IGCSE Psychology 0266

Cambridge IGCSE Psychology 0266 covers seven syllabus sections that develop scientific understanding of human behaviour and mental processes through psychological theories, named studies and research methodology. Approximately 130 guided learning hours are allocated across a two-year programme designed for students aged 14 to 16 and no prior study of psychology is expected. The assessment places 51 percent of marks on application, requiring candidates to connect theories and named study evidence to novel scenarios throughout both papers.

• Section 1 — Memory and Forgetting: key concepts of memory including encoding, storage and retrieval, declarative and procedural memory, retrograde and anterograde amnesia, Craik and Lockhart's levels of processing model with structural, phonemic and semantic processing, Atkinson and Shiffrin's multistore model with sensory register, short-term and long-term memory stores, the serial position effect including primacy and recency effects, forgetting through displacement, decay and access problems, the psychodynamic theory of motivated forgetting including the role of the id, ego, super-ego and defence mechanisms such as repression and suppression, and the role of the brain in memory including the limbic system, amygdala, hippocampus and cerebellum. Named studies: Craik and Tulving, Milner et al. (HM amnesia), Murdock (serial position effect).
• Section 2 — Sleep and Dreams: biological rhythms including circadian and ultradian rhythms, REM and nREM sleep characteristics, sleep measurement using EEG, EMG, EOG and dream reporting, the role of exogenous cues and endogenous pacemakers including the SCN, pineal gland and melatonin, the effects of jetlag and shiftwork, sleep disorders including insomnia, sleep paralysis and sleepwalking, the restoration theory of sleep, Hobson and McCarley's activation-synthesis theory of dreaming with sensory input blockade and random activation, and the psychodynamic theory of dreaming including manifest and latent content, wish fulfilment, dreamwork mechanisms and dream analysis. Named studies: Robinson et al. (sleep restriction), Williams et al. (bizarreness of dream content), Iorio et al. (dreams and trauma).
• Section 3 — Prosocial Behaviour: key concepts including individual and situational factors, the biological explanation including neurotransmitters such as serotonin, hormones such as oxytocin, brain areas including the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, and the heritability of prosocial behaviour using MZ and DZ twin studies, Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory including social categorisation, identification and comparison, ingroup favouritism and outgroup dynamics, and Bandura's social learning theory including the four processes of attention, retention, reproduction and motivation, vicarious reinforcement, prosocial media use and parental mediation. Named studies: Rushton (heritability of social responsibility), Levine et al. (helping behaviour), Prot et al. (prosocial media).
• Section 4 — Visual Perception: sensation versus perception, the five senses, the role of the occipital lobe, visual constancies in shape, size and colour, depth cues including relative brightness, texture gradient, relative size, superimposition and height in plane, the Gestalt principles of figure-ground, similarity, proximity, closure and continuity, Gibson's direct theory of perception as a bottom-up process including optic flow, motion parallax, invariants and affordance, Gregory's constructivist theory as a top-down process including schemas, inferences, perceptual hypotheses and perceptual set influenced by culture, motivation and expectation, and types of visual illusions including ambiguous figures, fictions, distortions, impossible figures and relative size illusions. Named studies: Gibson and Walk (visual cliff), Haber and Levin (familiarity and perception), Bremner et al. (culture and visual illusions).
• Section 5 — Motivation and Needs: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, Maslow's hierarchy of needs from physiological through self-actualisation, Hull's drive reduction theory including biological drives, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, homeostasis, primary and secondary drives, positive reinforcement in education including token economies, peer feedback and praise, the psychodynamic approach to motivation in marketing including unconscious desires, defence mechanisms such as regression and rationalisation, advertising appeals including nostalgia and morality, and Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory of competence, relatedness and autonomy applied to motivation to exercise. Named studies: Boniecki and Moore (classroom token economy), Calvo et al. (sports persistence), Merchant et al. (nostalgic advertising).
• Section 6 — Language Development: the stages of language acquisition from pre-linguistic through multi-word, the biological explanation including Broca's area, Wernicke's area, Chomsky's language acquisition device, universal grammar, the critical period for language acquisition and aphasia, the learning theory of language development including observation, imitation and reinforcement, and Piaget's cognitive theory including schemas, assimilation, accommodation and the four developmental stages from sensory motor through formal operational. Named studies: Senghas (sign language acquisition), Goldstein et al. (speech and social feedback), Hewitt (schemas and language).
• Section 7 — Research Methods: the experimental method including independent and dependent variables, operationalisation, repeated measures and independent measures designs, counterbalancing, random allocation, extraneous variables and controls, non-experimental methods including structured and unstructured observations, covert and overt observations, questionnaires and interviews with open and closed questions, and case studies, sampling techniques including opportunity and volunteer samples, validity and reliability including inter-rater and inter-observer reliability, ethical guidelines covering consent, debriefing, confidentiality, deception, right to withdraw, privacy and minimising harm, the research process, and dealing with data including tables, measures of central tendency, range and bar charts.

Assessment consists of two externally assessed papers: Paper 1 is a one-hour-and-thirty-minute written paper worth 90 marks and 53 percent of the final grade, containing Section A on memory and forgetting, Section B on sleep and dreams, Section C on prosocial behaviour each worth 20 marks, and Section D on experimental research methods worth 30 marks. Paper 2 is a one-hour-and-twenty-minute written paper worth 80 marks and 47 percent, containing Section A on visual perception, Section B on motivation and needs, Section C on language development each worth 20 marks, and Section D on non-experimental research methods worth 20 marks. Each paper includes one 8-mark extended response question in Sections A-C requiring candidates to use arguments for and against a theory. The full official syllabus is available on the IGCSE Psychology 0266 page on the Cambridge International website.