May 2013 Psychology papers 1 & 2

[citizenoftheuniverse]

Hey!

I just did my only IB exams for this year, IB psychology papers 1 & 2. How did they go for you? Did you find them easy? What do you think the mark bands will be like? What questions did you answer?

[Aly]

for paper one the SAQs were pretty difficult for me.

Bio--neurotransmittors

I didnt really focus on studying neurotransmission but I knew how it worked from bio, so I'm hoping my lack of studies and research support is made up for by the explanation of how neurotransmission functions on Serotonin and depression and acetycholine and memory.

Cognitive--principle of the Cognitive LOA in research

I chose Loftus and Palmer (both A and B) to demonstrate that Mental representations guide behavior.

Social--Cultural dimensions

again, something else I didn't study for, I guessed and chose Individualistic cultures as an emic behavior shown through self serving bias compared to Kashima and Triandis's finding about modesty bias in collectivist cultures.

For the LAQ I chose to do the Bio Level, different research methods...I did Longitudinal studies (twin and adoption) and experiments (animal) i referenced Kendler, Bouchard, Heston, Rosenzweig and Rutter (as support for Rosenzweig's findings)

paper 2 was difficult as well....we did sport and abnormal for our options

Sport--I chose two techniques for skill development

This one wasnt that bad! I wrote about Mental Imagery and Self Talk, although I may not have evaluated as much as I shouldve for the command term

Abnormal--I was stuck between gender differences in disorders and cultural and ethical issues in diagnosis

I ended up going for cultural and ethical issues because there was a wider range of things to discuss and talk about.

How was everything for you!

[Queens&Lionheart]

I had TZ1 and i found it quite easy!

Paper 1

Section A

Biological- One study on brain localization

Cognitive- Principle and study (one)

Sociocultural- Situational and dispositional factors

Section B

Two effects of the environment on physiological processes (the one i chose)

The interaction between cognition and physiology in emotion (VERY HARD)

One cultural dimension

Overall it wasn't that hard!

Paper 2 on the other hand was something

From abnormal I did the eclectic approach and from health the stress coping mechanisms! The abnormal was quite hard as it had no etiologies

Lastly, the paper 3 was easy!!

[maereth]

The topics were not hard. I chose interaction of cognition and emotion in memory (I think that's how it goes), I'm just worried that I did not focus on the command terms enough because we didn't really practice writing essays in the classroom, when we finished discussing paper 3, there was only time to do one mock exam... Same for paper 2, where I talked about considerations in diagnosis and development of gender roles.

paper 3 seemed easy but again, I don't think my teacher assesed my mock the way examiners do so no idea how it will turn out.

I hope that the grade boundaries will be as low as last year so that I could get the 7 I quite need ;p

[Queens&Lionheart]

hope that the grade boundaries will be as low as last year so that I could get the 7 I quite need ;p

The grade boundaries usually don't change by a lot, so I don't think the 7 will start from more than 70%! Good luck to us and fingers crossed for low boundaries!!

[Hens48]

I'm in tz2 and thought all 3 papers were relatively friendly...

The neurotransmitters were fine I hope.

Cognitive levels was also ok, I did mental processes should be studied scientifically and used the msm with Murdock, a little worried as I said Murdock made participants remember 'letters' instead of 'words' but hopefully that won't matter too much!

Sociocultural SAQ was also really nice and I chose time orientation with the Chen study.

For the LAQ I did how emotion influences a cognitive process using flashbulb memories, generally nice although I made a little mistake with the Basabe and Ross study.

Paper 2 was really nice and I did ethics and culture for abnormal and attachment for developmental.

Paper 3 was also pretty easy I thought, which ethical issues did people use?

[Aly]

I think you'll be okay with Cognitive, thats not too much of a mess up and if you demonstrated knowledge on the rest of the study you should be totally fine! i wouldnt worry about that at all.

what did you talk about for the ethical considerations in abnormal? I did that one too but i was having a hard time with that side.

and for paper 3, I used Participants and Confidentiality. the participants were ages 14-16 and informed consent was obtained, however according to APA under 16 needs parental consent, which influences the right to withdraw etc etc and that wasnt obtained. confidentiality with the snowball sample, because participants reccommended others

[Bennyboii]

Papers 1 & 2 for Psychology were the best I could of asked for apart from discuss cultural dimensions which I just wrote jibberish for but all in all it went pretty good =} Paper 3 was my worst paper just writing down things which I thought was completely wrong but it turned out not to be =] im hoping the grade boundaries are low for this year =]

[Yap]

The fun thing is that TWO effects of neurotransmitters is not in the syllabus. Even my teacher said that... so basically every of us students in our class had to come up with something at place.

[Hens48]

Thanks Aly, hopefully it will be alright!

For the abnormal question I talked about the issues of labelling, stigmas and how different cultures have different attitudes towards mental illness (more somatic symptoms in collectivist societies for depression etc). Also the issue of social norms, who decides, what happens when it's misused. And probably a few others things that came to me! I certainly didn't lack ideas...

Your paper 3 sounds similar, I totally forgot about the age issue for the ethics question as I had gone over 20 mins but managed to get it into one of the next questions, could really have done with longer!

[maereth]

The fun thing is that TWO effects of neurotransmitters is not in the syllabus. Even my teacher said that... so basically every of us students in our class had to come up with something at place.

