exam 1

Question 1

The primary focus for Socrates

Answer 1

Nativism- emphasizes the inborn “native” properties of the mind (what comes naturally)
-Genuine knowledge resides within the individual and needs to be brought out by skillful questioning (emphasized dialogues)

Rationalism- emphasizes the mind’s capacity for reason (practicing being rational)
-Questions about knowledge/nature/truth can be answered by reason

Question 2

primary focus for Aristotle

Answer 2

Empiricism- the theory that true knowledge has arrived through sensory experiences of the external world.

Question 3

Plato and Socrates vs Aristotle

Answer 3

Plato and Socrates human psyche is a reservoir of innate ideas and forms, brought out by empirical experiences

Aristotle: empirical experiences are the “raw materials” the psyche possess by means of its inborn categories, creating abstract concepts and laws that Platonists thought were innate.

Question 4

What is the name of the school that Aristotle studied at?

Answer 4

the academy (started by plato who was taught by socrates)

later he had his own school called the Lyceum

Question 5

who tutored Alexander the great

Answer 5

Aristotle

Question 6

Avicenna’s “Floating Man Thought Experiment” and his response to it

Answer 6

An elaboration of Aristotle concerned with the rational soul

Asked individuals to imagine a man suspended in space who has nonfunctional sese organs and limbs that are unable to move or touch. Is the man conscious of his soul or self?

Avicenna says YES: Self-awareness is DISTINCT from the body and its physical sensations

Question 7

Be familiar with the contribution of the Indo-Arabic numeral system and why it was important

Answer 7

Al-Kindi- “philosopher of the Arabs”

Numbering systems with unique symbols for the number 1 through 9, as well as a zero, created a function system for making arithmetical calculations.

Led to some of the most important and revolutionary developments in the history of civilization  Romans had lacked the ability to perform precise calculations

Question 8

Descartes theory of reflex mechanism and how stimuli are transmitted to and from the brain.

Answer 8

Brain has ventricles filled with clear yellowish liquid called animal spirits

Long nerves were hollow and contained fine fibers/filaments

Sensory stimulation (vibrations) impact sensory organs, initiating tugs/pulls on the filaments inside the nerves. This could open the valves in the brain, allowing the animal spirits to flow back down the nerves into muscles or glands, causing them to move or secrete.

Question 9

Descartes’s reflex mechanism: fire example

Answer 9

vibrations from a hot fire:

1. Stimulate sense receptors in foot
2. Pulling a fiber in the long nerve which opens a valve in the brain
3. Animal spirits contained in the brain cavity enter the long nerve and travel back down
4. The foot is withdrawn

Question 10

Know the part of the brain that Descartes localized the interactions between body and soul.

Answer 10

Pineal Gland- sensations from body presents to the soul

Strategic location within spirit-filled ventricles so that it senses the animal spirits he presumed were also the cause of emotion

Question 11

written response: According to Descartes, what is “interactional dualism”?

Answer 11

The body and mind are two separate fundamentally different substances which interact with and can mutually influence one another (sometimes cooperatively, sometimes antagonistically)

Question 12

Be familiar with Locke’s initial purpose for writing “Essay Concerning Human Understanding.”

Answer 12

Wanted to “remove the rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge”

Stimulated by a discussion abut how to resolve moral, religious, and political disagreements

Question 13

what did Locke argue in his “Essay concerning Human Understanding”?

Answer 13

Arguing the mind was a blank slate and that experience is how we gain all of our knowledge

Mind as a receptacle for info from the outside world, almost passive.

DISPUTED Descartes’s notion of innate ideas

Only 2 kinds of experiences of the mind: sensations of objects in external world and reflections of mind’s own operations

Question 14

Leibniz’s reaction to Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding.”

Answer 14

Leibniz was impressed but did not agree that the mind was a blank slate

Necessary truths: innate human mental capacities

Locke said that sometimes the mind is not active and can be without thoughts, Leibniz argued that the mind is constantly active, even during sleep.
-Since monads are constantly active and striving entities with awareness

Question 15

Leibniz claimed that Aristotle + Locke adopted metaphor of mind as … while himself + Plato took a nativist doctrine where…

Answer 15

.blank until experiences impress upon it

the soul contains various notions and doctrines

Question 16

Leibniz’s metaphor of the human mind at birth.

