PSY 310 Exam 1 Flashcards
Plato
suggested that mental processes were located in the brain
Descartes
suggested that the mind & body were distinct substances
Locke
argued that all the contents of the mind, such as acquired knowledge, emerged from learning & our personal experiences
Behaviorism
focused on only the OBSERVABLE behavior; the dominant theoretical perspective in psychology during the early 20th century
Noam Chomsky
initiated the “cognitive revolution” with his convincing critique of B. F. Skinner’s conceptualization of language development & behaviorism
Cognitive Psychology
the scientific study of mental processes including attention, language, memory, decision making, problem solving, & thinking; collection of mental processes & activities used in perceiving, remembering, solving problems, thinking, & understanding
Piaget
had major influence on early cognitive psychology; described the mind as a representational system that constructs mental models of the external world
The Information Processing Approach
where the operations of the mind are likened to that of a computer; the most influential theoretical framework in cognitive psychology
Social Cognition
concerned with how we think about & process our social world
Cognitive Developmental Psychology
concerns how cognitive processes change from womb to tomb
All Psychological Processes Involve:
cognition!
Memory Is:
malleable
Psychophysics
studies the relationship between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their stimuli, such as their intensity, & our psychological (subjective) experience of them
Psychophysicists
focus on the initial stages of information processing
Cognitive Psychologists
focus on ALL stages of information processing
Wilhelm Wundt
Father of Psychology; first psychology lab; “atoms of the mind”
Edward Titchener
Father of Structuralism; popularized structuralism in the U.S.; Early school of psychology that attempted to discover the basic elements (structures) of the human mind
Basic Elements of Consciousness
sensations, feelings, images
Introspection
selbst-beobachtung = “looking inside”
Functionalism
William James; early school of psychology that attempted to discover the functions of the human mind; emphasis on mental processing rather than mental structure
Methodological Behaviorism
private events (processes occurring inside the organism) are not accessible; John B. Watson
Radical Behaviorism
private events could be studied & eventually the descriptions of private events become necessary; emphasis on studying observable responses & their relation to observable stimuli (“S-R psychology”)
Ebbinghaus
experiments on memory; the forgetting curve
Bartlett
reconstruction; schemata
Gestalt Psychology
developed in Germany; arrived in the U.S. in the 1930s; Gestalt = whole, configuration, form; we have the tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes; the wholes we perceive are often more than the sum of their parts
Problems for the Stimulus-Response Accounts
- learning without responding
- learning without reinforcement
- cognitive maps
- complex behaviors
- language
Cognitive Revolution
- we cannot study the mental world directly
- we must study the mental if we want to understand behavior
- we can study mental processes indirectly since the processes have visible consequences
Cognitive Sciences
interdisciplinary effort to understand the mind
- cognitive psychology
- philosophy
- neuroscience
- artificial intelligence
- linguistics
- anthropology
Information Processing Model
“computer metaphor”; a model proposing that information is processed through a series of stages, each of which performs unique operations; each stage receives information from preceding stages & passes the transformed input along to other stages for further processing