Levels of Analysis Flashcards
What is Psychology
The study of human thought and behaviour
Experimental Psychology
the process of collecting, evaluating and interpreting information to draw sound conculsions
Aristotle/Plato
Contemplated fundamental questions of: “How do we learn and remember?” “Where does knowledge come from?
Descartes
The mind and body are distinct entities that were causally linked in a dualistic relationship.
- The mind controls the body
- the body feeds the mind info about outside world through sense.
Ebbinghaus
“Psychology has a long past but a short history”
Muller
- Neurotransmitters in nerves are coded like electrical impulses that travel along different channels.
- particular parts of the body are connected to specific areas of the brain that serve different fucntions
Helmholtz
Measured speed of nerve impulses –> 90 ft. per second (not as fast as electricity)
Florens
Used Muller’s brain technique and destroyed different areas of an animal’s brain. He learned which brain regions controlled heart rate, breathing and the processing of visual and auditory reflexes
Wundt
Opened first lab devoted to the study of psychology. He believed that conscious experience could be studies using the same methods that chemists and physicists use. He launched the first psychological journal devoted to psychology.
Hall
Opened first psych lab in North America and founded the APA
Psychological Level of Analysis
Most intuitive. Concerned with that lies within a subject’s mind. How do thoughts, memories and emotions motivate our actions?
Biological Level of Anaysis
Physiological mechanisms that underly thoughts and behaviour.
Structure and Function of the brain, genetic factors, molecular effects of neurotransmitters of hormones.
Environmental Level of Analysis
Social, cultural and learning interactions that influence thought and behaviour.
Levels of Analysis
The basic type of approach taken to a particular question. Includes: Psychological, Biological, Environmental
Perspectives in Psychology
have specific goals and may involve one or more levels of analysis. Include:
Behavioural, Evolution, Neuroscience, Socio Cultural, Cognitive, Development.
Watson
Formalized methodology of research methods of the behaviourist field of psychology.
Says that overt behaviour is the only valid means of psychology.
–Black box theory
Watson’s Black Box theory
Scientists should view the mind as an off-limits black box that takes input and makes output.
What happens inside the black box should be outside the domain of science, at least for the present.
Skinner
internal events exist, but are impossible to measure scientifically.
Everything we want to know about an organism can be gained by studying its behaviour.
pleasant = repeated behaviour
unpleasant = non-repeated behaviour
Cognitive Perspective
proper scientific methods can be applied to study internal mental processes tat are necessary to fully understand behaviour
Behavioural Perspective
a level of analysis concerned only with explaining psychological phenomena using learning methodologies, treating the mind as a black box.
Models
Abstract representations of how the mind functions.
Can be used to make predictions and design experiments.
Provide a framework to describe data and develop interesting, testable questions.
Aren’t necessarily accurate, just the best and more useful thing at the time until something better comes along.
Reductionism
All human behaviour can be reduced to the biology of the brain. However, the problem can actually be reduced to the cellular, molecular, atomic and subatomic mechanisms.
if we continue to break a problem into smaller and smaller parts, we eventually become unable to answer larger questions in a meaningful manner.
Crick
Can reductionism and advanced technology be used to fully explain all of human behaviour?
Structural Neuroimaging
Allows us to see the physical makeup of the brain
