final answer: The occipital lobe (visual cortex) is most likely affected; damage here would be expected to impair visual processing, potentially causing partial or complete loss of vision. | |
| Question 11[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying deprivation as the loss of an attachment that had already formed | 1 |
| identifying privation as never having formed an attachment in the first place | 1 |
| a suitable example of privation, e.g. a child raised in an understaffed institution with no opportunity to form a stable early attachment | 1 |
| noting privation is generally considered to have more severe, harder to reverse, long-term effects than deprivation | 1 |
| Final answer: Deprivation is losing an attachment that had formed; privation is never forming one, e.g. in an understaffed institution; privation's effects are generally considered more severe and harder to reverse. | |
| Question 12[5 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the agentic state as acting as an agent for another, an authority figure, rather than from personal conscience | 1 |
| explaining that in this state a person shifts responsibility for their actions onto the person giving the order | 1 |
| linking the phrase 'only following orders' directly to this shift of responsibility away from the self | 1 |
| noting that this agentic shift is thought to reduce the moral strain that would otherwise result from carrying out actions that conflict with personal conscience | 1 |
| a suitable further point, e.g. this explanation has been used to help understand real historical atrocities where large numbers of ordinary people obeyed harmful orders | 1 |
| Final answer: The soldiers' claim of 'only following orders' reflects an agentic state, in which responsibility for the action is shifted onto the authority figure giving the order rather than accepted personally, reducing the moral strain that disobeying conscience would otherwise cause; this explanation has been used to help understand obedience in real historical atrocities. | |
| Question 13[5 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying this as evidence that attachment patterns can change over time within the same culture, not just differ between cultures | 1 |
| linking the change to the social factor mentioned, e.g. increased maternal employment potentially reducing opportunities for sensitive caregiving | 1 |
| noting this challenges the idea that a culture's attachment pattern is simply fixed | 1 |
| identifying this as evidence for temporal/historical variation, rather than only cross-cultural variation | 1 |
| a suitable limitation, e.g. this is one study/city and may not represent the whole country | 1 |
| Final answer: This is evidence of temporal, not just cross-cultural, variation: attachment patterns changed over time in the same culture alongside social change such as rising maternal employment, challenging the idea that a culture's pattern is fixed, though the single-city sample limits how far this generalises. | |
| Question 14[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining the procedure of the Strange Situation, a series of separations and reunions observed through a two-way mirror | 1 |
| outlining the three attachment types identified: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. good inter-rater reliability has been reported, as observers can be trained to agree closely on classifications | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. the procedure has been criticised for lacking validity outside a Western, individualist cultural context | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. it may measure the quality of the relationship rather than a fixed trait of the child, since attachment type can differ across caregivers | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. it is a controlled observation, increasing replicability but reducing ecological validity compared to naturalistic settings | 1 |
| Final answer: Outline the procedure and three attachment types; evaluate with good inter-rater reliability, but cultural bias and questions over validity/generalisability. | |
| Question 15[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining proximity, obedience falling as the teacher and learner were placed closer together, e.g. in the same room | 1 |
| outlining location, obedience falling when the study moved from Yale University to a run-down office block | 1 |
| outlining uniform, obedience falling when the experimenter's role was taken by an ordinary member of the public in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. these findings have practical, real-world application in understanding how the setting or appearance of authority influences obedience in institutions | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. the variations were conducted in a controlled, staged laboratory context, so findings may not fully generalise to genuine, high-stakes real-world obedience | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. later research found high obedience among real nurses given an unjustified drug instruction over the phone, supporting the real-world relevance of situational explanations | 1 |
| Final answer: Outline proximity, location and uniform as situational variables, all shown to reduce obedience when weakened (e.g. same room, a run-down office block, no lab coat); evaluate with practical application to real institutions and support from field research into real nurses obeying an unjustified phone instruction, while noting Milgram's own variations remained staged laboratory procedures. | |
| Question 16[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining the temperament hypothesis, that individual differences in Strange Situation behaviour may reflect an infant's innate temperament rather than the quality of caregiving received | 1 |
| outlining supporting evidence, e.g. temperament assessed soon after birth has been found to relate to later Strange Situation classification | 1 |
| outlining the contrasting, attachment-based explanation, that Ainsworth attributed individual differences mainly to the caregiver's sensitivity | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. the temperament hypothesis offers a valuable nature-based alternative to a purely nurture-based account | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. temperament and attachment quality are difficult to separate in practice, since they most likely interact rather than being wholly independent explanations | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. this debate raises a question about the validity of the Strange Situation, since it may partly be measuring temperament rather than only attachment security | 1 |
| Final answer: Outline the temperament hypothesis and supporting evidence against Ainsworth's caregiver-sensitivity account; evaluate temperament as a useful nature-based alternative, the difficulty separating it from attachment quality, and the resulting question over what the Strange Situation truly measures. | |
| Question 17[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining Broca's area, in the frontal lobe, associated with speech production | 1 |
| outlining Wernicke's area, in the temporal lobe, associated with language comprehension | 1 |
| identifying that damage to Broca's area is associated with Broca's (expressive) aphasia, e.g. slow, non-fluent speech | 1 |
| identifying that damage to Wernicke's area is associated with Wernicke's (receptive) aphasia, e.g. fluent but meaningless speech | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. case studies of aphasia patients provide converging evidence for the localisation of these specific language functions | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. modern brain imaging has generally supported the involvement of these areas, though language is now understood to involve a wider connected network rather than only these two areas | 1 |
| Final answer: Outline Broca's and Wernicke's areas and their associated aphasias; evaluate with case-study support for localisation, tempered by modern imaging showing a wider language network beyond the two areas alone. | |
| Question 18[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining imprinting as a young animal following and attaching to the first large moving object it sees soon after hatching/birth | 1 |
| outlining Lorenz's finding that this only occurs within a brief, early critical period | 1 |
| outlining sexual imprinting, where misdirected early imprinting can affect adult mate choice | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. the concept of an early critical or sensitive period has since been applied to human development, e.g. informing thinking about the timing of adoption | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. generalising findings on imprinting in birds to attachment in mammals or humans is questionable, given clear physiological and behavioural differences | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. later research has suggested imprinting may be less fixed than first thought, since with the right later experience some animals can partly redirect a misdirected imprinting response | 1 |
| Final answer: Outline imprinting, Lorenz's critical period finding and sexual imprinting; evaluate with the concept's later application to human development, against the problem of generalising from birds and evidence that imprinting may be partly reversible. | |