Psychology — past papers by topic
Every official QCAA exam and examiner report we index, organised by topic and subtopic and labelled with the study design it was written under. Open the official paper, work the question in your own workspace, or bring a tutor into it live.
Papers and examiner reports open on the official QCAA website — they stay official and up to date. Question descriptions below are our own; we never republish exam content. Prefer to be walked through it? Book a tutor →
Official papers & examiner reports, year by year
METHODOLOGY: All URLs were verified via targeted WebSearch queries against qcaa.qld.edu.au (WebFetch was blocked with HTTP 403 on every qcaa.qld.edu.au URL attempted, including the subject page and PDFs directly — QCAA's site appears to bot-block automated fetchers — so verification relied on Google-indexed search-result snippets that returned the exact qcaa.qld.edu.au download URL and an accurate title/description of the document, cross-checked across 15+ distinct search queries with overlapping results confirming the same URLs repeatedly). No URL was fabricated or guessed by pattern-extrapolation alone; every URL in years[] appeared verbatim in at least one search result.\n\nCOVERAGE: QCE Psychology as a standalone General senior subject only exists from the 2019 v1.3 syllabus, first examined 2020 — so all 6 available EA years (2020–2025) are included, which is the full population, not just \"most recent 10.\" There is no QCAA Psychology EA before 2020 (Queensland's old OP system, pre-QCE reform, did not have a directly equivalent Psychology external exam in this format).\n\nGAP: 2025 EA question papers (P1 MC, P1 Q&R, P2 Q&R) could not be located via search despite the 2025 subject report (proving the exam occurred and was marked) being indexed. This is flagged in the 2025 year entry's notes rather than guessed. Recommend rechecking https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/senior/senior-subjects/syllabuses/sciences/psychology directly (or QCAA's 'Senior syllabus resource search' tool) closer to when this index is consumed, as QCAA's own indexing/publication of the newest year's papers sometimes lags.\n\nSYLLABUS TRANSITION: A NEW Psychology 2025 v1.3 General Senior Syllabus was published (dated January 2026) and applies to students who complete the course in 2026 or beyond — meaning the first EA under this new syllabus would be November 2027 (or possibly late 2026 depending on QCAA's cohort-year convention; this needs confirming against QCAA's syllabus implementation schedule, not confirmed in this pass). All 2020–2025 papers listed are under the OLD (still current as of today, 2026-07-08) 2019 v1.3 syllabus. Do not badge 2020-2025 papers with the new syllabus era.\n\nQUESTIONS: questions[] is deliberately empty. WebFetch could not open any QCAA PDF (persistent 403), so no paper content was directly read by me — per the task's strict instruction, I did not guess or infer per-question breakdowns from third-party summaries (e.g., exam-insights.com, Studocu snippets) that appeared in search results, since those are not \"actually opening and reading\" the official PDF and their question-level descriptions are not verifiable as accurate/complete.\n\nPORTAL-LOCKED CONTENT: IA (internal assessment) sample instruments, annotated sample responses, and annotated bibliographies exist per-unit on QCAA's site but are separate from EA past papers and were not included in years[].papers — only true EA (external assessment) exam booklets were included, matching the task's scope. Some richer historical resources (e.g., full year-by-year confirmed grade boundaries, alternate-format/accessible versions of papers) sit behind the QCAA Portal (teacher/school login) per QCAA's own text (\"teachers can access additional resources in the Syllabus application in the QCAA Portal\") and were excluded as non-public.\n\nMINOR URL VARIANTS: Several filenames appeared in multiple crawled variants (e.g., 2022 Paper 2 as both snr_psychology_22_ea_p2_question_response_a324.pdf and a plain version; 2023 Paper 1 MC as both a plain and _a4n18-suffixed version) — these look like alternate-format (accessible/large-print) duplicates hosted alongside the standard PDF at different crawl times. I selected the base/primary filename confirmed with a clean official title in search results for each; if a link 404s, try removing or the underscore-suffix variant.
Browse by topic
Pick a topic, open the exact question in the official paper, then work it in your own workspace — or hand the question straight to a live tutor session.
Unit 3: Individual thinking · question map rolling out
Topic 1: Localisation of function in the brain
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 2: Visual perception
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 3: Memory
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 4: Learning
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Unit 4: The influence of others · question map rolling out
Topic 1: Social psychology
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 2: Interpersonal processes
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 3: Attitudes
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Topic 4: Cross-cultural psychology
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Unit 1: Individual development (Year 11, not externally examined) · question map rolling out
Introduction to the discipline of psychology
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Psychological research design and statistics
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
The human brain and neuroanatomy
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Cognitive development
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Consciousness and sleep
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Unit 2: Individual behaviour (Year 11, not externally examined) · question map rolling out
Understanding and measuring intelligence
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Diagnosis and classification of psychological disorders
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Treatment of psychological disorders (incl. anxiety disorders)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Emotion and wellbeing
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Motivation
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Turn any question into a live lesson
Book a verified QCE tutor, and the question you pick loads into a shared live workspace — the tutor sees your working as you type, on a video call beside the official paper.
Find a Psychology tutor →