Chapter 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

Psychology

A

the scientific study of mind and behavior

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2
Q

Mind

A

private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings

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3
Q

Behavior

A

observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals

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4
Q

Nativism

A

the philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn–> Plato favored this

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5
Q

Philosophical empiricism

A

the view that all knowledge is acquired through experience–> Aristotle favored this

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6
Q

What did Aristotle think the mind is?

A

tabula rasa, or blank slate

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7
Q

René Descartes argued what?

A

argued that the mind and the body are different things
o mind/soul = immaterial
o body = material

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8
Q

What is dualism?

A

how mental activity can be reconciled & coordinated w/ physical behavior

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9
Q

Thomas Hobbes argued what?

A

that the mind is what the brain does; can’t look for where the mind meets the body

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10
Q

Phrenology

A

a now discredited theory that specific mental abilities and characteristics, ranging from memory and the capacity for happiness, are localized in specific regions of the brain

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11
Q

Who developed phrenology?

A

Franz Joseph Gall

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12
Q

What did Marie Jean Pierre Flourens do?

A

he surgically removed parts of animals brains and observed that they acted differently than animals whose brains were intact

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13
Q

What did Paul Broca do?

A

worked w/ patient who damaged part of brain & couldn’t speak, but could understand language and perform gestures; concluded that damage to a specific part of the brain could impair a specific mental function

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14
Q

What did the work of Broca and Flourens achieve?

A

essentially disproved Descartes’ theory that the mind is separate, but interacts with, the brain and the mind; mind is grounded in substance (brain!)

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15
Q

Physiology

A

the study of biological processes, esp. in the human body

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16
Q

What did Hemholtz measure & discover?

A

Measured reactions times from diff. parts of body to find speed of nerve impulse to brain; discovered that mental processes were NOT instantaneous

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17
Q

Consciousness

A

a person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind

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18
Q

Structuralism

A

The analysis of basic elements that constitute the mind

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19
Q

What did Wilhelm Wundt do?

A

Wrote book on physiological psychology, believed psychology should focus on consciousness

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20
Q

Introspection

A

the subjective observation of one’s own experiences

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21
Q

Describe Wundt’s reaction time experiments

A

One group told to press button when they heard sound, other group to press when they perceived sound; 2nd group 1/10 of second slower; showed that scientists could use techniques to disentangle subtle conscious processes

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22
Q

Titchener did what?

A

studied at Wundt’s lab, focused on identifying elements of consciousness (Cornell brain!)

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23
Q

Functionalism

A

the study of how mental processes enable ppl to adapt to their environments

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24
Q

Who developed functionalism? What did he liken consciousness to?

A

William James; flowing stream

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25
Q

What is the difference between structuralism and functionalism?

A

Structuralism- examined structure of mental processes

Functionalism- the purpose/functions of these mental processes

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26
Q

Natural selection

A

The features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to subsequent generations

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27
Q

What did G. Stanley Hall theorize about evolutionary biology?

A

As children develop, they pass through stages that repeat mankind’s evolutionary history

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28
Q

Define hysteria

A

a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences

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29
Q

What did experiments reveal about hysteric patients? Who were the physicians?

A

Blindness, paralysis, etc. disappeared when patients were hypnotized; revealed that the brain can create many conscious selves not aware of each other; Jean-Martin Charcot and Pierre Janet

30
Q

What does the latin word “hyster” mean?

A

womb

31
Q

According to Freud, what is unconscious mind?

A

the part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions

32
Q

Define psychoanalytic theory

A

an approach that emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts, and behaviors

33
Q

Define psychoanalysis

A

bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders

34
Q

Define humanistic psychology

A

an approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings

35
Q

Define behaviorism

A

advocated that psychologists restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable behavior

36
Q

Define response

A

an action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus

37
Q

What is the other name of behaviorism?

