Exam 1 - Ch. 1 Flashcards
Ch. 1
Psychology
scientific study of mind, brain and behaviour
Mind
The mental activity results from biological processes within the brain. (e.g. perception, thoughts, memories, feelings).
Behaviour
observable actions (human or animal)
Nativism
knowledge is innate
Plato
Empiricism
All knowledge is acquired through Experience
Belief in “Tabula rasa”, “blank slate”
(Aristotle)
Nature or Nurture? Which affects psychological development more?
Both nature and nurture interact in psychological
development
Dualism
The mind and the body are separate but intertwined
- Suggested that mind was unique to humans, who are the only animals with one (soul)
(Renee Descartes)
Mind or Body? Are the distinct?
Modern psychologist reject dualism
• The mind arises from brain activity.
• Cannot separate the mind and the brain
Phrenology
specific characteristics and knowledge are in specific regions of the brain
- Each section has different behaviours and traits
• e.g. mechanical ability, talent for poetry, love of
property, colour perception, language, affection
Franz Joseph Gall - Creator
Discredited as theory
Wilhelm Wundt
Founder of Psychology as a discipline
• Opens a first psychology lab
- Uses reaction time as method
- Deveolped Introspection
Reaction time
how quickly people can respond to events
- faster when the task is easier
- slower when the task if harder
consciousness
a person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind
Introspection
systematic examination of
mental experiences that require people to
think about and report the content of their
thoughts
Structuralism
the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind - like chemical elements
Edward Titchener developed it; was Wundt’s student
Used introspection as well
Introspection flaws?
- Experience is subjective
2. Reporting changes the experience itself
Functionalism
the study of how mental processes enable people to
adapt to their environments
Inspired by evolutionary theory; traits are adaptive and naturally selected by fitness
Functionalism argued that mental abilities must have evolved because they were adaptive. • Therefore, psychologists should study how the mind operates in the context of human evolution
William James
Founder of Functionalism
Criticized structuralism - mind is not that simple
Believed single moment of consciousness is impossible to capture
Stream of consciousness
mind consists of continuous
series of thoughts that cannot be broken down
G. Stanley Hall
• Functionalist
• His work focused on development and education
as informed by evolutionary thinking
• As children develop, they pass through stages
that repeat the evolutionary history
Sigmund Freud
Father of psychoanalytic theory • Found that some of his patients with neurological disorders had few medical reasons. • Built on the idea of unconscious
Unconscious
the part of the mind that
operates outside of conscious awareness
but can influence conscious thoughts,
feelings and actions
Psychoanalytic theory
Understand how unconscious thoughts can lead
to psychological disorders
approach that emphasizes importance of unconcious in shapping feelings, thoughts, and behaviour
Psychoanalysis
therapeutic method that focuses on bringing
unconscious material into conscious awareness
Behaviourism
emphasizes environmental effects on observable
behaviour
idea that environmental stimuli predicts behaviour - “skinner baby”
Inspired by Ivan Pavlov
John B. Watson
Founder of Behaviourism
Believed that if psychology was to be objective, it
should study observable behaviour not mental
processes
Believed that animals, including humans, learn all
behaviour through environmental experience -
therefore study stimuli instead
Stimulus
A Sensory input from the
environment
Behaviour
An action or physiological
change elicited by a stimulus
B.F. Skinner
Wanted to develop behaviourist principles to
explain how animals learned to act in their
environment
reduced all human behaviour to reinforcement of
responses with reward (or punishment)
Skinner box
Conditioning chamber
Reinforcement
consequence of an action
that can increase the chance of the action
happening again in the future
Problems with behaviourism
- It ignored mental processes (e.g. memory, consciousness etc)
- It ignored evolutional history of the organism
• (E.g. some behaviours cannot be explained by reinforcement alone) - Couldn’t explain learning by observation, or infant learning of grammar
Gestalt Theory
the whole of personal
experience is not simply the sum of its
constituent elements.
Max Wertheimer
Founder of Gestalt
psychology
Humanistic psychology
Focused on the Goodness of people and how people should accept themselves and think positively
Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers
Cognitive psychology
study of mental or cognitive processes such as
perception, memory, subjective
experience, attention and language
George A. Miller
Initiated the study of the mind
One of founders of cognitive psychology
Magic # 7
People can only hold 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information in
their short term memory, or a “Chunk”
Cognitive Neuroscience
aims to understand the links between cognitive
processes and brain activity
i.e. the physical mechanisms, such as neural firing, that leads to mental processes
created in Montreal neurological institute
Donald Hebb
Developed theory of the
neural basis of learning
(Cognitive neuroscience contributor)
Wilder Penfield
Pioneered surgical removal of
brain tissue to alleviate seizure
(Cognitive neuroscience contributor)
Brenda Milner
Discovered the neural basis
of long-term memory
(Cognitive neuroscience contributor)
