The article describes citation behaviour in psychology and it is argued that in this particular specialism, the knowledge of domain culture is crucial. The author describes a method for observing citation behaviour, and by implication culture, and reports on a study he ahs conducted with postgraduate students in the Netherlands. The citation patterns of the students are studied within the scope of a methodology which goes back to Swales' work on academic genre analysis (Swales 1990) an to the extensions to the cognitive functions of ciation patterns. One of the key findings is that the study of citation patterns will help to develop critical skills, that, in turn, will enable students to make efficient use of previous findings.