Chapter 1: The Evolution Of A Science Flashcards
Psychology
The scientific study of mind and behavior.
Mind
Our private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings.
Behavior
Observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals
Cognitive psychology
The scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thoughts, memory and reasoning. “Cognition” refers to thinking and problem solving.
Mindbugs
Occasionally malfunctions in our otherwise efficient mental processing. Mindbugs reveal that our minds process information and generate solutions in particular ways. Indeed, mindbugs offer a window into the internal working of the mental machinery to reveal the underlying way it may be organized and the limitations under which it can operate. Mindbugs are not necessarily failing in the mental machinery; rather, they are ‘set’ ways of going about finding solution which, overall, might actually be more adaptive as a general approach.
Nativism
The philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge is innate or inborn.
Philosophical empiricism
The philosophical view that all knowledge is acquired through experience.
Epistemology
The study of how knowledge is acquired.
Metaphysics
A branch in philosophy that examines the nature of reality.
Dualism
The concept that body and mind are two distinct entities that interact.
Phrenology
A psychological theory which held that specific characteristics are localized in specific regions of the brain.
Physiology
The study of biological processes, especially in the human body.
Stimulus
Sensory input from the environment.
Reaction time
The amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus
Sensory perception
The way that we interpret and process signals received via our senses.
Consciousness
A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind.
Structuralism
The analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind.
Introspection
The subjective observation of one’s own experience.
Functionalism
The study of the purpose mental processes serve in enabling people to adapt to their environment.
Natural selection
Charles Darwin’s theory that the features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to subsequent generations.
Illusions
Errors of perception, memory of judgment in which subjective experience differs from objective reality.
Gestalt psychology
A psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts.
Hysteria
A temporary loss of cognitive and motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experience.
Unconscious mind
The part of the mind that operates outside conscious awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings and actions.
Psychoanalytic theory
Sigmund Freud’s approach to understanding human behaviour that emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts and behaviour.
Psychoanalysis
A therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders.
Humanistic psychology
An approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings.
Response
An action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus.
Reinforcement
The consequences of a behaviour determine whether it will be more or less likely to occur again.
Free will
The ability to choose or decide what to do.
Natural behaviours
Instinctual responses that were not learned.
Ethology
The scientific study of animal behaviour in the natural habitat.
Pedagogical approach
The scaffolding of learning by instruction.
Equipotential
Equally responsible for enabling learning to occur.
Law of mass action
Performance is determined by the quantity of nervous tissue removed and is independent of any particular area.
Behavioural neuroscience
An approach to psychology that links psychological processes to activities in the nervous system and other bodily processes.
Cognitive neuroscience
A field that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity.
Evolutionary psychology
A psychological approach that explains mind and behaviour in terms of natural selection, where minor variations in the way we think and behave mean that some individuals are more suited to their environments.
Social psychology
A subfield of psychology that studies the causes and consequences of interpersonal behaviour.
