Chapter 4 + Darwin

Question 1

Who claimed the transformation of psychology?

Answer 1

> Green, Shore, and Teo

> noted the importance of a more scientific approach in psychology

Question 2

What was J.F. Herbart’s attempt to cast a psychological theory?

Answer 2

> in purely mathematical terms.

> Herbart was also one of the first to apply psychology to practical problems, by showing how his psychology implied a particular approach to education.

Question 3

How did G.T. Fechner contribute to psychology scientifically?

Answer 3

> psychophysics

> which hypothesized a mathematically precise relation between stimulus values and sensation that could be tested by means of experimental data.

Question 4

Scientific work on the psychophysiology of perception led to important theories of what and by who?

Answer 4

> led to important theories of colour vision

> by Hermann von Helmholtz, Ewald Hering, and Christine Ladd-Franklin.

Question 5

The study of brain injuries by Paul Broca and others suggested what?

Answer 5

> suggested that particular functions could be localized in specific areas of the brain.

Question 6

How did J.F. Herbart differ from Kant?

Answer 6

> Although J.F. Herbart succeeded to Kant’s position at the University of Königsberg, he differed from Kant in believing that mathematics is applicable to psychological events. (Kant believe mathematics would be impossible to apply to psychological events)

> Because of this belief, Herbart is often regarded as one of the earliest mathematical psychologists if not the first

Question 7

Who made the threshold concept central to psychology?

Answer 7

> Herbart

> Did so by embedding it in a rich theory of mental life.

> Herbart was interested not only in what went on above the threshold of consciousness, but also in what went on below the threshold of consciousness.

> Events below the threshold of consciousness were unconscious and, under the right circumstances, could become conscious.

Question 8

Herbart’s psychology rests on the assumption that…

Answer 8

> all mental life is the “result of the action and interaction of elementary ideas”

> By “elementary ideas,” Herbart meant “entirely simple concepts or sensations—e.g., red, blue, sour, sweet, etc.”

> In some respects, Herbart is similar to the associationists such as Hume

Question 9

How did Herbart go beyond the simple laws of association advocated by his predecessors?

Answer 9

> Yes, he suggested that ideas may be opposed to one another and act like forces upon each other.

> Putting all energy into one thought suppresses other ideas with the preoccupation into that one thought.

> As the preceding example shows, some ideas facilitate each other while other ideas inhibit each other.

Question 10

What is the mathematical process of inhibition? Why is it important?

Answer 10

> another assumption of Herbart’s psychology is that intensity can be quantified. This is very important, because, if it is true, a mathematical treatment of mental life becomes possible.

> Herbart interpreted this to mean that one idea can never push another completely out of awareness, and ideas above the threshold of awareness never reach a state of complete balance, or equilibrium

Question 11

Herbart used the term apperceptive mass to refer to what?

Answer 11

> to refer to the set of ideas that assimilates ideas consistent with it and rejects ideas inconsistent with it.

Question 12

The process of apperception was central to what?

Answer 12

> to Herbart’s psychology and others.

> The concept of perception originated with Leibniz (1646-1716), who used it to refer to the process by which the mind becomes fully aware of ideas.

Question 13

Herbart believed what about educational psychology?

Answer 13

> Herbart believed that not knowledge, but character and social morality, should be the end of education”

Question 14

Herbart’s educational psychology had 5 steps. Name them.

Answer 14

Herbart’s educational psychology implied that instruction should proceed through 5 steps:

(1): Preparation: necessary for the appropriate apperceptive mass to be engaged before any new material can be properly assimilated.

(2) Presentation: Once the stage is set, the lesson can be introduced.

(3) Association: After the student has taken in the point of the lesson, the teacher should connect the new material with other relevant material.

(4) Generalization: It is not enough for the student simply to have a set of associations—they must also be well organized.

(5) Application. Once something is understood, the student should have some way to apply that knowledge.

Question 15

In what three ways is Herbart important to psychology?

Answer 15

(1) Proposed the threshold of conciousness.

(2) A second contribution is his attempt to apply mathematics to psychology.

(3) Finally, Herbart’s educational psychology was by no means the last attempt to apply psychological ideas to education.

Question 16

What is Gustav Theodor Fechner responsible for?

