QCAA Psychology 2019 v1.3 General Senior Syllabus (examined to the 2026 cohort; the 2025 syllabus applies from 2027)
Psychology is assessed through internal assessments completed at school across Units 3 and 4, including investigation work, plus a QCAA external assessment restricted to Unit 3 and Unit 4 subject matter. The external assessment is delivered as two papers. Paper 1 arrives as a multiple choice question book with a separate question and response book, and Paper 2 is a question and response book of longer written items. QCAA publishes marking guides and an annual subject report alongside the papers.
Past papers on this subject span more than one syllabus. Papers written under an older one still work as practice, but the units and topics they test have changed — the index labels every paper with the syllabus it was set under.
Psychology 2019 v1.3 General Senior Syllabus · 2020–2026Psychology 2025 v1.3 General Senior Syllabus (new) · 2027–present
The units and topics, one by one
Each area below lists the concepts named in the syllabus, what the QCAA exam asks of them, and the mistake that most often costs marks.
Area 1 of 4
Unit 3: Individual thinking
Unit 3 is about what happens inside one mind. Localisation of function maps behaviour onto structure, covering the lobes of the cerebral cortex, motor and somatosensory areas, Broca's and Wernicke's areas, hemispheric specialisation and the case-study and imaging evidence that established each claim, along with neuroplasticity after injury. Visual perception moves from sensation to interpretation, covering the visual pathway, depth and constancy cues, Gestalt organising principles, perceptual set, and the illusions that expose how the system constructs rather than records. Memory covers the multi-store model, working memory, long-term subdivisions such as episodic, semantic and procedural, encoding and retrieval processes, and forgetting through decay, interference and retrieval failure. Learning covers classical conditioning, operant conditioning with reinforcement and punishment schedules, and observational learning, with the defining studies for each.
What the syllabus lists under this area · 4 points
- Topic 1: Localisation of function in the brain
- Topic 2: Visual perception
- Topic 3: Memory
- Topic 4: Learning
What the exam asks
Questions supply a scenario, often a described patient, participant or everyday situation, and ask you to identify the process at work and apply the relevant model or theory to it. Command words such as describe, explain and apply dominate. Marks come from naming the concept precisely and then linking each element of the model to a detail in the stimulus.
Where marks go missing
Naming a theory and then never connecting it to the scenario given. A response that defines the multi-store model or operant conditioning correctly but does not identify which stimulus, response or store the scenario describes is a definition, not an application, and only scores at the lower end.
Area 2 of 4
Unit 4: The influence of others
Unit 4 turns outward to behaviour in the presence of others. Social psychology covers conformity and the factors that raise or lower it, obedience to authority, group influence through social loafing, deindividuation and groupthink, bystander intervention, and the classic experimental programs that generated this evidence along with the ethical debate around them. Interpersonal processes cover attraction and relationship formation, person perception, attribution including the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias, and communication in groups. Attitudes are broken into cognitive, affective and behavioural components, with attitude formation and change, cognitive dissonance, prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, and strategies for reducing intergroup hostility such as contact and superordinate goals. Cross-cultural psychology examines individualist and collectivist orientations, cultural differences in the phenomena studied earlier, and the problem of generalising findings from one cultural sample.
What the syllabus lists under this area · 4 points
- Topic 1: Social psychology
- Topic 2: Interpersonal processes
- Topic 3: Attitudes
- Topic 4: Cross-cultural psychology
What the exam asks
Expect unfamiliar social situations to interpret using named concepts, and questions that ask you to distinguish closely related ideas such as conformity and obedience, or stereotype and prejudice. Higher-mark items ask you to evaluate a study or predict how a described change in conditions would alter behaviour, which requires you to reference the variable being manipulated.
Where marks go missing
Treating conformity and obedience as interchangeable. Conformity is yielding to group norms without a direct instruction, obedience is compliance with an explicit order from an authority figure, and swapping them makes every subsequent explanation of the scenario incorrect.
