Chapters 1 and 2 Flashcards
what did Donders study?
he wanted to know how long it took to make a decision, and he used reaction time tasks to measure this
-> mental chronometry
what is a simple reaction time task vs a choice reaction time task?
simple: you perceive something, and respond to it
choice: you perceive something on one side, you have to choose which side to press the button on, then react
what was Wundt’s contribution to psychology?
opened the first psychology lab, structuralism
what is structuralism?
the idea that experience is made up of elements, sensations, feelings, images
what is analytic introspection?
describing experiences/thought processes in response to stimuli
what did Ebbinghaus study?
how many words a person could remember at a given time and how long it took for memory to fade/be re-learned
what are savings in Ebbinghaus’s study?
the time to learn the new list - the time it took to relearn (1000 - 400 = 600 seconds saved)
what was William James contributions to psychology?
believed that consciousness was like a river, and it must be adaptive otherwise it wouldn’t exist
- functionalism
what is functionalism?
the concept that mental states and behaviours have adaptive functions
what was Ivan Pavlov’s discovery?
classical conditioning: when a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that produces a behaviour
what was Skinner’s discovery?
operant conditioning: behaviour is only a response to the environment
what is positive/negative reinforcement?
positive reinforcement: increasing behaviour by adding a stimulus
negative reinforcement: increasing behaviour by removing a stimulus
what is positive/negative punishment?
positive punishment: decreasing behaviour by adding an unpleasant stimulus
negative punishment: decreasing behaviour by removing a pleasant stimulus
what are cognitive maps?
a mental conception of a spatial layout
what was Chomsky’s language acquisition device?
he believed language couldn’t be learned because children say the wrong things all the time, believed we were programmed to learn language
what is the information-processing approach?
the idea that the mind is associated with a digital computer, and information is processed in stages
describe Broadbent’s flow diagram
input -> filter -> detector -> memory
(information is filtered based on physical characteristics)
what are extraneous variables?
any variable other than the IV influencing the DV
what are confounding variables?
when two variables interact in a way that makes it hard to determine specific effects
what is different between a quasi experiment and a normal experiment?
quasi experiments do not use random assignment
what is the speed accuracy trade off?
when speed increases, accuracy decreases (and vice versa)
what are correlational/descriptive studies?
when there is no manipulation done, just observation of preexisting conditions
what is a positive correlation?
when two variables interact and move in the same direction
what is a negative correlation?
when two variables interact and move in opposite directions