Answer 16

Veined slab of marble whose internal fault lines predispose it to be sculpted into some shapes more easily than others

Shapes pre-exist in the marble, even though a sculptor’s work is required to expose and clarify them

Question 17

contributions of Franz gall

Answer 17

-discovered entire brain as a complex organ
-discovered gray and white matter
-commissures: white matter connecting the two halves of the brain
-comparative brain anatomist

Question 18

Franz Gall’s error within his understanding of the brain

Answer 18

phrenology:Believed that discrete psychological “faculties” resided generally within specific parts of the brain
-Bumps and indentations on surface reflected the size of underlying brain parts and of the different faculties

Question 19

mistakes Gall made

Answer 19

 Assumed the shape of one’s skill reflected the shape of the brain

 His choice of specific psychological qualities to localize in the brain (faculties)

 Unreliable testing methods

Question 20

The technique Flouren’s used to disprove phrenology.

Answer 20

Study functions of brain strictly according to experiment = ablation

Surgical removal of parts of animal’s brain to observe changes in behavior/function

Question 21

written response: motor aphasia vs sensory aphasia?

Answer 21

Motor/Broca’s aphasia- damage to brain’s left frontal lobe; inability to vocalize fluent speech while comprehension remains intact

Sensory/Wernicke’s aphasia- speech is fluent and grammatical, but comprehension is severely impaired and speech is marked by mispronunciations

Question 22

Brenda Milner’s work and her breakthrough discovery regarding memory systems.

Answer 22

Famous for her case study of brain-injured patient HM who lost the capacity for short term memory

Discovered long-term and short-term memory, dedicated her life to studying the mind

Question 23

written response: according to Kant, noumenal vs phenomenal world?

Answer 23

Noumenal world- the external world as made up of “things-in-themselves” which exists in a “pure” state, independent of human experience.
-Presumed to exist and interact with human mind, can never be known directly because as soon as it impacts on a human mind, it becomes transformed by that mind into the inner/phenomenal world

Phenomenal world- Kant’s concept of the world as subjectively experienced after being processed and transformed via the intuitions and categories of the mind.

Question 24

Describe what the “Physiological Mechanism” doctrine is and explain why Helmholtz had adopted it over the theory of “vitalism.”

Answer 24

All natural processes are potentially understandable in terms of physical and chemical processes

In opposition to vitalism which staged that all living organisms are animated by an immaterial life force that is not analyzable by scientific methods
* Helmholtz disagreed with vitalism since it implied there as a limit to a complete scientific understanding of physiological processes since the life force itself lays beyond scientific analysis

Question 25

Fechner’s Psychophysics

Answer 25

Psychophysics- the study of relationships between he objectively measured intensities of various stimuli, and the subjective impressions of those intensities as measured in jnd units.

Absolute threshold: smallest intensity of a stimulus that can be perceived at al

Question 26

Fechner’s law

Answer 26

the assertion that the observed relationship between physical and subjective stimulus intensities for many different senses can be expressed by the single general mathematical formula (S=k log P).

Question 27

what is gestalt psychology about?

Answer 27

Focuses on the ways the mind organizes experiences and perceptions into organized wholes that are more than the sums of their separate parts.

Apparent movement, phi phenomenon, figure and ground, etc.

Question 28

Who is considered to be the father of psychology?

Answer 28

Wilhelm Wundt- a German physiologist who is known for the development of experimental psychology as a discipline and established the first psychology laboratory at the university of Leipzig in 1879

Question 29

importance of “Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874)” written by Wundt

Answer 29

o Considered the founding textbook for experimental psychology as a discipline.

o The book focuses on sensation and perception, mental chronometry and psychophysics.

Question 30

The name of the approach that Titchener advocated for

Answer 30

Structuralism- observe the structure of the mental phenomena before looking at its function

Discovery of basic structures of mental phenomena as collections of sensations and feelings, before considering their functions

Question 31

written response: Describe E. B. Titchener’s attitudes towards women in psychology (1pt).

Answer 31

His support for individual women was impressive for the time: encouraged by publishing it in journals BUT

Not a positive attitude, he established an exclusively male Society of Experimental Psychologists society for experimental psychologists

Question 32

Describe the “Forgetting Curve” that was proposed by Herman Ebbinghaus (1pt).

Answer 32

Observed pattern of forgetting lists of nonsense syllables over time: rapid decline in correct memory, followed by a gradual leveling off

Demonstrated that memory could be studied experimentally

Question 33

• Difference between “uniformitarianism” and “catastrophism.” By Lyell

Answer 33

Uniformitarism- a theory strongly promoted by Lyell, which held that the earths major features resulted from gradual process over a long period of time.

Catastrophism- a predominant nineteenth-century theory holding that the geological features of the natural world were caused by a sudden and massive cataclysms (Noah’s flood)

Question 34

Darwin’s book, “Origin of Species” presupposed the existence of what?

