Chapter 1: History and Methods Flashcards
Aristotle proposed the Tabula Rasa, which means ____
a man begins life as a blank slate that you fill up with your own knowledge and experiences
Psyche definition
the mind. A source of all human behavior and separate from the body
T/F The psych is thought to be connected to the body
false, people believe that the psyche is separate from the body.
In 384 BC, what did people the brain function was? Where did people think memory was stored?
People used to believe that the brain cools the blood and plays no role in behavior. They also believed that memory is stored in the heart, where they thought the soul originates from and lives on after death.
____ is the mind when the body dies
the soul
Principle of Dualism
both nonmaterial mind and a material body drive behavior. The belief that body and brain direct all basic behavior via mechanical and physical principles.
“the mind is still so advanced that it exists out of the body, but the brain is helping out”Q
What did the Dualism believers think the function of cerebrospinal fluid was? Who thought of dualism?
Dualism was proposed by Descartes in 1600s.
They believed that cerebrospinal fluid and ventricles acted as some sort of hydraulics system
In Kants book the Critique of Pure Reason, he proses that
human experience is drawn from the structure of the mind, making it so:
- all human experience shares the same structure
- there are human COMMONALITIES in thinking and reasoning.
Why did Kant believe that there is a possibility of perpetual peace?
because all humans (besides psychopaths) share a common morality, thinking, and reasoning process.
to make psychology into a science, researchers tried to study the brain through ____ism
structuralism
Who was the founding father of structuralism? What did he method did he use to collect data?
Wilhelm Wundt founded the first experimental psychology lab. He used introspection.
structuralism used elements of _____ to gather empirical evidence about human sensations.
Psychophysics
Structuralists used different _____ such as mode, intensity and quality of psychophysics to obtain a ____ response to an _____ stimulus.
Structuralists used different MODALITIES such as mode, intensity and quality of psychophysics to obtain a SUBJECTIVE response to an OBJECTIVE stimulus.
_____ was the founder of psychophysics and used physics and math to study the mind.
Gustav Fechner
____ measured sensitivity thresholds and determined the first laws of perception, such as the just noticeable difference
Ernst Weber
Absolute threshold
measures the detection of a stimulus from 0 (ex/ the faintest light).
Difference threshold
measures the detection of a CHANGE in a stimulus; how much of a difference is needed before it can be detected?
the smallest difference between two stimuli that a person can detect.
Absolute threshold for a given stimulus
When the stimulus is intense enough to be detected 50% of the time.
lowest frequency when establishing an absolute threshold is also known as:
the floor line
highest frequency when establishing an absolute threshold is also known as:
the ceiling limit
Describe the signal detection of absolute thresholds.
it is meant to quantify a person’s reponses to a given stimulus by categorizing the responses to 4 different streams:
1) misses
2) hits
3) false alarms
4) correct rejections.
Weber’s Law pertains to :
a) absolute thresholds
b) difference thresholds
difference thresholds
Webers law is also known as
just noticeable difference
the smaller the JND, the ____ sensitive a person is to change in intensity
the MORE Sensitive a person is to a change in stimuli.
just noticeable difference
the smallest difference between two stimuli that a person can detect.
according to webers law, as the magnitude of a stimulus increases, the _____ the difference needed to detect change.
as the magnitude of a stimulus increases, the GREATER the difference needed to detect change.
ex/ if you are lifting a 5 pound weight and you add 2 pounds, it will be very noticeable. but if you are lifting a 100 pound weight and you add 2 pounds, you may not notice it at all.
What phenomena may happen if you increase the intensity of a stimulus that you are very sensitive to?
response EXPANSION.
ex/you slightly increase an electric shock, but the person feels as though the shock stimulus has been doubled.
What phenomena may happen if you increase the intensity of a stimulus that you are NOT sensitive to?
response COMPRESSION.
ex/ you double the intensity of the light but the person does not report a difference at all.
Edward ____ established the first psychology lab in North America. He also used introspection
Titchener.
_____ focused on psychophysics experiements and used objective measurements, but they couldn’t account for abstract thought processes like reasoning.
structuralists.
____ was the response to the shortcomings of structuralism
functionalism
____ uses darwinian concepts of evolution and adaptation to study abstract processes like reasoning
functionalism
Behaviorism
the science of observable behavior. operated on the premise that all human thought and intellect can be explained by stimulus-response relationships. Thought that structuralists put too much weight on subjective responses to (objective) stimulus.
____ was a functionalist who wrote the first psychology textbook
william james
“Nature,”
the belief that cognitive functions are hardwired from birth
“nurture,” name the field of study that was on the side of nurture.
the belief that all people were born with a blank slate; that thought and behavior is theoretically limitless.
