Child Psychology

What Child Psychology covers

One of the three Paper 2 applications. It covers Bowlby and Ainsworth on attachment, deprivation, privation and day care, cross-cultural research, and autism, together with the observation, self-report, cross-cultural and ethical methods that research with children requires.

The 22 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Bowlby's theory of attachmentRecall questions on monotropy, the internal working model, the critical period, social releasers, maternal deprivation and the 44 Thieves study.Open →
• Ainsworth and the Strange SituationRecall questions on the eight episodes of the Strange Situation, the four behaviours coded, secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant infants, Ainsworth's maternal sensitivity hypothesis and Baltimore study, De Wolff and van IJzendoorn's meta-analysis, and the temperament criticism.Open →
• Research into deprivationRecall questions on protest, despair and detachment, the Robertsons' films, and how substitute emotional care reduces the effects.Open →
• Research into privationRecall questions on Genie and the Czech twins, Rutter's Romanian adoptees, age at adoption, and disinhibited attachment.Open →
• Research into day careRecall questions on the EPPE and NICHD findings, what distinguishes good from poor quality provision, and the effect of long hours.Open →
• Cross-cultural research into attachmentRecall questions on the nature-nurture question, variation between and within cultures, and the imposed etic criticism of the Strange Situation.Open →
• Autism: features, explanations and therapiesRecall questions on sensory differences, impaired social communication and interaction, restricted and repetitive behaviours, genetic and twin evidence, Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory, applied behaviour analysis, social skills and speech and language therapy, and early intervention.Open →
• Individual differences in child psychologyRecall questions on Kagan's temperament hypothesis, why attachment type differs by parent, and why day care suits some children and not others.Open →
• Developmental psychology in child psychologyRecall questions on the effects of day care, deprivation and privation on development, the continuity hypothesis, and the internal working model.Open →
• Observation in child psychologyRecall questions on qualitative and quantitative observational data, tallying frequency counts, the strengths and limitations of participant, non-participant, overt and covert observation, and how the four types combine.Open →
• Questionnaires and interviews in child psychologyRecall questions on how questionnaires and interviews gather quantitative and qualitative data, structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews and their reliability, closed questions, sampling through gatekeepers and parental consent, and which method suits young children.Open →
• Issues with self-report in child researchRecall questions on social desirability in parent reports, demand characteristics with children, and open against closed questions.Open →
• Cross-cultural research methodsRecall questions on using the Strange Situation across cultures, what similar and differing distributions say about nature and nurture, cross-sectional and longitudinal designs and cohort effects, meta-analysis, and the imposed etic and misclassification.Open →
• The ethics of researching with childrenRecall questions on parental consent and child assent, children's rights and the UNCRC (1989), and participation and protection.Open →
• Analysing data in child psychologyRecall questions on why attachment type needs the mode, frequency tables, range and standard deviation, thematic analysis, bar charts, inter-rater reliability, and when chi-squared, Spearman's rho, Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon are used.Open →
• Classic study: van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)Recall questions on the meta-analysis of 32 studies in 8 countries, the country patterns, and why within-culture variation was the larger.Open →
• Contemporary study: Cassibba et al. (2013)Recall questions on the Italian meta-analysis, how the distribution compared with the global norm, and what explained the difference.Open →
• Contemporary study: Gagnon-Oosterwaal et al. (2012)Recall questions on the international adoptees, pre-adoption adversity, internalising and externalising problems at seven, and why cause cannot be shown.Open →
• Contemporary study: Li et al. (2013) child care timingRecall questions on the NICHD data, the comparison of infancy against pre-school care, and why timing mattered for the outcomes measured.Open →
• Key question in child psychologyRecall questions on choosing a key issue such as day care or adoption timing, and applying research to answer it.Open →
• Practical investigation in child psychologyRecall questions on designing an observation of children, defining categories, obtaining consent, and reporting the analysis.Open →
• Issues and debates in child psychologyRecall questions on ethics with children, nature and nurture in attachment, cultural bias in the Strange Situation, and social sensitivity.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Child Psychology further

The same content, four other ways.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How does the internal working model affect later development?

   Model answer

   It shapes expectations and behaviours in future relationships, as the child uses their early attachment experience as a template for understanding how relationships work.

2. 2

   Why is an interactionist approach considered more complete than purely nature or nurture explanations of attachment?

   Model answer

   It acknowledges that both biological predispositions and environmental influences work together to shape attachment, rather than one factor acting alone.

3. 3

   What did Bowlby mean by monotropy?

   Model answer

   That an infant forms one primary attachment which is qualitatively different from and more important than all the others.

4. 4

   What is the internal working model in Bowlby's theory?

   Model answer

   A mental template of relationships built from the first attachment, which shapes expectations of later relationships including the infant's own parenting.

5. 5

   What did Bowlby mean by a critical period for attachment?

   Model answer

   That attachment must form within roughly the first two and a half years, and becomes very difficult after about five.

6. 6

   What are social releasers in Bowlby's account?

   Model answer

   Innate infant behaviours such as crying, smiling and clinging that elicit caregiving from adults.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Child Psychology revision questions

What does Child Psychology cover in Edexcel A-Level Psychology?

22 subtopics: bowlby's theory of attachment, ainsworth and the strange situation, research into deprivation, research into privation, research into day care, cross-cultural research into attachment, autism: features, explanations and therapies, individual differences in child psychology, developmental psychology in child psychology, observation in child psychology, questionnaires and interviews in child psychology, issues with self-report in child research, cross-cultural research methods, the ethics of researching with children, analysing data in child psychology, classic study: van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg (1988), contemporary study: cassibba et al. (2013), contemporary study: gagnon-oosterwaal et al. (2012), contemporary study: li et al. (2013) child care timing, key question in child psychology, practical investigation in child psychology and issues and debates in child psychology. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Child Psychology organised?

By the Edexcel 9PS0 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.