OCR GCSE Psychology key terms

The consistency of results across items within a test.

The extent to which different raters or observers give consistent measurements of the same behaviour.

A programme introduced to bring about change, such as lessons intended to change students’ beliefs about intelligence.

A self-report research method in which a researcher directly asks a participant questions and records their answers.

An influence on participants’ answers caused by the interviewer’s characteristics or behaviour.

The prepared list of questions used by an interviewer.

A developmental stage within a fixed sequence that, according to Piaget, all children pass through.

Intelligence quotient: a standardised score comparing a person's performance on an intelligence test with that of other people their age. Modern tests set the average at 100.

A test designed to assess cognitive abilities, such as reasoning and memory, and convert performance into scores.

A rigid, unrealistic or extreme interpretation that is not adequately supported by evidence.

An age-based phase of schooling in England with specified curriculum content.

An experiment conducted in a controlled environment in which the researcher manipulates the independent variable.

The underlying unconscious meaning that Freud believed was disguised within a dream.

A question worded to suggest or encourage a particular answer.

A claimed preferred way of receiving information, such as through images, listening or practical activity. A preference does not establish that matching teaching to it improves learning.

The claim that learners achieve better results when teaching matches their preferred way of receiving information, such as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic presentation.

The perceived right of a person to exercise authority or make a particular request.

Power that people recognise as giving someone the right to issue instructions in a particular setting.

A rating scale on which participants indicate their degree of agreement with a statement.

A group of interconnected brain structures involved in emotion; its activation helps explain the emotional content of dreams.

A graph with points joined in order to show how a measurement changes across a continuous scale, such as time.

A person’s belief about whether events and outcomes depend mainly on their own actions or on external forces.

Research that gathers information about the same participant or participants over an extended period.

A memory store with potentially permanent duration and unlimited capacity, in which information is mainly encoded by meaning.

Repeating information to keep it active in short-term memory.

The process through which the attitudes or behaviour of the larger group influence other people to conform.

The remembered events, images and storyline of a dream.