Psych Overview: U2 Test

Question 1

Know the Chapter themes mentioned in class for Chapters 3 and 4.

Answer 1

a. Ch. 3- Brain localization versus brain generalization. Is the brain organ localized by function or does it have generalized function? The answer is both”

Ch. 4- The problem of how our experience of the external world is mediated through the sensory and perceptual processes of an active mind (internal world). Conscious experience differs from objective reality.

Question 2

list the three assumptions of Gall’s phrenology

Answer 2

i. Discrete psychological “faculties” were housed within specific parts of the brain.
ii. The more well developed a portion of the brain the more prominent that trait (personality trait).
iii. Bumps and indentations on the surface of an individual skull reflected the size of the underlying brain parts, and hence of the different faculties.

Question 3

Three faults with Gall’s three assumptions

Answer 3

i. Gall incorrectly assumed that the shape of one’s skull accurately reflects the shape of the underlying brain.
ii. Gall’s arbitrary choice of specific psychological qualities to localize within the brain.
iii. The futile methods by which its hypotheses were often tested.

Question 4

How Gall was properly scientific and naive plausible.

Answer 4

It made direct empirical observations and measurements. To an uninitiated scientist, this could be believable.

Question 5

How Gall’s assumptions remain a pseudoscience

Answer 5

Pseudo science means, “fake science.” Its lack of reliability and validity with regard to the personality traits.

Question 6

Gall

Answer 6

Demonstrated the general importance of the brain for all of the higher human functions, while also originating the movement of Phrenology.

Question 7

Broca

Answer 7

His findings from investigations of sensory aphasia ushered in a new period of interest in the localized functions of the brain.

Question 8

Fechner

Answer 8

Scientist whose work on the measurement of the relationship between subjective and physical stimulus intensities showed the possibility of a mathematically based experimental psychology, in a field now known as psychophysics.

Question 9

Flourens

Answer 9

Opposed Gall’s phrenology and conducted ablation studies in animals suggesting that the brain’s cortex functions as a unified whole.

Question 10

Fritsch and Hitzig

Answer 10

Discovered that electrified portions of the motor strip elicited specific movements on the opposite side of the body.

Question 11

Lashley

Answer 11

Known for his study of learning and memory and his research that suggested memories are not localized to one part of the brain but rather a distributed throughout. Equipotentiality.

Question 12

Wernicke

Answer 12

A neurologist who used localization theory as the basis of an influential theory of aphasia.

Question 13

Be able to describe Kant’s two types of reality

Answer 13

i. Noumenal World: “Things in themselves” objects in a ‘pure’ state independent of human experience”
ii. Phenomenal World: “Things as they appear” The domain of reality completed inside the human mind

Question 14

Kant’s four reasons the mind could not be studied scientifically.

Answer 14

i. Mental phenomena have no spatial dimension.
ii. Mental phenomena are too transient for sustained observation.
iii. Mental phenomena cannot be experimentally manipulated
iv. Mental phenomena cannot be mathematically described or analyzed.

Question 15

Mechanism

Answer 15

all physiological processes to be potentially understandable in terms of ordinary physical and chemical principles.

Question 16

Vitalism

Answer 16

All living organisms are imbued with an ineffable “life force” that gives them their vitality and that is not analyzable by scientific methods.

Question 17

Helmholtz’s discoveries

Answer 17

i. Conservation of energy- All organic processes studied up to this point had also seemed governed by the
ii. Reaction time and its relation to electrochemical nerve transmission.
iii. Sensation and Perception in relation to the three divisions.
1. Physical
2. Physiological
3. Psychological

Question 18

Two Reasons Helmholtz was one of the great pioneers

Answer 18

i. He helped show how the neurological processes underlying mental functions could be subject to rigorous laboratory experimentation.
ii. He helped develop a scientific conception of the Kantian “mind” with his integrated physical, physiological, and psychological studies of vision and hearing.

Question 19

Who Gestalt psychologists were

Answer 19

A group of psychologists who in the early 1900s uncovered ways in which an active and creative mind molds important aspects of conscious perpetual experience, emphasizing the ways in which the mind perceives wholes of Gestalts as opposed to separate, individual elements

Question 20

what phenomena led Gestalt psychologists to stress the form vs. individual elements of perception.

Answer 20

Apparent movement, negative images, optical illusions

Question 21

Contrast Wundt and Titchener.

Answer 21

Wundt defined a new domain of science, conjoining physiology and psychology (physiological psychology). While physiology investigates living organisms “by our external senses,” psychology examines things “from within” and tried to explain those processes that “inner observation discloses” Father of modern academic and experimental psychology.
Tichtchener: Disagreed with Wundt’s view of introspection as having too many restrictions. He propounded an experimental psychology whose major goal was the atomistic analysis of the elements of consciousness