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, think critically about psychological concepts and phenomena are essential to the study of psychology. - 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 a 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 academic knowledge to practice during placements, for example through developing and testing hypotheses, developing treatment plans, and then using the relevant information for conducting individual sessions for clients.
Literacy (language): This relates to the ability to acquire, understand, and apply information in a scholarly manner.
- Introduction
Competent literacy skills, in English, are essential to develop and deliver professional, appropriate, and effective responses to academic assessment tasks. - 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 is fundamental to competent professional practice. - Adjustments
Adjustments must enable the demonstration of a capacity to effectively acquire, comprehend, apply, and communicate accurate information. - 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 to complete academic assessment tasks. - 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
- Effectively communicating an understanding of statistical concepts and analyses.