Answer 16

> for creating an approach to psychology that was seen as truly scientific.

Question 17

Fechner was a person of many talents and idiosyncrasies, and he had a mystical side to his character. His mysticism influenced his choice of topics to study and the way he interpreted what he found. One expression of this mysticism was what?

Answer 17

> his doctrine of pan-psychism. This is the notion that mind permeates everything in the universe. (Everything has a mind/soul - even planets)

Question 18

What did Fechner believe about the mind-body problem?

Answer 18

> He assumed that this relationship was one of psychophysical parallelism: “A strict paral-lelism exists between soul and body in such a way that from one, properly understood, the other can be constructed”

> The study of the relation between mind and brain was to be a part of what Fechner called inner psychophysics

> Fechner believed this relationships could be expressed mathematically.

Question 19

However, Fechner became most famous in psychology for his elaboration of what came to be called:

Answer 19

> outer psychophysics

Question 20

Outer psychophysics investigated what?

Answer 20

> the relationship between events in the external world and the experiences to which they give rise.

> In concrete terms, this involved the study of the connection between stimulus magnitudes and the intensity of the resulting sensations.

Question 21

Fechner saw that the change in our experience would depend on:

Answer 21

> the original magnitude of the stimulus, and not just on the magnitude of the change.

> Thus, if I have 10 candles in a room, and add one, that will make a bigger difference to my experience of the brightness of the room than if I have 1,000 candles in a room and add one candle. In the latter case, I may not notice the difference at all

Question 22

Fechner drew on earlier work by Daniel Bernoulli and E.H. Weber (1795-1878) in order to formulate the relationship between stimulus magnitudes and the resulting experience as follows

Answer 22

> “A difference between two stimuli . . . is always perceived as equal . . . if its ratio to the . . . stimulus to which it is added remains the same, regardless of how the absolute size changes.

> For example an addition of 1 unit to a stimulus expressed as having a magnitude of 100 units is perceived the same as an addi-tion of 2 to a stimulus of 200 units, of 3 to 300 units, and so on”

> Called this relationship Weber’s Law and characterized it as “a main foundation for psychological measurement.”

Question 23

What is Weber’s Law?

Answer 23

> expresses the relation between a stimulus magnitude and the amount by which that magnitude must be changed in order for the subject to perceive a just noticeable difference, or JND.

Question 24

What were the three methods that verified Webers law?

Answer 24

(1) Method of just noticeable differences. (also known as method of limits)

(2) Method of right and wrong cases. This

procedure is also called the method of con-stant stimuli

(3) Method of average error.

Question 25

In the nineteenth century many of Fechner’s critics argued what? What is the objection called?

Answer 25

> “mind was not possessed of magnitude and that mental measurement was an impossibility”

> Such a refusal to accept the fundamental assumption of psycho-physics is called the quantity objection to psychophysics

Question 26

Fechner (1876) played a central role in founding a psychology of beauty, or what came to be called:

Answer 26

> experimental aesthetics.

Question 27

What does “Aesthetics from above” refer to?

Answer 27

> refer to the traditional approaches to aesthetics taken by philosophers and art critics

> They approach art “from above” by attempting to evaluate art according to standards derived from some theory of what art should be.

Question 28

What do aesthetics from below refer to?

Answer 28

> is empirical

> it depends on observation of spectators’ responses to art in order to try to understand the effects that art has on people

Question 29

The distinction between “aesthetics from above” and “aesthetics from below” reflects what? What was it replacing?

Answer 29

> reflects a general trend in the development of experimental psychology in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

> The new breed of experimental psychologists thought of themselves as replacing speculation with observation.

> Experimental psychologists intended to replace windy philosophical treatises with factual investigations conducted under con-trolled experimental conditions.

Question 30

The career of Hermann von Helmholtz was marked by?

Answer 30

> learning in physiol-ogy, physics and mathematics and his ability to bring all three fields to bear on any one subject”

> Helmholtz “belong[s] to a dying age in which a full synthetic view of nature was still possible, in which one [person] could not only unify the practice and teaching of medicine, physiol-ogy, anatomy and physics, but also relate these sciences sig-nificantly and lastingly to the fine arts”

Question 31

Helmholtz’s theorizing (ibid., 118) did not take place in a vacuum, and among those whose contributions he acknowledges is…

Answer 31

> Johannes Müller (1801-58).