Answer 34

Evolution by Natural Selection (favoring certain kinds of individuals to survive and reproduce)

Question 35

William Paley’s focus was on what theory/idea?

Answer 35

Gradual evolution and promoted the “argument from design”- a contention suggesting that because humans and the various species of animals were so complicated and so perfectly constructed and adapted, they must have been designed as finished products by God

Question 36

Darwin’s sexual selection

Answer 36

• quality of mate selection plays a role in the passing down of characteristics favorable for survival

Question 37

Darwin’s complementarity of the sexes

Answer 37

men and women have evolved to have different but complementary psychological characteristics (men intellectual, women moral)

Question 38

darwin’s variation hypothesis

Answer 38

across all species, ales have been more modified by evolution than females and show more variability within their own gender

Question 39

sociobiology

Answer 39

attempt to account for social behavioral traits as the result of individual but interacting genes tending to replicate themselves throughout successive generations

Question 40

comparative psychology

Answer 40

looks at similarities and differences among various animal’s psychological functions

Question 41

social darwinism

Answer 41

political systems and societies evolve by natural selection

Question 42

What is the difference between polygenesis and monogenesis

Answer 42

Polygenesis- theory suggesting that non-European, “savage” peoples were a distinctly different species of being.

Monogenesis- theory suggesting that all human races shared a common ancestry.

Question 43

Definition of the “psychology of individual differences.”

Answer 43

By Galton
Focuses on the measurement and study of differences between individuals on a psychological characteristic, rather than general qualities of that characteristic

Question 44

What was important and notable about Galton’s book “English Men of Science”?

Answer 44

Popularized the phrase “nature and nurture”

This book reveals results of Galton’s self-questionnaire study of the backgrounds of scientists.

Question 45

Who might have been influenced by Galton’s “word association” experiments?

Answer 45

Sigmund Freud- free association technique

Carl Jung- word association test

Question 46

Francis Galton and Alphonse de Candolle agreed on the nature/nurture question but had different views on the influence of heredity and environment. Who believed that “heredity” had more of an influence, and who believed that “environment” had more of an influence?

Answer 46

Alphonse de Candolle- “environment”
o Francis Galton- “heredity”

Question 47

the overall conditions involved in the “separated twin studies.”

Answer 47

Separated twin study- Identification of an adult group of unquestionably monozygotic twins reared in separate, independent environments, whose study is potentially useful in determining the relative influences of heredity and environment.

Question 48

James’ metaphor for conscious thought

Answer 48

stream of consciousness

Question 49

pragmatism vs determinism

Answer 49

Pragmatism:
considering something as true without needing to confirm that it is universally true.

Determinism:
the view that all events are determined by previously existing causes.

Question 50

name of first African American to earn PHD in psychology

Answer 50

Francis Cecil Summer

Question 51

Mary Calkins description of “self-psychology”

Answer 51

The self is an active, guiding, and purposive agency present in all acts of consciousness

Question 52

Describe James’ understanding of emotion through the lens of the “James-Lange of Theory Emotion.” (1pt)

Answer 52

Emotion is a consequence, rather than a cause, of bodily changes associated with it.

State of body can induce emotions

Question 53

Name at least one contribution made by Edward Lee Thorndike in the field of psychology

Answer 53

Trial-and-error learning- Thorndike’s term for learning that occurs as a result of random trial-and-error behavior that is occasionally successful and gradually becomes more precise.

Question 54

What were two challenges relating to “race/ethnicity” within the early history of psychology? (2pts)

Answer 54

Darwin’s Descent led to presumed intellectual superiority of the “Nordic” races as it was believed that because they had to survive harsh northern climates, they were more creative and inventive (pg. 225).

During Jensen’s examination of IQ scores for children in the Head Start Program, he found that African American children had lower IQ scores than white Americans. While most researchers attributed this gap due to differences in environmental and socioeconomic factors, Jensen said that it was due to genetic differences. He was implying that intelligence differences between the groups may be biologically determined.

Question 55

What were two challenges relating to “gender” within the early history of psychology? (2pts)

Answer 55

Darwin’s “complementarity of the sexes” assumed that women have inherently lower intellectual abilities than men. Although he attributed some positive mental qualities to women, he simply assumed a general masculine intellectual superiority.

Women were often excluded from societies (such as Titchener’s Experimentalists)  less opportunities and networking

Question 56

What may be a potential limitation within the development of the field of psychology as a result of the way diversity and inclusion was handled in the early history of psychology? (1pt)

Answer 56

Many of the assessment tools, techniques, and experiments performed by early psychologist may not be generalizable to the larger population since they focus primarily on white men. Many psychologists were biased and perpetuated harmful stereotypes in their research.