psy 160sk Flashcards
commitments to science
quantification, objectivity
quantification
everything is reducible to math (galileo)
objectivity
science is the objective study of reality, free of belief and judgement
pre-commitments to science
materialism, reductionism
(dualism, pluralism)
materialism
the idea that everything that exists is physical
reductionism
it is best to explain complex things by their underlying principles
dualism
some things are material and some are not (no monism)
pluralist
not just 2 options; many things occupy reality
What is psychology
the effect of your mind on your behavior
nominal
using #’s to categorize things
ordinal
scaling, doesn’t tell you how different one is from the other (1st place, 2nd place)
interval
gives you order + how far apart they are (temperature)
ratio
nominal data, has an order, and also has a true 0
memory (received view)
the process of encoding, storing and retrieval
clinical dissociation
the idea that memory is multiple and its functions are independent. aspects of memory are physiologically different
H.M.
temporal and hippocampus parts cut out
retrograde amnesia - couldn’t remember 3 years prior to surgery
anterograde amnesia - couldn’t form new episodic memories
Occam’s razor (principle of parsimony)
the theory explained with the least assumptions is preferred (memory violates this principle by having multiple parts)
LTM
capacity: a whole lot
lifelong/ long time
STM
capacity: 7+/- 2 chunks
< minute
Tulving
created idea of episodic and semantic memory
episodic memory
record of time, space, self
-lost easier than semantic
-requires sense of self
-may require frontal lobe
semantic memory
absent of when/where memory was acquired (factual information)
autonoetic vs noetic.
autonoetic = ability to mentally time travel
Klein’s view of memory
it is terminologically vapid; everything that is memorized is encoded, stored retrieved (beliefs, imaginations, etc)
memory is… (Klein’s view)
from the past, about the past (it actually happened), about my past (it happened to you)
Patient R.B.
did not take ownership of his memories
William James
“the self is central to psychology”
self as known (epistemological)
material self (physical attributes)
spiritual self (psychological attributes)
social self (different selves for different social situations)
self as knower (ontological)
subjective, subconscious, has no neural basis
symbolic interactionism
our sense of self is a consequence of the people we interact with
Cooley
looking glass self (how other people see us is important to us)
Gallup Test
chimps raised in isolation or not
will they recognize themselves in the mirror?
place red dot on top of their head
isolation: ignores red dot
group: touches themselves
identity
although the “self” is changing all the time, we have a sense of continuum (we are the same person over time)
synchronic
how we feel right now (easy to do)
diachronic
sense of self over time (not as east to do)
Povenelli
post-it note test on children (video record)
2-3 year olds did not reach for post-it after watching video back (do not think the person in the video aka past self is the same as they are right now)
4 years: 75% would reach (diachronic self)
Klein’s view of self
self is conscious of things personal to you
William James’ view is good (self as known, self as knower) but is missing one aspect: personal ownership
Free will
behavior is not predetermined, you have a choice
Determinism
monistic (one) materialism
everything has a physical entity
everything is predetermined in the universe
Libet
studied people undergoing brain surgery
noted brain started to act ~ 1/2 a second before the patient was conscious they were about to do something
Problem with Libet
there was nothing spontaneous about the patients movement
we don’t know if the readiness potential was specific for a given behavior
we cannot ever determine functions of the universe by an experiment
Loplace’s Demon Argument
if you know position and movement of all the particles in the universe
and you know all the laws that govern their behavior
and you could compute it
you can predict and retrodict everything possible
epiphenomenon
something that is associated with another but has no causal effect on it
remembering
not everything that is remembered is a memory
retrieving something for behavior, verbalization
should psychology be a science?
no, science is about the natural and physical word. psychology does not need to be reduced
constructs of psychological science
misuse of numbers
theoretical poverty
constructs are poorly defined (we use the same methods as other sciences)
Likert scales
used to map a persons experience
problem: how do we know the distance from 1-2 is the same as 2-3?
Numbers
“iffy propositions”
Is the self an illusion (does it require consciousness?)
consciousness is an illusion
illusions are an experience, experience requires experiencer, experiencer has consciousness
Mead
we wouldn’t have a sense of self if we didn’t interact with anyone