> Müller, who was not only one of Helmholtz’s teachers but also an extremely influential figure in his own right, advanced a theory called the specific energy of nerves. Müller’s doctrine was designed to explain the apparent fact that the same stimulus “gives rise to different sensa-tions in each sense.”

Question 32

Helmholtz elaborates Müller’s views on what?

Answer 32

> on senses on both a physiological and a philo-sophical basis

> thus lays the theoretical framework for the subsequent development of modern sensory neuroscience

Question 33

From Müller’s doctrine it follows that we do not experience the external world directly, but what?

Answer 33

> what directly apprehend is not the immediate action of the external exciting cause upon the ends of our nerves, but only the changed condition of the nervous fibers which we call the state of excitation or functional activity”

Question 34

Helmholtz did not believe that these different experiences arose because the nerves of different senses had different properties. Rather, he argued that…

Answer 34

> all nerves operate in the same way and transmit impulses at the same speed, which he estimated to be 100 feet per second.

> Different experiences arise when nerves connect different sense organs to dif-ferent places in the brain.

> He compared nerves to telegraph wires

Question 35

Helmholtz argued that the degree to which each cone was stimulated determined what?

Answer 35

> determined the colour we see.

> “Pure red light stimulates the red-sensitive fibers strongly and the other two kinds of fibers feebly; giving the sensation red. . . . Pure yellow light stimulates the red-sensitive and green sensitive fibers moderately and the violet-sensitive fibers feebly giving the sensation yellow”

Question 36

According to his theory, colours such as yellow have no specific receptor but are derived from… Who originally created this theory?

Answer 36

> are derived from mixtures of the other receptors. As we will see below, this is a controversial aspect of Helmholtz’s theory.

> Helmholtz credited Thomas Young (1773-1829) with being the originator of this theory, and so it is usually called the Young-Helmholtz theory of colour perception.

> It is also called the trichromatic theory of colour perception because it holds that three colours—red, green, and blue—are the most fundamental and that our perception of other colours is formed by the blending of these three in different proportions

Question 37

How are we able to perceive different pitches, such as different musical notes, for example?

Answer 37

> Helmholtz (1962: 135) suggested that the notes of a musical scale are analogous to colours, arguing that “[E]ach separate nerve fiber is constructed to take cognizance of a definite note.”

> This is called a place theory because it assumes that nerves located at different places in the cochlea are responsible for the perception of different pitches.

> Although no longer believed to be entirely correct, aspects of Helmholtz’s place theory were still incorporated into subsequent theories of pitch perception

Question 38

Helmholtz is also famous for his theory of how we what?

Answer 38

> perceive objects in the external world.

> relates to the projective model of vision

Question 39

Any theory of perception needs to explain:

Answer 39

> how we are able to integrate the two different retinal images so as to yield our experience of a world in three dimensions.

Question 40

What is unconscious inference?

Answer 40

> we are not aware of the inferences we make

Question 41

Helmholtz’s (1962: 179) explanation of perception points to a useful distinction

between two kinds of knowledge. How so?

Answer 41

> unconcious knowledge - i.e. riding a bike

> This kind of knowledge is to be contrasted with knowledge that can be put into words, and of which we are fully aware, such as knowing that Helmholtz’s first name is “Hermann.” T

Question 42

Ewald Hering ([1878] 1961) is famous for:

Answer 42

> formulating a competing theory to Helmholtz’s theory of colour perception.

> Hering, along with many others, noted that yellow was not experienced as a blend of other colours.

• Rather, it seemed to be as much a primary colour as red, green, and blue. Hering also wanted a theory that would capture the distinction between achromatic and chromatic colours.

Question 43

What are Achromatic colours?

Answer 43

> Achromatic colours cover the range from black through grey to white.

Question 44

What are chromatic colours?

Answer 44

Chromatic colours have hue, such as red, green, yellow, and blue.

Question 45

The structure of achromatic and chromatic colours are represent

Answer 45

> the means of the colour solid (Ebbinghaus Colour Solid)

Question 46

Hering invented what came to be called a what? What did it entail?

Answer 46

> Opponent process theory of colour vision

> Hering imagines that the visual system is based on three pairs of antagonistic processes.