Area 3 of 4
Unit 1: Individual development (Year 11, not externally examined)
Unit 1 lays the foundations that Year 12 assumes. It introduces psychology as a discipline, its major perspectives and its ethical framework, then moves to research methodology in detail: experimental and non-experimental designs, independent and dependent variables, controls, sampling and allocation, extraneous and confounding variables, and the descriptive statistics used to summarise results, along with reliability, validity and the ethics of working with participants. The human brain and neuroanatomy cover neurons and synaptic transmission, the divisions of the nervous system, and the major brain structures. Cognitive development follows how thinking changes with age through stage-based and social accounts. Consciousness and sleep cover states of awareness, sleep stages and circadian rhythms, theories of why we sleep, and the effects of sleep deprivation.
What the syllabus lists under this area · 5 points
- Introduction to the discipline of psychology
- Psychological research design and statistics
- The human brain and neuroanatomy
- Cognitive development
- Consciousness and sleep
What the exam asks
Unit 1 is assessed internally in Year 11 and is not examined in the external assessment, which covers Units 3 and 4. Its research methodology content is the exception in practice, because senior questions routinely ask you to identify variables, judge whether a conclusion is supported, or comment on the reliability of a study described in the stimulus.
Where marks go missing
Using reliability and validity as synonyms. Reliability is consistency of results on repetition, validity is whether the study measures what it claims to. A study can be highly reliable and still invalid, and questions asking you to evaluate a method reward that distinction.
Area 4 of 4
Unit 2: Individual behaviour (Year 11, not externally examined)
Unit 2 studies individual differences and wellbeing. Intelligence covers competing definitions and models, the construction and standardisation of intelligence tests, what an IQ score does and does not represent, and the influence of heredity and environment. Diagnosis and classification cover how psychological disorders are defined, the criteria used to judge behaviour as abnormal, and the role of classification systems, together with their limitations and the risk of labelling. Treatment covers biological, psychological and social approaches, with anxiety disorders as a worked example running from symptoms and causes to interventions such as cognitive behavioural techniques and systematic desensitisation. Emotion and wellbeing cover theories of emotion, stress and coping, and models of mental health. Motivation covers intrinsic and extrinsic drivers and the major theories explaining why behaviour is initiated and sustained.
What the syllabus lists under this area · 5 points
- Understanding and measuring intelligence
- Diagnosis and classification of psychological disorders
- Treatment of psychological disorders (incl. anxiety disorders)
- Emotion and wellbeing
- Motivation
What the exam asks
Unit 2 is examined by school-based assessment rather than the external papers, which are limited to Unit 3 and Unit 4 subject matter. The concepts still support senior work, since attitude change, group behaviour and cross-cultural questions often require you to reason about motivation, emotion and the limits of applying a diagnostic or testing framework across populations.
Where marks go missing
Treating a diagnostic category as an explanation of behaviour. Saying someone behaves anxiously because they have an anxiety disorder restates the label rather than identifying a cause, and evaluation questions specifically reward recognising that classification describes a pattern rather than explaining it.
Common questions
Is Unit 1 and Unit 2 Psychology content on the QCE external assessment?
No. The external assessment covers Unit 3 and Unit 4 subject matter only, so Year 11 units are assessed by your school. Research methods knowledge from Unit 1 is the practical exception, because senior questions regularly ask you to identify variables or evaluate the design of a study described in the stimulus.
Which Psychology syllabus applies to my cohort?
The 2019 version 1.3 General Senior Syllabus applies to students completing the course up to 2026, and a 2025 edition takes effect from the 2027 cohort. Every external assessment paper published so far was written under the 2019 edition, which is what makes them directly relevant practice for current students.
How should I use QCAA Psychology subject reports?
Subject reports summarise how the cohort performed and where responses commonly fell short, often naming the exact confusions that cost marks. Reading the report for a paper before attempting it, then again afterwards, is usually more informative than a marking guide alone because it explains why stronger responses scored higher.
Do I need to memorise psychological studies by name?
Knowing key studies helps, but the marks sit in using them. Questions ask you to apply a concept to a new scenario or evaluate evidence, so the useful knowledge is what a study manipulated, what it found and what its limitations were, rather than the researcher name and year in isolation.