Beginnings of morden psychology- Wundt & James Flashcards
What is empiricism?
Empiricists believed that all knowledge (contents of the mind) comes from experience and observations.
Simple experiences become associated to form complex and abstract ideas.
What does contiguity mean?
What is experienced together is remembered together.
What does resemblance mean?
Experiences trigger memories of similar experiences.
What does compound associations mean?
Multiple links between experiences facilitate memory.
How do simple experiences combine to give rise to complex knowledge?
More active processes under the control of the will.
What is rationalism?
It is knowledge that is derived from reason and logic.
Our mind is not simply the sum-total of associated experiences but the result of an active mind that ascribes meaning to sensations (through reasoning).
What did Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) think?
Abstract ideas are possible due to innate knowledge, not perception: totality, time, space, reality, possibility- impossibility, existence- nonexistence.
What did Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz (1646-1716) think?
Petites perceptions occur below the level of awareness but combinations of them can reach thresholds (limen) of awareness (apperception).
What is empiricism and rationalism in psychology?
Empiricism is the emphasis on perceptions. Emphasis on thought processes; innate knowledge.
How did we get there?
Developments in philosophy and physiology
Late renaissance to the 19th century
What were some of the ideas from Phrenology by Gall (1758-1828) and Spurzheim (1776-1832)?
Morphology (form&structure) of the skull is related to an individual’s mental capacities.
Bumps and dimples of the skull can relate them to our observations of an individual’s personality.
(However, most are false)
What did Broca’s and Wernicke’s language areas ideas state?
They confirmed that certain mental capacities are localised in the brain.
Systematically associating abnormalities in behaviour with damage to the brain.
What was specific nerve energies?
The idea that sensory nerves respond in a characteristic way, no matter how they are stimulated.
What is the Bell-Magendie Law?
Different information (sensory&motor) carried by different nerve tracts in the spinal cord.
Who created the Bell-Magendie Law?
Bell (1774-1842)
Magendie (1783-1855)
What did Weber come up with?
The study of just-noticeable-differences (JND)
What is the Weber’s Law?
JND is a constant proportion of the original stimulus value.
What did the study of JND consist of?
Touch (stimulate the skin simultaneously at two points, vary the distance, note when subject experiences 2 rather than 1 touch).
Kinesthesis (ask people to lift different weights, one reference weight that is always the same and other weights that vary, note the minimum difference that the subject can detect).
Who founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology in 1879?
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
What did Wundt say consciousness was?
inner phenomena
What did Wundt say psychology was?
study of the individual
What was experimental introspection?
Use of lab instruments to vary stimulus conditions.
note the effects on subjective experience.
aims to be as precise as physiological experiments (e.g. Helmholtz)
What are feelings described as in terms of three dimensions?
Pleasantness- unpleasantness (valence)
Excitement- calm (arousal)
Strain- relaxation
What was Wundt known for?
The founder of scientific psychology
supervised 186 doctoral students