• The pairs are yellow-blue, red-green, and white-black, the last being responsible for achromatic colours.
• In the absence of stimulation, all pairs give rise to the experience of grey, which represents a state of balance between opposing processes.
• Light acts on each pair to yield one of its component colours but inhibit the other.

> Thus, we cannot experience a “reddish green” because red and green form an antagonistic pair.

• However, one can experience a “greenish yellow” or a “red-dish blue,” because these colours can be activated at the same time

Question 47

What is the Ebbinghaus Colour Solid

Answer 47

> The colour space is represented by two pyramids, placed base to base.

> The upper pyramid represents the lighter colours, with white at its apex; the lower pyramid represents the darker colours, with black at its apex.

> The achromatic neutral grays are represented by the vertical line through the center of the solid joining black and white.

> All other points within the solid represent chromatic colors.

> The base is so tilted that yellow, which is relatively bright, is near white; blue, being relatively dark, is near black.

> “Compound” colors are represented at intermediate points.

Question 48

Hering theory was quite successful in explaining a number of important colour phenomena, such as:

Answer 48

negative after-images

Question 49

Christine Ladd-Franklin is a particularly interesting figure because she:

Answer 49

> became an emi-nent scientist at a time when women were rigorously excluded from the academic and sci-entific communities.

Question 50

Ladd-Franklin (1929) is remembered for her theory of colour perception, which was:

Answer 50

> Her theory was an evolutionary one

> Initially, vision would have been sensitive only to achromatic colours ranging from white to black.

• The rods are thus representative of the earliest stage of the evolutionary development of vision.
• The next stage consists of the emergence of cones sensitive to yellow and blue.
• Some of the cones sensitive to yellow undergo a further specialization to become cones sensitive to red and green.

Question 51

Evidence in favour of the Ladd-Franklin theory comes from the study of:

Answer 51

> comes from the study of colour blindness, a common form of which is to be unable to see red and green but to be able to see yellow and blue.

> To explain this fact, Ladd-Franklin invoked a widely used principle “last in, first out” principle that R. Brown (1958: 297) has called the law of progressions and pathologies.

Question 52

What is the law of progressions and pathologies

Answer 52

> According to this principle, since the red-green system is the last to evolve, it should be the first to show the effects of pathology, leaving behind only the more primitive yellow-blue system.

Question 53

What is the The Localization of Function Controversy?

Answer 53

Attempts to locate particular psychological functions in the cortex of the brain.

Question 54

As Krech (1962) observed, the attempt to discover which parts of the brain are specialized for which tasks goes back at least to:

Answer 54

> Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) and his student, J.G. Spurzheim (1776-1832).

> Gall and Spurzheim promoted phrenology.

> Gall and Spurzheim’s method for locating functions in the brain was highly specu-lative. They believed that the more highly developed a function, the larger it would be. Furthermore, the larger a function, the more it would manifest itself as a protrusion on the skull.

Question 55

What was the thought on the mind by the end of the 19th century?

Answer 55

> In other words, the idea that the brain is the organ of the mind became “common sense.”

Question 56

A classic study of the consequences of brain injury is:

Answer 56

> Paul Broca’s (1824-80) investi-gation of the loss of the ability to express ideas by means of speech.

> This disability is often called Broca’s aphasia. Broca ([1861] 1960) described a patient who fitted this pattern of being unable to speak but apparently could still understand what was said to him.

> After the patient’s death, an autopsy showed severe damage to the part of the left hemisphere labelled B in Figure 4.5, which has since become known as Broca’s area.

Question 57

Karl Wernicke (1848-1905), contributions:

Answer 57

> Karl Wernicke (1848-1905), who studied 10 such cases found that the lesions apparently responsible for their symptoms were located in the left hemisphere in the area labelled W in Figure 4.5. This area became known as Wernicke’s area, and the corres-ponding disorder as Wernicke’s aphasia.

Question 58

What is the difference between Wernicke and Brocca?

Answer 58

> It is tempting to believe that Broca’s area is responsible for speech production and Wernicke’s area for speech comprehension.

Question 59

What are the drawbacks to Wernicke and Brocca’s findings?

