History - Chapter 1 Content

Question 1

What is empiricism?

Answer 1

The belief is that knowledge comes from an individual’s own
experience and the key is associations between these experiences. (Locke and Hume)

Question 2

What is nativism?

Answer 2

The belief is that knowledge is hard-wired into your brain and cannot be learned from experiences, information is innate. (Kant and Descartes)

Question 3

How did Wundt use introspection?

Answer 3

He had trained observers who were presented with various stimuli and were told to describe their experience. This is based on experimental self-observation and must be done in a lab under controlled conditions.

Question 4

Functionalism

Answer 4

The big question was why does the mind work as it does? This focused more on the function, applying it to real-world experiences rather than the content of the brain. Introspection was used here in a more natural setting. (James)

Question 5

Structuralism

Answer 5

A mode of knowledge wanting to identify the simple units to understand more complex ones. Mode, quality, intensity, and durations are the 4 elements of the unconscious that experiences can be broken down into. (Wundt and Baldwin)

Question 6

Behaviourism

Answer 6

The theory is that behaviour can be explained through conditioning, relationship between inputs (stimuli) and the outputs (responses). This became from the rejection with the lack of progress being made with introspection. (Skinner and Watson)

Question 7

What is a mental representation?

Answer 7

An internal depiction of information

Question 8

Gestalt

Answer 8

The belief is that one cannot construct a simple coherent perception of sensory aspects but instead create a whole structure of an experience as a whole, focusing on the holistic aspects of the conscious experience. The whole is perceived more than the sum of its parts. Used introspection. (Kohler)

Question 9

Localization of function

Answer 9

The neural structure supporting the functions resides in this specific area of the brain

Question 10

What is naturalistic observation?

Answer 10

Observing people is a familiar everyday context when they are going about their own cognitive business. This can have ecological validity as a benefit but experimental control as a disadvantage.

Question 11

What are the positives and negatives of introspection?

Answer 11

The positives are that observing one’s reactions and behaviour can give them an insight into an experience that can be richer and more complete than anyone could observe. Whereas the negative is that people tend to be biased about their own cognition.

Question 12

What is the most common way to collect evidence?

Answer 12

Doing a true experiment involving the manipulation of one or more variables and observing how the recorded measures, being the dependent.

Question 13

The difference between a between and within-subject design.

Answer 13

Between: participants are assigned to specific conditions and the researchers look at the differences between the groups
Within: the participants are exposed to all the conditions and the researcher compares the performance of the same participants within the different control groups.

Question 14

What is a quasi experiment?

Answer 14

Participants are randomly assigned a control group and it cannot be based on sex, gender, ethnicity, and age.

Question 15

What is a paradigm?

Answer 15

It is all the different ways the mind can be represented in the field of psychology.

Question 16

Information-processing approach

Answer 16

The analogy of human cognition and a computer processing info.

Question 17

Connectionism

Answer 17

Explaining cognition as a network of connections composed of simple units (neural networks).

Question 18

Cognition

Answer 18

Actively processing, transforming, reducing, elaborating, storing, and recovering information.

Question 19

What are the 4 sub sections of cognition?

Answer 19

Attention, perception, pattern recognition and memory.

Question 20

Define Individual differences.

Answer 20

The idea is that intelligence, morals and personality were innate and that people differ in the way different processes function. Used tests and questionnaires to asses mental abilities. (Galton)

Question 21

How did human factors enginerring present new problems?

Answer 21

This promoted a paradigm shift and focused on thinking about mind connection and the optimal usage of humans in machines in order for them to be efficient.

Question 22

What is the cognitive revolution?

Answer 22

It is the way that studying cognition had to be changed because new things were being found and introduced into the world.

Question 23

How did behaviourism fail to explain language?

Answer 23

Conditioning was primarily focused on how we learned language through imitation and reinforcement. But this was questioned when children were using improper grammar when not reinforced to do so.

Question 24

How did localization of the brain with function create discussion in cognitive psychology?

Answer 24

This helped to explain how different sub-processes occurred in certain areas of the brain. One thought was that this occurred from connections between neuron groups and the other thought was that early experiences with the development of the nervous system were very important.

Question 25

How did the computer analogy affect the cognitive revolution?

Answer 25

The development of computers created a strong metaphor for the way out brain would function. Starting with input into short-term storage and from there you can go into long-term storage or create the output needed.

Question 26

Describe information processing.

Answer 26

The emphasis is on how the info flows through an organism and how it is stored symbolically (representing something of the outside world). Also talks about serial processing and how mental tasks need to go in order and flow in a sequence.

Question 27

What is connectionism?

Answer 27

Simple neuron-like element code patterns of activation across a large population of such elements. Neural networks are all the info stored across neurons, positive leads to activate and negative leads to inhibit. Focuses on the pattern of activation and the connection and linkage between thoughts.

Question 28

Why must research for this field be done in a lab?

Answer 28

To understand cognition, the basic mechanisms need to be found and this can only be done in a stable situation which happens in a controlled environment.

Question 29

Explain the evolutionary approach.

Answer 29

This is based off of thinking that the brain and cognition are like any other body part and treating it like the rest of the body. This was more so focused on outside the lab.

Question 30

Explain the ecological approach.

Answer 30

This is based on putting people in the context in which they naturally occur so their behaviour and cognitive are the most realistic. Mainly naturalistic observations are used for this approach.