Midterm 1 Flashcards
What does psychology today use?
Scientific study of behaviour and mind and their neurobiological bases. The scientific study uses scientific method. It focuses on behaviour and the mind and focuses on the mind, not the brain.
What is the mind?
What we do with the stuff in the brain
What is behaviour? What characterizes it, is there certain timing behind it?
Action or reaction of person or animal responding to external or internal stimuli. It can be overt or covert and be physical, mental or emotional. The response can be immediate or delayed and intentional or unintentional.
What distinguishes between behaviour and operation?
Cultural reasons - behaviour can be the same but have different interpretations. There can also be a difference in clarity of communication because science requires it.
What are operational definitions? Can you provide an example?
Involves defining something in terms of specific process or action used to determine presence and quantity, that is, one defines or describes something in terms of operations used for measuring or manipulating it. This is how scientists achieve clear communications. Example: Party Animal. Henry drank nearly eight litres of beer. When told to refrain from drinking he did a keg stand and lit a lampshade on fire.
Who is William James and what are his contributions to psychology?
Not a founder but made substantial contributions. Historical events influence what researchers study. What researchers study can affect social/cultural value.
What was the historical context in which psychology emerged?
Industrialism and the enlightenment, the printing press allowed the middle class to have knowledge because they have books and stuff. There was also an increase in social interaction.
What is the difference between Anthropocentrism?
Anthropocentrism is the idea that people (anthro) are most important thing in the universe whereas determinism is the idea that every event including human thought and behaviour is casually determined by unbroken chain of preceding events.
Charles Darwin.
Origin of species challenges our ancestry and said we share common ancestry with primates. Also outlined the way in which organisms and species change over time through natural selection.
Aristotle and Plato?
Genetic inheritance (nature) versus upbringing (nurture)
How did Sir Francis Galton and John B Watson differ in thoughts about the mind and it’s formation?
Francis thought genetic inheritance was most important where as Watson thought environment was stronger force. Many psychologists study ways in which nature and nurture interact to influence behavoiur
What was Rene Descartes thought process and why did people reject this, what did they embrace instead?
Rene believed in dualism between the mind and the body, the physical body is a container for a non physical thing called the mind. Most people embraced Ryle’s scientific materialism which states only things that can be said to exist are composed of matter or of interaction among things that have matter.
What do Paul Brocas study?
Post morgen studies to find the extent that behaviours were connected to certain parts of the brain. Concluded damage to certain parts of brain impair certain mental functions and therefore the brain and mind are closely linked.
Who was Franz Joseph Gall and what did he propose?
Phrenology- study of shape and size of cranium as an indication of character and mental abilities.
Who were Pierre Flourens and Herman Von Helmoltz?
Pierre flourens surgically removed pieces of the brain. Helmoltz studied reaction time and nerve impulses.
What is stimulus? What is reaction time?
Stimulus is sensory input from environment and reaction time is the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus.
What is physiology?
Study of biological process in human body
What is the goal of psychology?
Study the contents of the conscious mind.
Wilhelm Wundt?
Opened first psychological laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Credited with the emergence of psychology.
What is structuralism?
Breaks down mental processes into basic components. All consciousness based on three elemental states, sensations, images and affection. The main assumption is that the content of conscious experience can be analyzed by basic element. Used introspection as method and rigorous description of content of conscious mind. Focused on identifying elements that make up content of our conscious world, operating under main assumption that content of conscious experience can be analyzed into its basic elements.
What are some differences between natural science and psychology.
Natural science is the riddle of the world. The objective world, world of quantity, somatic world and the world as it is. Psychology is the riddle of ourselves, it’s the subjective world, a world of quality, a semantic world and the world as experienced.
What is semantic memory?
One of two types of declarative or explicit memory, refers to general world knowledge we have accumulated throughout our lives.
What is somatic memory?
When you drop a rock on your toe and your toe remembers, you remember it hurt a lot and toe feels memory as dull ache or when your heart has been broken or you’ve grieved and memory can be felt in your chest.
What are the main school of Psychology?
Structuralism, gestaltism, functionalism, Freudian is, behaviourism.
What was the original objective of psychology?
Contents of conscious mind is just a little part, basic elements of conscious mind and not the study of consciousness.
What is imageless thought?
Thought that has no conscious precursor.
What are some issues with introspection?
It’s complete subjective so it’s not exactly reliable. The degree to which the result of a measurement can be depended on to be accurate each time.
What is the cognitive unconscious?
Mental processes not accessible to judgements feelings etc.
What is gestaltism?
Reaction against structuralism and based on notion that whole (what we consciously perceive) is more than the sum of the parts. Gestalt asserted perception of the world depends on particular configurations of elements that we experience things as unified wholes. It’s argued that gestalts are perceptual primaries. Would argue that if you can see a soccer ball from just small shapes, you are a gestalt because you can observe things as a whole. Max Wertheimer
What is functionalism?
Built on Darwinism and evolutionary perspective. The main assumption is that the function of conscious experience in providing adaptation of organism is more important than structure of conscious experience. Defined psychology as study of functions of psychological abilities.
