L1 Psychology Revision Sheets — Full Programme

First-Year Psychology (L1) — Complete Revision Sheet

The first year of a psychology degree provides a comprehensive overview of the discipline across its major fields: history of psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology and psychopathology, biological psychology (neuroscience), and research methodology. This sheet covers the essential theories, landmark experiments, and key researchers.

1. History and Major Schools

Wilhelm Wundt (1879) founded the first experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, using introspection to study the structure of consciousness (structuralism). William James proposed functionalism, focusing on the adaptive purpose of mental processes.

Psychoanalysis — Sigmund Freud: the psyche comprises the Id (drives, pleasure principle), the Ego (reality principle), and the Superego (moral norms). Psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital. Defence mechanisms: repression, projection, sublimation, denial.

Behaviourism — Watson and Skinner: psychology should study only observable behaviour. Pavlov's classical conditioning (dogs salivating to a bell). Skinner's operant conditioning: behaviour is shaped by consequences — positive/negative reinforcement increases behaviour, punishment decreases it.

The Cognitive Revolution (1950s-60s): reinstated the study of mental processes. Key influences: information theory (Shannon), Chomsky's critique of Skinner on language acquisition, Miller's "magical number seven" (1956), Neisser's Cognitive Psychology (1967).

Humanistic psychology (Maslow, Rogers): the "third force" — self-actualisation, Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

2. Developmental Psychology

Piaget's Cognitive Development (4 stages)

1. Sensorimotor (0-2): knowledge through senses and motor actions. Key acquisition: object permanence.
2. Preoperational (2-7): symbolic thought, language, but egocentrism and failure of conservation tasks.
3. Concrete operational (7-11): reversibility, conservation, logical reasoning on concrete objects.
4. Formal operational (11+): hypothetico-deductive thinking, abstract reasoning.

Mechanisms: assimilation (integrating new information into existing schemas), accommodation (modifying schemas), equilibration (the drive to resolve cognitive conflicts).

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): the gap between what a child can do alone and what they can do with guided support. Scaffolding: temporary adult support gradually withdrawn as the child gains competence. Language is first social, then becomes internalised thought.

Attachment Theory — Bowlby and Ainsworth

Bowlby: infants have an innate need for proximity to an attachment figure. Ainsworth's Strange Situation (1970) identified attachment styles: secure (~60-65%), insecure-avoidant (~20%), insecure-ambivalent (~10-15%), and disorganised (Main & Solomon, 1986).

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

Eight life-span stages, each defined by a crisis: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, integrity vs. despair.

3. Cognitive Psychology

Memory

Atkinson-Shiffrin model (1968): sensory memory (brief), short-term memory (7±2 items, ~15-30s), long-term memory (unlimited capacity). Baddeley's working memory model (1974/2000): phonological loop (verbal), visuospatial sketchpad (images), central executive (coordination), and episodic buffer (integration).

Long-term memory types (Tulving): episodic (personal events), semantic (general knowledge), procedural (skills and habits).

Attention

Broadbent's filter model (1958): early selection based on physical features. Treisman's attenuation model (1960): unattended information is weakened but not blocked, explaining the cocktail party effect. Kahneman's resource theory (1973): attention as a limited pool of cognitive resources.

Perception and Language

Gestalt laws (proximity, similarity, continuity, closure). Bottom-up vs. top-down processing. Chomsky's universal grammar: innate language acquisition capacity. Competence (grammatical knowledge) vs. performance (actual use).

4. Social Psychology

Conformity — Asch (1951)

Line comparison experiment: ~75% of participants conformed at least once to an obviously wrong group answer. Conformity increases with group size (up to 3-4) and unanimity. Informational conformity (believing the group is right) vs. normative conformity (desire for acceptance).

Obedience — Milgram (1963)

Participants delivered fake electric shocks up to 450V on the experimenter's orders. 65% obeyed to the maximum level. Factors: victim proximity (↓), authority proximity (↑), institutional prestige, absence of a disobedient model. The agentic state: participants felt they were mere instruments of authority.

Cognitive Dissonance — Festinger (1957)

Psychological discomfort from holding contradictory cognitions. Festinger & Carlsmith (1959): participants paid $1 to describe a boring task as interesting changed their attitude more than those paid $20, because the low payment did not justify the lie (strong dissonance → attitude change).

Stereotypes and Prejudice

Stereotypes (beliefs), prejudice (attitudes), discrimination (behaviour). Tajfel's minimal group paradigm (1971): arbitrary categorisation alone is enough to produce in-group favouritism.

5. Clinical Psychology

The DSM (DSM-5-TR) is the standard diagnostic classification: categorical, atheoretical, criteria-based. Key disorders: anxiety disorders (GAD, panic, phobias, OCD, PTSD), mood disorders (major depression — Beck's cognitive triad; bipolar disorder), schizophrenia (positive symptoms: hallucinations, delusions; negative symptoms: social withdrawal, flat affect. ~1% prevalence. Vulnerability-stress model: Zubin & Spring, 1977).

6. Biological Psychology

Neurons: cell body, dendrites, axon, synaptic terminals. Action potential: all-or-nothing electrical signal. Myelin sheath speeds conduction. Synapse: neurotransmitter release into the synaptic cleft.

Key neurotransmitters: dopamine (reward, movement — schizophrenia, Parkinson's), serotonin (mood, sleep — depression, SSRIs), GABA (inhibition — anxiety, benzodiazepines), glutamate (excitation — learning, LTP), acetylcholine (memory — Alzheimer's).

Brain structures: prefrontal cortex (executive functions — Phineas Gage case), hippocampus (episodic memory consolidation — patient H.M.), amygdala (fear, emotion), Broca's area (speech production), Wernicke's area (language comprehension).

7. Research Methodology

Experimental method: manipulate an independent variable (IV), measure a dependent variable (DV), control confounding variables, use random assignment. Between-subjects vs. within-subjects vs. mixed designs. Correlation ≠ causation — only controlled experiments establish causal relationships.

Other methods: systematic observation, surveys, case studies, longitudinal studies. Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, debriefing, right to withdraw, non-maleficence. Post-Milgram, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were strengthened.