AP Psychology: Key Contributors Flashcards
Socrates and Plato
The mind is separable from the body and continues after the body dies. Knowledge is innate.
Aristotle
Knowledge comes from experience/observation and is not innate. We need information to learn
Greek Philosophers
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates
René Descartes
Agreed with Socrates and Plato. Dissected animals and discovered that fluid in brain flows through nerves to muscles, causing movement
Francis Bacon
Father of modern science and empiricism
John Locke
We are a blank slate at birth and it is our experiences that define us (called tabula rasa)
Wilhelm Wundt
Established the first psychology lab and wanted to measure the fastest mental processes (“atoms of the mind”)
Physics (remember for test)
Edward Bradford Titchener
Used introspection to search for the mind’s structural elements (structuralism)
Charles Darwin
Natural selection of physical and mental traits and adaptive evolution. Influenced William James
William James
Wrote “Principles of Psychology” and introduced functionalism. Coined the phrase “stream of consciousness,” with each moment in our lives flowing into the next
Margaret Floy Washburn
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
Behaviorists
John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner
Sigmund Freud
Founder of psychoanalysis (treatment process) and personality theory
Humanists
Abraham Moslow and Carl Rogers
G. Stanley Hall
Wundt’s student who established the first formal US psychology laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 1883
Ivan Pavlov
A Russian psychologist who pioneered the study of learning. He pioneered “classical conditioning,” which is focused on reflexes
Jean Piaget
A Swiss biologist who was the century’s most influential observer of children
Dorthea Dix
Led the way for humane treatment of those with psychological disorders
B.F. Skinner
Pioneered “operant conditioning,” which is focused on behaviors
Gustav Fechner
A German scientist and philosopher who studied the edge of our awareness of faint stimuli, or absolute threshold
Ernst Weber
Established Weber’s Law, which states that for an average person to perceive a difference, two stimuli must differ by a constant percentage
David Hubel
Nobel Prize winner who discovered that our minds deconstruct visual images and reassemble them via feature detectors
Torsten Wiesel
Same as Hubel (see above)
Sigmund Freud
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.
Ernest Hilgard
Believed hypnosis involves not only social influence but also a special dual-processing state of dissociation — a split between different levels of consciousness.
Little Albert
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.
Neal Miller
A researcher who worked on biofeedback, finding that rats could modify their heartbeat if given pleasurable brain stimulation
Gregory Kimble
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.
Ivan Pavlov
A behaviorist who conducted experiments on dogs, in which he used classical conditioning principles to spur dogs to salivate whenever a bell was rung
John B. Watson
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
B.F. Skinner
A behaviorist who experimented with the operant chamber (Skinner box), conditioning animals to perform certain behaviors for rewards
Edward L. Thorndike
Founded a principle called the “law of effect,” which served as the basis for Skinner’s work in operant conditioning
John Garcia
Contributed to learning theory through his theory of taste aversion, which disproved the notion that a US must immediately follow a CS
Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner
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)
Edward C. Tolman
Conducted studies that showed that animals can create cognitive maps of places a form of latent learning
Albert Bandura
Demonstrated the phenomenon of observational learning/modeling in his experiment with Bobo dolls
Hermann Ebbinghaus
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
Richard Atkinson
Proposed the 3-stage model to explain our memory-forming process (sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory)
Richard Shiffrin
Same as Atkinson (3-stage model)
George A. Miller
Proposed that we can store +/- 7 pieces of information in short-term memory
Eric Kandel
Performed experiments on Aplysia (sea slug) and noticed that, when learning occurs, the slug releases serotonin, causing synapses to become more sensitive/efficient (LTP)
Elizabeth Loftus
Showed how people/eyewitnesses can misremember faces/events and how easy it is to reconstruct memories
Robert Sternberg
Came up with the 5 components for creativity: Expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment
Wolfgang Köhler
Demonstrated that other animals (like chimps) can display insight
Amos Tversky
Studied representative and availability heuristics and established how they can lead to faulty decision-making
Daniel Kahneman
Same as Tversky. Both won the Nobel Prize for their work
Daniel Kahneman
Same as Tversky. Both won the Nobel Prize for their work
Steven Pinker
Dubbed language as “the crown jewel of cognition”
Noam Chomsky
Argued for the idea of “universal grammar,” that humans have the innate ability to learn language
Paul Broca
Confirmed that damage to an area of the left frontal lobe (Broca’s area) inhibited speaking ability
Carl Wernicke
Discovered that damage to a specific area of the left temporal lobe (Wernicke’s Area) inhibited understanding
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Came up with the idea of “linguistic determinism,” that language controls the way we think