Who were William James and G Stanley Hall and what did they argue?
Psychology should focus on understanding purpose of mental processes, skills, and capacities. The way in which each of them enable people to adapt to environment. Example - what adaptions are enable by people to communicate via spoken language. People are consciously aware of parts of inner or outer world. Psychology should also develop clear functional definitions of core concepts and answer questions like what is required for something to be classified as short term memory or as consciousness. What is it for something to be a kidney or for something to be a carburetor?
Freud and the Unconscious?
Freud’s school of thought emphasized influence of unconscious mind on behaviour. Freud believed human mind was controlled by three forces. The Id, ego and superego. Id deals with primal urges, ego is a component of personality charged with dealing with reality and the superego is the part of personality that holds all ideals and value we internalize from our parents and culture. Freud believed the interaction of these three elements led to all complex human behaviours.
Freud and Psyschoanalysis? Psychoanalytic theory?
The unconscious is the part of mind that operate outside of awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings and actions. Psychoanalytic theory is the approach to understanding human behaviour and emphasizes importance of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts and behaviours. Psychoanalysis is the therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders.
What is Behaviourism?
Attempt to resurrect the discipline. Psychology should be an experimental branch of science. Should be concerned with directly observable behaviours and responses. Focus on prediction and control of behaviour. Seek to quantify relationship between stimuli and quantify relationships between stimuli and responses. Got their inspirations and foundations from associationist (philosophy), classical conditioning (Pavlov; physiology). Conditioning of emotional reactions (Watson psychology) and operant conditioning (skinner; education)
What is learning?
Matter of making connections between stimuli or between stimulus and a response.
What are the primary laws of association?
Contiguity, frequency, similarity and classical conditioning.
What is contiguity?
Things that occur close to each other in space or time tend to get linked together in the mind.
What is frequency? (Primary laws of association)
More often two things or events are linked, the more powerful their association and connection.
What is similiarity? (Primary laws of association)
If two things are similar, the though of one will tend to trigger the thought of the other.
What is classical conditioning?
Study of dogs bring in a reflexive (natural behaviour) of salivating under control of a new stimulus (eg: ringing of a bell) Reflexive or involuntary behaviours include sweating, shivering, relaxing, salivating, startle, sexual arousal, and envying.
What is the little Albert study?
Conditioning emotional responses? Watson and Rainer made loud noise by striking steel bar with a hammer to frighten Albert, 11 month old infant. While playing with a stuffed rat, Watson struck the bar and scared infant. The process was repeated until five weeks later, when the rat was shown to the infant, he immediately started crying. When presented with a white rabbit, Albert feared it almost as much as a rat. Albert still feared these objects two months later.
What is operant/instrumental conditioning?
Voluntary responses and behaviours are to be controlled by consequences. Guy below used terms operant to describe behaviour that has some impact or operate on environment. Burrhus Frederic Skinner- consequence of a behaviour determines whether it will be more or less likely to occur again. Same idea as throndikes (1905) “law of effect”
Critical Assumption of behaviourism?
Associationist laws are sufficient to account for all learning. All learning is guided by the same principles. In OC, organism can be taught a connection between any response and any reinforcement or punishment. All species learn the same way. There’s a heavy emphasis on nurture (nature is not important)
Prepared Classical Condition
Evolution prepared us to be afraid of whatever threatened our forebears (snakes, spiders, blood, fire) as consequence, condition differently to these kinds of stimuli. Garcia did research on taste aversion and showed duration between CS and UCS may be long, hours, or may occur in a single trial. Latent learning is also contrary to behaviourist because a rat can figure out a maze without behavioural reinforcement.
What is cognitivism?
Psychology should be experimental science that uses computer software as a metaphor for exploring the mind. Analogy of brain is to hardware. Focuses on how mind processes example encodes, transfmorms and stores information. Investigates information processing programs used by humans and animals and explores emergency and development of these programs.
What is cognitive psychology?
Branch that studies mental processes including how people think, attend, perceive, decide, remember etc. Behaviourists view mind as a black box that cannot be studied by scientific method. Cognitivism claims we need to open up box, we cannot achieve any real understanding without looking inside box.
Inspiration and socio-historic context for cognitivism?
We need to open box, cannot achieve any real understanding without looking inside the box. Developments in computing technology brought need for explaining learning. Behaviourism inability to give insight into limits of human attention (ex: while driving or on phone), also limit short term memory vs long term memory. Cognitivism is everywhere, knowledge structure interrelated collection of knowledge on topics.
What is personality and anxiety?
Personality is a construct or knowledge structure, abstraction that cannot be seen directly but is inferred from patterns of cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses in various contexts. Anxiety is a general term for several disorders that cause nervousness, fear, apprehension and worrying. These disorders affect how we feel, think and behave.
What is empiricism?
How to know stuff. The best way to understand is to observe, this is essential element of the scientific method which is the procedure for finding truth by using empirical evidence.
