Lecture 2 Q &A

Question 1

How did Aristotle explain how the body worked/was driven?

Answer 1

Aristotle sought to study the organ of the mind. He believed that the brain serves as a cooling agent that soothes the body instead of helping it work/process info. Instead he saw that the heart (which is more dynamic and hot-blooded) was the “organ of the mind”

Question 2

What did Galen believe?

Answer 2

Galen thought that the brain was the organ of the mind and was driven by spirits that act as a force that starts in the senses and flows into the brain.

Question 3

What is the 1st ventricle of the brain?

Answer 3

Sensus Commenus (Common Sense)

Question 4

What is the 2nd ventricle of the brain?

Answer 4

Cognition

Question 5

What is the 3rd ventricle of the brain?

Answer 5

Memories

Question 6

What did Vesalius discover?

Answer 6

He was a medical student who helped produce the first anatomical textbooks as he discovered that the brain was more complex than Galen thought.

Question 7

What did Galvani discover?

Answer 7

Galvani found that the brain was driven by electricity and conducted the frog leg

Question 8

Did Volta agree with Galvani?

Answer 8

No! Volta thought that the electricity was just being put into the cell– not that the brain contained it.

Question 9

What did Santiago Ramon y Cajal find?

Answer 9

He discovered that the brain is a bunch of cells and used the Golgi stain to prove this.

Question 10

What did Camillo Golgi do?

Answer 10

Camillo Golgi came up with the Golgi staining technique and stained the hippocampus. He believed in “reticular theory” or that the brain was just made up of one big net.

Question 11

What did Hermann Ebbinghaus discover?

Answer 11

He created the field of memory research through his method of savings experiment.

Question 12

What is the method of savings experiment?

Answer 12

Learn lists of nonsense syllabus (eg tub, bio).
1) Count how many times he had to go through the list to recite it perfectly.
2) After some delay, count how many times he had to go through the list again to recite it perfectly.
3) the difference between 1 and 2 is the savings “ a quantification of memory”.
Essentially he came up with a method to measure memory by assessing the number of times he had to go through the list to recite it perfectly.

Question 13

What were the discoveries of the method of savings experiment?

Answer 13

1) Forgetting is not linear but exponential (occurs rapidly at first but then gets slower).
2) Principle of “massed vs distributed” practice.

Question 14

What does the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve show?

Answer 14

This shows that there is fast decline (exponential) but then it begins to hold onto some stuff.

Question 15

Explain the concept behind distributed vs massed practice.

Answer 15

It was found that distributed practice is better than massed practice for long term memory retention via a computer typing study.

Question 16

What did William James discover?

Answer 16

He founded the separation of memory vs habits and is the father of compartmentalization.

Question 17

What did Thorndike study?

Answer 17

He studied how animals solve problems and develop “habits”. “Thorndikian conditioning”.
Ex. Cat in the puzzle box experiment to get milk.
Stimulus - Response- Reinforcement.

Question 18

What was discovered regarding reinforcement?

Answer 18

It was found that negative reinforcement fades away vs positive reinforcement stays strong.

Question 19

What did Ivan Pavlov find?

Answer 19

He performed the meat powder and dog salivation experiment and found the conditional stimulus and unconditional stimulus responses. Essentially he was able to find that dogs were salivating when they see the light turn on even though no meat powder had been given to them.

Question 20

What was the function of the “tower of silence”?

Answer 20

Thick walls served as the experimental control of variability. This was done by having the entire experimental room isolated from noise and vibration by hanging it from a cable.

Question 21

What is a conditional stimulus?

Answer 21

A stimulus that can eventually generate a conditioned response. Ex. light bulb

Question 22

What is an unconditional stimulus?

Answer 22

This is a stimulus that leads to an automatic response.

Question 23

What did Sir Charles Sherrington find?

Answer 23

He came up with the S-R “Chain-Link” model of behavior or the idea that. Any behavior can be understood as a series of linked components. These links are “chained” together, because they follow in succession one after the other; one link in the chain leads to another. For behaviors that are well rehearsed (practiced a lot), it may appear that the episode cannot be broken down into steps—that it “all happens at once

Question 24

What did John B Watson discover in the Little Albert experiment?

Answer 24

demonstrated that classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear, that is out of proportion to the danger. In this experiment, a previously unafraid baby was conditioned to become afraid of a rat.

Question 25

What is the “Skinner box”

Answer 25

Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever

Question 25

What is the “Skinner box”

Answer 25

Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. He found that if a person is first exposed to a stimulus, which elicits a response, and the response is then reinforced (stimulus, response, reinforcement).

Question 26

What did Edward Tolman believe?

Answer 26

Tolman believed individuals do more than merely respond to stimuli; they act on beliefs, attitudes, changing conditions, and they strive toward goals. Tolman is virtually the only behaviorists who found the stimulus-response theory unacceptable, because reinforcement was not necessary for learning to occur.n classic experiments, Tolman convincingly demonstrated that you need some notion of mental representation — like a mental map — to explain rat behavior. This idea challenged behaviorist dogma and paved the way for cognitive science. Champion of cognition

Question 27

Clark Hull

Answer 27

King of S-R he proposed a drive-reduction theory of learning. In its simplest form, the theory claimed that no learning occurred unless a drive produced tension and impelled the organism into activity to procure a reward that would reduce the drive and satisfy its related physiological need.

Question 28

What happened to Henry Molison (HM)?

Answer 28

He had a famous case of anterograde and retrograde amnesia in psychology. In an attempt to control his seizures, H. M. underwent brain surgery to remove his hippocampus and amygdala.The findings from H.M. established the fundamental principle that memory is a distinct cerebral function, separable from other perceptual and cognitive abilities, and identified the medial aspect of the temporal lobe as important for memory.

Question 29

What did Brenda Milner discover?

Answer 29

She found that memory and temporal lobes, the lateralization of hemispheric function in language, as well as the role of frontal lobes in problem-solving. The part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe (which includes the hippocampus) is critical for the forming of long-term memories.