Just looked it up, and surprisingly, you're right, it says two hormones but only one or more examples of the effects of neurotransmission. Although in my study guide the learning outcome was two. Maybe they meant that the exam question can be either 'one' or 'more than one' but they could've made it clear.. Wonder if someone else taught only about one and will tell them, maybe they will look at this questions less strictly then.

[Kirimin]

The fun thing is that TWO effects of neurotransmitters is not in the syllabus. Even my teacher said that... so basically every of us students in our class had to come up with something at place.

Just looked it up, and surprisingly, you're right, it says two hormones but only one or more examples of the effects of neurotransmission. Although in my study guide the learning outcome was two. Maybe they meant that the exam question can be either 'one' or 'more than one' but they could've made it clear.. Wonder if someone else taught only about one and will tell them, maybe they will look at this questions less strictly then.

But I suppose even if you had only done one neurotransmitter, you could have talked about two different effects of it. Which is what one of my friends did

[Babydolleyes]

The fun thing is that TWO effects of neurotransmitters is not in the syllabus. Even my teacher said that... so basically every of us students in our class had to come up with something at place.

Just looked it up, and surprisingly, you're right, it says two hormones but only one or more examples of the effects of neurotransmission. Although in my study guide the learning outcome was two. Maybe they meant that the exam question can be either 'one' or 'more than one' but they could've made it clear.. Wonder if someone else taught only about one and will tell them, maybe they will look at this questions less strictly then.

One or more examples technically does require us to know more than just one example. The Pearson's Psychology book has plenty of examples such as the dopamine theory, serotonin hypothesis and it also mentions acetylcholine. I think it was a very reasonable short essay question, in fact you could even stretch into a long essay if you talk about how neurotransmission works in general and the different ways drugs can affect the neurotransmitters etc..

I think P2 was a DREAM - I chose eclectic approaches to treatment for abnormal psychology and one theory of cognitive development (so easy with Piaget), and I wrote 16 pages. It was lovely. I wish I had written more for P1 but I am happy with what I wrote which is the main thing I guess. I chose emotion on cognitive process (so FBM's). I was slightly disappointed with seeing FBM's on the final exam because I have written on it so many times so I found it quite boring.

P3 was great in my opinion, I discussed confidentiality and informed consent because the participants were underage and they all knew each other, plus the stimulus didn't specify whether the recordings were destroyed and transcripts made anonymous. My main regret is that I didn't find a way to mention confirmability, dependability and transferability. I mainly talked about credibility.

I hope you guys are glad it's over and satisfied with your overall performance!

[BJD]

I enjoyed the papers. For paper 1, neurotransmittters - Dopamine and Acetylcholine, Cognitive principle - I used the mind can be studied scientifically and used Loftus and Palmer's lab experiment as the example, then for cultural dimensions (thank God for revision on the train to the exam) I did long term vs short term orientation with Chen et al as supporting study. Section B I chose research methods in BLOA using Case Studies and Lab experiments, luckily I started on the other question about emotion and memory but I started to write about the appraisal theory! (idiot) then I realised it was about flashbulb memory and immediately crossed it out.

Paper 2, Abnormal - I chose the gender variations one (I forgot the complete question), and the Human relationships - discuss socialcultural explanations to the origins of violence which was amazing and I was waiting for that question

[decemberr94]

The topics were not hard. I chose interaction of cognition and emotion in memory (I think that's how it goes), I'm just worried that I did not focus on the command terms enough because we didn't really practice writing essays in the classroom, when we finished discussing paper 3, there was only time to do one mock exam... Same for paper 2, where I talked about considerations in diagnosis and development of gender roles.

paper 3 seemed easy but again, I don't think my teacher assesed my mock the way examiners do so no idea how it will turn out.

I hope that the grade boundaries will be as low as last year so that I could get the 7 I quite need ;p

Ahh, i feel the exact same way!! Need a 7 so bad

[maereth]

The topics were not hard. I chose interaction of cognition and emotion in memory (I think that's how it goes), I'm just worried that I did not focus on the command terms enough because we didn't really practice writing essays in the classroom, when we finished discussing paper 3, there was only time to do one mock exam... Same for paper 2, where I talked about considerations in diagnosis and development of gender roles.

paper 3 seemed easy but again, I don't think my teacher assesed my mock the way examiners do so no idea how it will turn out.

I hope that the grade boundaries will be as low as last year so that I could get the 7 I quite need ;p

Ahh, i feel the exact same way!! Need a 7 so bad

Yeah I need 6 6 7 in hl subjects for my firm, and psychology is the only one I could realisticaly get it in... Well, we'll see in July I guess ;d

[Garmr]

I thought Psychology was good overall and I'm expecting a 7 (although, I have a feeling examiners mark very harshly given the rather low boundaries >_>).

Paper 1 was okay I guess, but for the neurotransmitter SAQ I used Martinez & Kesner's rat study and I only realized it said "effects of neurotransmitters on human behavior" after my friends told me after the exam I could've talked about the biological LOA principle but didn't realize it at the time so I hope they won't penalize me too much. I did the essay on flashbulb memories and it was ok, I'm just worried I didn't really adhere to command term and all that jazz

I thought Paper 2 was much better (surprising given how much our whole class was freaking out before the exam), did strategies for stress reduction and altruism and Paper 3 was pretty good, so yeah.