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Question 1

Wilhelm wundt role in development of psychology as a science

Answer 1

Set up first psychology laboratory in Germany in 1879 and published first book on helping establish the subject as an independent branch of science

Used controlled environments to establish general theories about mental health processes

Used scientific method to study present experiences such as structure of sensation and perception using introspection

Arguing human experiences should be analysed in terms of its components e.g. sensations,emotions and reactions

Question 2

Introspection

Answer 2

Focuses in present experiences

Individual conscious experience is systematically analysed

Induvidual focus on an object whilst listening to a stimulus looking inwards noticing own present sensations ,feelings and images

Analysis is broken into component’s of thoughts,images and sensations

Question 3

Wundt Ao3 strength

Answer 3

Moving psychology away from philosophical roots

Used controlled environment with standardised procedure to study emotions, feelings and sensation

Such as using same stimulus every time and giving participants same standardised instruction’s

Thus this increased ability to replicate pieces of the research and increased psychology’s status and its emergence as a science

Question 4

Wundt Ao3 limitation

Answer 4

However, although method was replicable it’s not considered reliable

As introspection focuses on a participants subjective experience

Thus findings varied greatly from person to person

Making it difficult to establish consistent general principles of human behaviour

Behaviourist psychologist Watson and Raynor believed psychology should only study behaviour that could be observed and measured scientifically

As a result behaviourist approach was developed and used more emphirical and objective methods

Which increased psychology’s scientific status following contributions of Wundt

Question 5

Assumptions about human behaviour

Answer 5

All behaviour is learnt from the environment thus can be unlearnt

Question 6

Pavlovs study

Answer 6

Classical conditioning is learning though stimulus response associations

Controlled environment, showed dogs could be conditioned to salivate to sound of a bell

UCS-food
UCR-salivation
NS-bell

During experiment dogs were presented food once again, pavlov rang bell at the same time and repeated this association many times

Dogs learnt to associate food with noise of bell

Question 7

Operant conditioning

Answer 7

Emphasised importance of consequence,learning through rewards,reinforcement and punishment

Question 8

Positive reinforcement

Answer 8

Reward is given for a behaviour thus behaviour is encouraged, so behaviour is repeated to gain same reward

Question 9

P.R skinners research

Answer 9

Hungry rat in skinners box, everytime it pressed lever, rat was rewarded with food

This was repeated as rat was conditioned to press the lever through positive reinforcement to get pleasant outcome

Question 10

Negative reinforcement

Answer 10

Performing behaviour to remove/avoid an unpleasant consequence

So behaviour is repeated to avoid unpleasant consequence again

Question 11

Negative reinforcement skinners research

Answer 11

Ran electrical current across floor, caused rat discomfort so it would move around until it knocked the lever

Lever would stop current, rat would repeat this behaviour as it learnt pressing lever would avoid unpleasant consequence of pain

Question 12

Punishment

Answer 12

Unpleasant consequence for behaviour e.g detention for not doing homework therefore this should stop that behaviour

Question 13

Negative and positive reinforcement vs punishment

Answer 13

Positive and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated (Encourages it) whereas punishment decreases the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated (stops it)