The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through one's thoughts, experience, and senses.
Knowledge and cognitive skills: Acquired skills that reflect an individual's ability to think. Cognitive skills include verbal and spatial abilities, concentration, memory, perception, reasoning, planning and organisation, flexible thinking, and problem solving.
- Introduction
The ability to review academic literature, synthesise knowledge, analyse data, and think critically about psychological concepts and phenomena are essential to the study of psychology and reflect skills that are important in many professional areas. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates:
- The capacity to locate appropriate and relevant information
- The ability to explain behaviours in terms of psychological concepts and processes
- An understanding of the relationship between data and psychological theory
- The capacity to understand and conduct appropriate statistical analyses.
- Justification of inherent requirement
A sound knowledge of psychological principles is required in order to apply them effectively in an academic and professional context. It includes the ability to recognise the limits of one’s knowledge and the ability to source appropriate knowledge. - Adjustments
Adjustments must ensure that a clear demonstration of knowledge and cognitive skills is not compromised or impeded. - Exemplars:
- Ability to apply appropriate conceptual understanding in response to an academic assessment.
Literacy (language): This relates to the ability to acquire, understand, and apply information in the English language in a scholarly manner.
- Introduction
Competent English literacy skills are essential for effective performance in academic and professional contexts. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates:
- The ability to acquire information and accurately convey appropriate, effective messages
- The ability to read and comprehend a range of literature and information
- The capacity to understand and implement academic and practice conventions to construct written text in an appropriate manner for the intended audience.
- Justification of inherent requirement
The ability to acquire information and to accurately convey messages in English is fundamental to developing appropriate responses to academic assessment tasks and competent professional practice. - Adjustments
Adjustments must demonstrate a capacity to effectively acquire, comprehend, apply, and communicate accurate information in English. - Exemplars:
- Paraphrasing, summarising, and referencing in accordance with the American Psychological Association Publication Manual.
Numeracy: This relates to the ability to understand and work with numbers.
- Introduction
Competent and accurate numeracy skills are essential in many areas of academic and professional activities related to psychology. - Description of inherent requirement
Student demonstrates the ability to interpret and correctly apply numerical data, measurement and numerical criteria. - Justification of inherent requirement
Competent application of numeracy skills is essential in psychology to facilitate accurate and effective delivery of results when collecting and interpreting numerical data. - Adjustments
Adjustments must demonstrate a capacity to manage and interpret numerical data accurately and effectively. - Exemplars:
- Accurately interpreting psychological test results
- Accurately gathering and interpreting data using specialist software such as SPSS
- Effectively communicating an understanding of statistical concepts and analyses.