AP Psychology: Key Contributors

Question 1

Socrates and Plato

Answer 1

The mind is separable from the body and continues after the body dies. Knowledge is innate.

Question 2

Aristotle

Answer 2

Knowledge comes from experience/observation and is not innate. We need information to learn

Question 3

Greek Philosophers

Answer 3

Aristotle, Plato, Socrates

Question 4

René Descartes

Answer 4

Agreed with Socrates and Plato. Dissected animals and discovered that fluid in brain flows through nerves to muscles, causing movement

Question 5

Francis Bacon

Answer 5

Father of modern science and empiricism

Question 6

John Locke

Answer 6

We are a blank slate at birth and it is our experiences that define us (called tabula rasa)

Question 7

Wilhelm Wundt

Answer 7

Established the first psychology lab and wanted to measure the fastest mental processes (“atoms of the mind”)
Physics (remember for test)

Question 8

Edward Bradford Titchener

Answer 8

Used introspection to search for the mind’s structural elements (structuralism)

Question 9

Charles Darwin

Answer 9

Natural selection of physical and mental traits and adaptive evolution. Influenced William James

Question 10

William James

Answer 10

Wrote “Principles of Psychology” and introduced functionalism. Coined the phrase “stream of consciousness,” with each moment in our lives flowing into the next

Question 11

Margaret Floy Washburn

Answer 11

Student of Edward Titchener and the first female to earn a Ph.D.in psychology. Wrote “The Animal Mind.” Second female president of the APA

Question 12

Behaviorists

Answer 12

John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner

Question 13

Sigmund Freud

Answer 13

Founder of psychoanalysis (treatment process) and personality theory

Question 14

Humanists

Answer 14

Abraham Moslow and Carl Rogers

Question 15

G. Stanley Hall

Answer 15

Wundt’s student who established the first formal US psychology laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 1883

Question 16

Ivan Pavlov

Answer 16

A Russian psychologist who pioneered the study of learning. He pioneered “classical conditioning,” which is focused on reflexes

Question 17

Jean Piaget

Answer 17

A Swiss biologist who was the century’s most influential observer of children

Question 18

Dorthea Dix

Answer 18

Led the way for humane treatment of those with psychological disorders

Question 19

B.F. Skinner

Answer 19

Pioneered “operant conditioning,” which is focused on behaviors

Question 20

Gustav Fechner

Answer 20

A German scientist and philosopher who studied the edge of our awareness of faint stimuli, or absolute threshold

Question 21

Ernst Weber

Answer 21

Established Weber’s Law, which states that for an average person to perceive a difference, two stimuli must differ by a constant percentage

Question 22

David Hubel

Answer 22

Nobel Prize winner who discovered that our minds deconstruct visual images and reassemble them via feature detectors

Question 23

Torsten Wiesel

Answer 23

Same as Hubel (see above)

Question 24

Sigmund Freud

Answer 24

Freud believed the unconscious was a hiding place for our most anxiety-provoking ideas and emotions, and that uncovering those hidden thoughts could lead to healing.

Question 25

Ernest Hilgard

Answer 25

Believed hypnosis involves not only social influence but also a special dual-processing state of dissociation — a split between different levels of consciousness.

Question 26

Little Albert

Answer 26

John B. Watson and his graduate assistant Rosalie Rayner conditioned “Little Albert” to fear a white rat (neutral stimulus) after repeatedly experiencing a loud noise as the rat was presented. He grew to fear the rat and eventually generalized this fear to dogs and rabbits.

Question 27

Neal Miller

Answer 27

A researcher who worked on biofeedback, finding that rats could modify their heartbeat if given pleasurable brain stimulation

Question 28

Gregory Kimble

Answer 28

Claimed that: “Just about any activity of which the organism is capable can be conditioned and … these responses can be conditioned to any stimulus that the organism can perceive.” He was later proven wrong thanks to the discovery of preparedness and instinctive drift.

Question 29

Ivan Pavlov

Answer 29

A behaviorist who conducted experiments on dogs, in which he used classical conditioning principles to spur dogs to salivate whenever a bell was rung

Question 30

John B. Watson

Answer 30

A behaviorist who thought that psychology should discount cognitive processes, Led the Little Albert experiment, where he conditioned an 11-month old boy to fear a white rat

Question 31

B.F. Skinner

Answer 31

A behaviorist who experimented with the operant chamber (Skinner box), conditioning animals to perform certain behaviors for rewards

Question 32

Edward L. Thorndike

Answer 32

Founded a principle called the “law of effect,” which served as the basis for Skinner’s work in operant conditioning

Question 33

John Garcia

Answer 33

Contributed to learning theory through his theory of taste aversion, which disproved the notion that a US must immediately follow a CS

Question 34

Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner

Answer 34

Created the contingency model. Conducted an experiment with rats that showed that animals can react to the predictability of an event (cognition is involved in learning)

Question 35

Edward C. Tolman

Answer 35

Conducted studies that showed that animals can create cognitive maps of places a form of latent learning

Question 36

Albert Bandura

Answer 36

Demonstrated the phenomenon of observational learning/modeling in his experiment with Bobo dolls

Question 37

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 37

Created the retention curve, which established that we remember more than we recall. As he repeated a list of syllables over several days, he found that the time required to relearn the list decreased

Question 38

Richard Atkinson

Answer 38

Proposed the 3-stage model to explain our memory-forming process (sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory)

Question 39

Richard Shiffrin

Answer 39

Same as Atkinson (3-stage model)

Question 40

George A. Miller

Answer 40

Proposed that we can store +/- 7 pieces of information in short-term memory

Question 41

Eric Kandel

Answer 41

Performed experiments on Aplysia (sea slug) and noticed that, when learning occurs, the slug releases serotonin, causing synapses to become more sensitive/efficient (LTP)

Question 42

Elizabeth Loftus

Answer 42

Showed how people/eyewitnesses can misremember faces/events and how easy it is to reconstruct memories

Question 43

Robert Sternberg

Answer 43

Came up with the 5 components for creativity: Expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment

Question 44

Wolfgang Köhler

Answer 44

Demonstrated that other animals (like chimps) can display insight

Question 45

Amos Tversky

Answer 45

Studied representative and availability heuristics and established how they can lead to faulty decision-making

Question 46

Daniel Kahneman

Answer 46

Same as Tversky. Both won the Nobel Prize for their work

Question 47

Daniel Kahneman

Answer 47

Same as Tversky. Both won the Nobel Prize for their work

Question 48

Steven Pinker

Answer 48

Dubbed language as “the crown jewel of cognition”

Question 49

Noam Chomsky

Answer 49

Argued for the idea of “universal grammar,” that humans have the innate ability to learn language

Question 50

Paul Broca

Answer 50

Confirmed that damage to an area of the left frontal lobe (Broca’s area) inhibited speaking ability

Question 51

Carl Wernicke

Answer 51

Discovered that damage to a specific area of the left temporal lobe (Wernicke’s Area) inhibited understanding

Question 52

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Answer 52

Came up with the idea of “linguistic determinism,” that language controls the way we think