Watson and Behaviorists were on the side of nurture.
the belief that we are solely the products of the environment and our responses to it is on the ____ side of the nature vs nurture debate
nurture
BF Skinner was demonstrated behaviorism principles through animal learning, and felt that most human behavior could be shaped through ____ conditioning
operant conditioning
Operant conditioning relies on _____ of _____ in order to elicit a targeted behavior
schedules of reinforcement ( reward and punishment)
winning during gambling is an example of a ____ schedule of reinforcement which plays a role in its addictive properties.
variable ratio of reinforcement. You cannot predict how many “spins” you have to do in order to win each time.
What is cognitive psychology?
the study of how people and other animals process information.
bottom up processing
sensory info (such as sound) that vibrates hairs in your ear and causes perception
top down processing
thought processes that you can apply to a sensation to create a more relevant perception.
Example of nature vs nurture in human speech
- nature and nurture are equal players in the field of psychology.
- we have biological structures for speech (nature), but it must be exercised and stimulated through the environment at an early age, or else the person will never be able to properly learn language (nurture)
when conducting a study, psychological measures that are more abstract and difficult to quantify need to be ____ defined
operationally defined.
example of how intoxication may be operationally defined
intoxication can be measured via:
1) a physiological measure: like blood alcohol level
2) behavioral measure: like the number of missteps when trying to walk on a straight line.
3) a self reported measure when asked the question “how drunk are you”
Internal validity
does the study measure what it’s supposed to? are the results trustworthy? the measure must be appropriate and sampling must be non-biased.
external validity
do the findings reflect reality? How generalizable is this study to the general population?
T/F: a good study has only internal validity
false. a good study has both internal and external validity. there must be some generalizability for the study to be usedul, but the operational definition must truely measure the abstract behavior of interest and there cannot be any significant confounding variables.
reliability
the consistency of the measurement.
ideal measurements are both high in ___ and ____
ideal measurements are both high in validity and high in reliability.
research designs are structured according to the amount of ____that the researcher has over the participants and variables.
amount of control.
Pros and cons of experimental designs
experimental designs offer the most amount of control (pro), but it is hard to generalize (con) —> there is a degree of artificiality.
careful and unobtrusive observation of behavior while recording how subjects behave in a natural setting is an example ____ (type of research design)
naturalistic observation
correlational design
studies the relationship between two naturally occurring or pre existing variables.
a correlational design measures the relationship between two individuals using the _____ coefficient
pearson’s r coefficient.
two variables with a strong relationship =
the increased ability to predict one variable based on the other.
T/F: two variables that have a strong correlation may be causally related
false. they may be highly correlated, but you cannot determine causal relationships through a correlational study because there are no controls.
Type of design that can arrive at cause and effect relationships
experimental design
the ___ gets a special treatment in regard to the independent variable
the experimental group
the ___ group gets no special treatment or a placebo treatment in regard to the independt variable
the control group.
How do you ensure that the only thing causing the difference between the experimental and control group is the independent variable?
you ensure that the 2 groups are alike in all other respects, and that the subjects that make up the two groups are determined via random assignment.
placebo effect
when there is a change in the control group that was expected in the independent variable group due to the expectations of the subjects
nocebo effect
opposite of placebo effect. the subjects expectations leads them to believe that the treatment won’t work, thus negatively impacting the study.
between subjects experimental desgin
different groups of subjects are exposed to one type of condition.
in a between subjects design, how many times is each person measured?
only once. either the person belongs in the control or the experimental gorup.
pros and cons of between subject design
con: need a large sample size
pros: faster, no history or order effects.
within subjects design
the same group of people are exposed to both experimental and control conditions
in a within subjects design, how many times is each person measured?
twice. each person acts as their own control
pros and cons of between subjects design
pro: do not need as many people. Individual differences are mitigated because each person acts as their own control; both ethe experimental and control groups are exactly alike besides the application of the independt variable.
con: time consuming, possible order effects by being exposed to two different treatments.
mixed subjects design. Example.
occurs if there are multiple variables.
ex/ measuring typing speed in a hot or cold room when being exposed to loud or no music.
there will be 2 groups: —> music on/of in COLD room
music on/off in HOT room.
People act as their own control for one of the variables in a multivariable study (for this one, they act as their own control for music conditions)
Counterbalancing
changing the order that people experience the independent variables in order to prevent order effects during a within subjects design
Name a demographic that is hard to obtain large sample numbers
elderly, clinical (ex/ alzheimers, schizophrenia), or very rare disorders.
how would you study something if you couldn’t get enough numbers for an experiment?
do a case study