What are dogmatists?
Best way to understand illness is to develop theories about the body’s functions.
What is a theory?
Hypothetical explanation of a natural phenomenon.
What is the rule of parsimony?
Simplest theory that explains all evidence is the best one.
What is a hypothesis?
Falsifiable prediction made by a theory.
What is the empirical method?
Sets of rules and techniques for observation.
Empirical challenges have three qualities that make them unusually difficult to study, what are they?
Complexity- brain is very complicated with complex thoughts, feelings and actions that are psychology’s core concerns. Variability- people are different, no two individuals are the same. Reactivity - when people are needing studied, they don’t always behave as they should.
What is an Instrument?
Mayonnaise. Anything that can detect the condition to which an operational definition refers?
What is validity?
Goodness with which a concrete event defines a property.
What is reliability?
Tendency for an instrument to produce the same measurement whenever it is used to measure the same thing.
What is power?
Instruments ability to detect small magnitudes of the property.
What are demand characteristics?
Those aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think someone else wants or expects.
What is naturalistic observation?
How to avoid problem of demand characteristic. Technique for gathering scientific information by unobtrusively observing people in their natural environments.
What are cover stories?
Misleading explanations meant for people to not discern the true purpose of observation.
What are filter items?
Pointless measures designed to mislead subjects about purpose of observation.
What is observer bias?
Expectations can influence observations.
What is double blind?
Observation whose true purpose is hidden from both observer and person being observed.
Statistics?
Normal distribution, mathematically defined distribution in which frequency of measurements is highest in middle and decreases symmetrically in both directions. Mode is value of most frequently observed measurement. Median is value that is in the middle. Range is the value of largest measurement in a frequency distribution minus the value of the smallest measurement. Standard deviation describes the average difference between measurements in a frequency distribution and the mean of that distribution.
What is variable?
Properties whose values can vary across individuals over time.
What is correlation? Coefficient? Different types of correlation?
Correlation is when variable in value of one variable are synchronized with variations in value of the other. A correlation coefficient is a mathematical measure of both direction and strength of a correlation and is symbolized by the letter r. Natural correlations are observed in the world around us and can tell us whether two variable have a relationship but cannot tell us what kind of relationship the variable have.
What is a third variable correlation?
Two variables are correlated only because each is causally related to a third variable.
What is the matched samples techniques? Matched pairs?
Technique where participants in two groups are identical in terms of a third variable. Matched pairs is technique whereby each participant is identical to one other participant in terms of a third variable.
What is the third variable problem?
Causal relationship between two variable cannot be inferred from naturally occurring correlation between them because of the ever present possibility of a third variable correlation.
What is an experiment?
Technique for establishing the causal relationship between variables.
What is manipulation?
Changing a variable in order to determine it’s causal power.
Independent and Dependent variable?
Independent variable is the variable that is manipulated. A dependent variable is the variable that responds.
Experimental group vs control group?
Experimental group is the group of people who are exposed to a particular manipulation. the control group is the group who are not exposed to particular manipulation.
What is self selection?
Problem that occurs when anything about a person determines whether he or she will be included in the experimental or control group.
What is random assignment?
Procedure that lets chance assign people to experimental or control group.
What are the three R’s when respecting animals in testing?
Replacement - no alternative
Reduction - must use fewest number of animals possible
Refinement - modified to minimize discomfort, infection, illness and pain of animals.
What are the four ways of knowing?
Nativism- some knowledge is native/hard wired into brain at birth. Rationalism- exercise of reason not experience, authority or spiritual revelation, provides primary basis for knowledge.
Authoritarianism- knowledge comes from those in position of authority
Empiricism- view that all our knowledge comes from experience (through our sensory systems)
What is Naive realism?
Belief or conviction that we see the world precisely as it is. Illustrated by seeing is believing attitude. Too much faith in experience. Is our perception or experience always valid, showing us only what is real and revealing everything that exists? Fail to see things that exist in the world?
What is hindsight bias?
Tendency to exaggerate our ability to have foreseen how something would turn out after learning how it would turn out
What is overconfidence?
Tendency to overestimate accuracy of current knowledge. Willingness to be satisfied by insufficient or limited data.
Availability Heuristic?
Tendency to judge probability of event by ease with which it comes to mind
What is a confirmation bias?
Tendency to seek out evidence that confirms our beliefs and assumptions. To learn more you should ask questions that could disprove your assumptions.
What is meant by self fulfilling prophecy?
Prediction of events that come about because of one’s belief in prediction and enactment or lack of enactment on belief thus reinforcing belief. Finding that if a certain prediction is made, that person maybe unconsciously will modify behaviours or engage behaviours that will create these situations that will cause predicted events to come about.
What is the Hawthorne effect?
Distortion in outcome of test because subjects behaviour changes due to mere fact that you’re being observed.
What is the placebo effect?
Beneficial effect produced by drug or treatment that cannot be attributed to properties of placebo itself.
What is scientism?
View that scientific method is only route to valid and reliable knowledge?
