Outline one link between genes and behaviour with reference to one relevant study.

Refer to the paper 1 section A markbands when awarding marks. These can be found under the “Your tests” tab > supplemental materials.

The command term “outline” requires candidates to give a brief account or summary of a link between genes and behaviour with reference to a relevant study.

Examples of links between genes and behaviour include, but are not limited to:

• genes and intelligence (e.g., Bouchard et al., 1990)
• genes and aggression (e.g., Caspi et al., 2002)
• genes and depression (e.g., Caspi et al., 2003, Kendler et al., 2006).

If a candidate does not refer to a relevant study, award up to a maximum of [5].

If a candidate makes reference to a relevant study without making the connection to the link outlined, award up to a maximum of [4].

If a candidate outlines more than one example of a link between genes and behaviour, credit should be given only to the first link outlined.

If a candidate refers to more than one relevant study, credit should be given only for the first study.

HL:

Candidates that performed well in this question were able to clearly identify a relevant link between genes and behaviour, intelligence or depression in the vast majority of responses, through the use of a relevant study which was usually quite well described. These responses were able to address the command term well and give a brief account of how genes or one specific gene were linked to behaviour so that the response was well focused on the demands of the question. Weaker responses to this question failed to adequately address a clear link between genes and behaviour and focused instead on lengthy descriptions of genes and heredity followed by a study that did not effectively demonstrate the link to behaviour.

There was a surprisingly high number of responses unfortunately that provided either completely irrelevant studies from the Biological approach (for example, studies of hormones or neurotransmitters) or made reference to studies showing the influence of environmental factors on behaviour (e.g. Bandura's study). For this reason, there were some candidates that were awarded zero marks for this question.

Some candidates used animal studies to support their response to this question with no more than a passing reference to how the findings could be related to human behaviour.

SL:

Many candidates were unable to outline a link between genes and behaviour in any detail and this tended to be done implicitly through the use of twin or kinship study descriptions. However, stronger candidates included details on the difference between monozygotic and dizygotic twins and the use of concordance rates or alternatively, how to investigate heredity through the use of family and adoption studies. Others effectively detailed specific genes and their alleles and linked these to human behaviour.

The majority could identify a relevant study and these tended to be summarized in good detail. The highest marks were usually awarded to descriptions of Caspi et al. (2003) with detailed descriptions of the link of the 5-HTT gene with depressive behaviour. Several candidates used twin studies; with Bouchard (1990) and Kendler (2006) being the most popular choice. However, only a minority of these responses outlined the link between genes and behaviour effectively. As a result, many candidates could not access the highest markband.

Unfortunately, a significant majority of the candidates who selected Wedekind (1995) failed to make the link with the MHC gene, instead concentrating on the smell of the T-shirts and attraction, so these tended to be low scoring answers.