Answer 59

> For one thing, the aphasias are not very well-defined and “we now appreciate that clin-ical aphasic syndromes are comprised of variable clusters of symptoms”

> It is difficult to see how such ill-defined phenomena could be regulated by a precisely located part of the brain. More important, the exact location of, for example, Wernicke’s area is difficult to determine on the basis of anatomy alone

Question 60

Simonton (1984, 1988) has demonstrated that people who make creative contributions to our culture often have the following characteristics:

Answer 60

> They suff er the loss of a parent when young.

> They receive neither too much nor too little formal education.

Question 61

Darwin began to go beyond this simple historical framework as a result of observa-tions he made as the voyage progressed. Where were the most famous observations made?

Answer 61

> The most famous of these observations took place in 1835 in the Galapagos Islands

> The specimens Darwin collected laid the groundwork for his subsequent hypothesis- Rather, it began to seem possible that new species could emerge as descendants of other species.

> “The finches are of special interest, for although obviously closely related they have become separated off into at least 13 distinct species showing extraordinary modifications of the beak in accordance with different modes of life”

Question 62

The story of Darwin’s finches tells us as much about the history of science in general as it does about?

Answer 62

Darwinian Theory

Question 63

What did Darwin observe about the finches?

Answer 63

> noticed the distinctiveness of their beaks.

> The beaks are adapted to eat seeds of different sizes and hardness. As Darwin

Question 64

What theory was originally proposed by Jean Baptiste Lamarck?

Answer 64

> developed the law of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which held that animals can acquire characteristics in their lifetime that they can pass along to their immediate descendants.

> The most famous example used by Lamarck is the giraffe. The giraffe lives in regions devoid of grass, in which the only food comes from trees. As a result of habitually reaching for leaves high up in trees, the giraffe has acquired long legs and a very long neck.

Question 65

More important than Lamarck in shaping Darwin’s thinking was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). What essay was influential?

Answer 65

> Darwin read Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society in 1838 (Thomson, 1998).

> Malthus (1956 [1798]: 1193) argued that “the population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.”

> According to Malthus’s calculations, the food supply increases arithmetically, while the population increases geometrically.

Question 66

What was the difference between Malthus’s theory and Darwin’s theory?

Answer 66

“Malthus dichotomized nature into humankind on the one hand, and its food supply on the other. . . . Darwin was interested in describ-ing all of nature, including humankind, in the same terms. Struggle is not only for food but against all the conditions of life”

Question 67

Darwin continued to refine his views and eventually published the theory for which he became justly famous. What were these theories?

Answer 67

> The theory was based on natural selection, or the survival of the fittest.

Question 68

It is important to be clear about the difference between natural selection, as Darwin described it, and the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. What is the difference?

Answer 68

> Lamarck’s view was that organisms attempt to adapt to their environments and that adaptations acquired during their lifetime can be passed on to their offspring.

> By contrast, Darwin proposed that the chief mechanism of evolution was what has come to be called blind variation and selective retention- those with variations that happen to be adaptive tend to be retained, in that the individuals with those variations “have the greatest probability to survive, to reproduce, and to transmit their attributes to the next generation”

Question 68

The influence of evolutionary theory on psychology has been very great indeed. As Heidbreder (1933: 106) observed, Darwinian theory implied that:

Answer 68

> psychologists had to study people in terms of their “development both genetic and phylogenetic, [their] position in the array of animal species, and the means by which [they] adapt themselves to [the] environment.

Question 69

Comparative psychology and evolution came from what theorist?

Answer 69

> Darwin established “the continuity between human and nonhuman animals. From his time on, one could not reasonably regard humans as fun-damentally independent of the rest of the animal kingdom”

> This suggests that a great deal can be learned about people by comparing them with other species. Thus, the study of animals should be part of psychology

Question 70

Individual differences in psychology and evolution

Answer 70

> Individual members of a species differed from each other, and these individual differences determined how well or how poorly individuals adapted to the environment. [darwin]

Question 71

Many other topics of study in psychology also received a Darwinian stamp. What are some examples?

Answer 71

> Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals deeply influenced the psychology of emotion.

> the role of instincts in human behaviour, and the instinct concept has been used in many areas of psychology, from ethology to social psychology

> The study of sexuality was a central feature of Darwin’s work

> Finally, although child psychology began before Darwin, he still contributed a framework that has informed the work of many develop-mental psychologists