Chapter 1.1 Psychology: Evolution Of A Science Flashcards
Edward Titchener
- Focused on identifying basic elements of consciousness
- Flaws emerged and it failed
- Mostly due to introspective method
- Wundt’s student
- Cornell
Measure and predict thought, behavior, and brain processes
Difficult because: (4)
- People are different
- People change over time
- Each experience changes you
- Always developing
Behavior
Observable actions of human beings and nonhuman beings
Wilhelm Wundt
- Scientific psychology should focus on analyzing consciousnesses
- Taught other psychologists
- 1879
Animism
There’s a spirit that moves the body
1879
- Wundt opened first laboratory devoted to psychological studies
- Focus on sensation and perception
- Birth of Psychology
- Leipzig, Germany
Hermann von Helmholtz
Measured speed of responses and recorded reaction times
Marie Jean Pierre Flourens
Removed specific parts of animals’ brains and found actions different from other’s
Psychology
Scientific study of mind, brain, and behavior And how they interact
Abraham Maslow
Emphasis on positive potential of people
There is some stability in phsychology because:
- Mind and brain are tuned to the world
- Modest degree of prediction
Franz Joseph Gall
Thought brain was related to mind
Phrenology
John Locke
- Knowledge is acquired
- Sensory experiences
- Completed ideas from simple ones
Thomas Hobbes
Mind is what the brain does
Mind
Private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings
Phrenology
- Specific mental abilities and characteristics in different parts of the brain
- Franz Joseph Gall
- Bumps and indentations
Luigi Galvani
Frog muscles
Psychoanalysis
Freud
Active unconscious
Pierre Flourens
Experimental ablation
Aristotle
- Philosophical Empiricism
- A child’s mind is a tabula rosa (blank slate)
- Materialism
Behaviorism
You can’t see the mind but you can see behaviors
Mind is not a subject of study
René Descartes
- Argued that mind and body are different things
- Modified dualism
- Animals have no souls so some behavior doesn’t need it
Levels of Explanation and Analysis:
- Social
- Cultural
- Interpersonal
- Individual
- Individual Differences
- Cognition
- Biological
- Brain Systems
- Neurological
- Genetic
Functionalism
Study of how mental processes enable people to adapt to their environments
Structuralism
- Analysis of basic elements that constitute the mind
- Wundt’s students created by building upon his approach
- Introspection
Dualism
Can’t study mind
Gestalt Psychology
Max Wertheimer
The whole is different from the sum of its parts NOT The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Louis Victor Leborgne
- Damage to left side of brain
- Could not talk (“tan” only syllable he could say) understood everything that was said and could communicate with gestures
Paul Broca
- Worked with Louis Victor Leborgne
- Concluded that damage to a specific part of the brain impaired a specific mental function
Nativism
Philosophical views that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn
Plato
Introspection
Subjective observation of one’s own experience
Tone and button experiment
G. Stanley Hall
- Functionalism
- Set up first psychology research lab in North America at John Hopkins University (1887)
John Stuart Mill
Mind is a product of the brain
Plato
Nativism
William James
- Drew inspiration from Darwin
- Mental abilities had evolved because they were adaptive
- Functionalism
Philosophical Empiricism
All knowledge is acquired through experience
Aristotle