A

stimulus-response (S-R) psychology

38
Q

Summarize Pavlov’s dog experiment

A

sounded tone when dogs were fed; after a little, merely sounding the tone led to dogs salivating

39
Q

Define reinforcement

A

the consequences of a behavior determine whether it will be more or less likely to occur again

40
Q

Summarize Skinner’s experiment

A

put rat in Skinner’s box; initially pressed lever by accident, food pellet drops, pressing of lever by rat increases dramatically until rat isn’t hungry; evidence of reinforcement

41
Q

What was Skinner’s controversial claim?

A

our subjective sense of free will is an illusion and that when we think we’re exercising free will, we are actually responding to present and past patterns of reinforcement

42
Q

What shared idea behind structuralism, functionalism, and psychoanalysis did the behaviorists challenge?

A

All preceding theories focused on thoughts/feelings reported by people, but behaviorists thought that psychology shouldn’t focus on mental life at all

43
Q

What was the goal of scientific psychology according to Watson?

A

to predict and to control behavior in ways that benefit society

44
Q

What technique, borrowed from Pavlov, did Watson famously apply to a human infant?

A

stimulus-response

45
Q

Why was behaviorism replaced? What replaced it?

A

behaviorism ignored important mental processes and evolutionary history; cognitive psychology

46
Q

Define illusions

A

errors of perception, memory

47
Q

What is Gestalt psychology?

A

a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts; the mind imposes organization on what we see

48
Q

What did Sir Frederic Bartlett discover?

A

Memory is not a photogenic reproduction of past experiences & that our attempts to remember the past are influenced by knowledge, beliefs, hopes, aspirations, desires

49
Q

What did Jean Piaget discover?

A

Children at age 3 lacked cognitive ability to determine that even though the clay mound was broken into pieces, it had same amount of clay

50
Q

Kurt Lewin argued what?

A

that a person’s behavior in the world could best be predicted by understanding the person’s subjective experience of the world i.e. pinch cheek

51
Q

Lewin realized it was not the stimulus but the _____ of the stimulus

A

construal

52
Q

Define cognitive psychology

A

the scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory, and reasoning

53
Q

What was Noam Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s book?

A

Language relies on mental rules that enable ppl to make new words/sentences, not behaviorist view that children learn to use language by reinforcement

54
Q

What did Karl Lashley do with rats?

A

had them run a maze and surgically removed parts of their brains to see which part of the brain stored learning

55
Q

Physiological psychology has become what field?

A

behavioral neuroscience

56
Q

What is behavioral neuroscience?

A

An approach to psychology that links psychological processes to activities in the nervous system and to other bodily orocesses

57
Q

What is cognitive neuroscience?

A

the field of study that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity

58
Q

What were 3 developments that led psychologists away from behaviorism?

A

1) interest in mental processes
2) interest in brain
3) evolutionary psychology

59
Q

Why was Garcia’s rat experiment important?

A

rats associated nausea more quickly with smell than with light or sound; even though they were born in lab, it was easier for ancestors to associate spoiled food with smell, so rats were genetically predisposed to do the same

60
Q

What is evolutionary psychology?

A

explains the mind and behavior in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural selection

61
Q

What is the relationship of subjective experience to behavior?

A

A person’s construal of a stimulus affects the resulting behavior i.e. pinch on cheek

62
Q

What did psychologists learn from WWII pilots?

A

can’t focus on many instruments and must actively move attention from one to another; limited capacity to handle incoming information

63
Q

What is social psychology?

A

the study of the causes and consequences of sociality

64
Q

What was Norman Triplett’s experiments? findings?

A

children reel fishing line faster when theyre with other children; the mere presence of other people can influence performance of tasks

65
Q

What is cultural psychology?

A

the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members

66
Q

What does Absolutism hold? Relativism?

A

absolutism: that culture makes little or no difference for most psychological phenomena
relativism: psychological phenomena are likely to vary across cultures and should only be viewed within context of a culture

67
Q

What is the scope of cultural psychology?

A

ranges widely b/c researchers look to see which phenomena are universal and which vary over different places and times

68
Q

How has the face of psychology changed as the field as evolved?

A

Started as academic, now mostly clinical

69
Q

Career paths for ppl trained in psychology?

A

Sports psychologist, marketing

70
Q

Where does psychology stand in relation to other sciences?

A

between medicine and social science