Psych Perspectives

Question 1

Behaviour

Answer 1

overt or observable actions (what the person is doing- obvious and measurable)

Question 2

Mental processes

Answer 2

thoughts (memories, imagery concepts), emotions (fear, happiness, anger, arousal), interactions between the two (e.g. decision making depends on particular thoughts and emotions).

Question 3

Goals of Scientific Psychology

Answer 3

Description of behaviour using observations

Predictions to allow for specifications of conditions under which behaviour will or will not occur

Explanation identifying the causes of behaviour (what best enables me to learn features of the world)

Facilitating changes in behaviour (e.g. therapy)

Question 4

Science vs Common Sense

Answer 4

Science needs some clearly observable data rather than subjective data

Needs to have systematic observations (create an experiment) not a hit or miss observation

Reliance on evidence (to generate explanations/hypotheses). Doesn’t ignore counterevidence.

Question 5

Effective learning

Answer 5

After experimenting, found 2 ways which work the best
- Self testing/repeated testing and quizzing
- Distributed practice over time
What may also work:
- Elaborative interrogation
- Self-explanation: How do I know that that’s the case
- Interleaved practice: mixing apples and oranges (doing a few subjects at the one time)

Question 6

Myths in education

Answer 6

• We only use 10% of our brain
  
  • Left brain and right brain people differ
    Brain of males and females differ in ways that dictate learning abilities

Question 7

Not effective learning

Answer 7

Highlighting or underlining
Re-reading
Imagery for text etc.

Question 8

Things we can learn from psychology that we wouldn’t otherwise know

Answer 8

Our capacity to self-reflect and use that for what we’re seeing or perceiving is quite poor. (we don’t really observe what’s happening around us)

Question 9

Beginning of psych

Answer 9

Psych emerged as part of philosophy but defined itself as an empirical science (we manipulate scenarios and variables to make sure we know what’s going on)

Question 10

Early assumption was that…

Answer 10

The goal of psychology was to understand structure/content of the mind.

Question 11

Introspection

Answer 11

‘looking inwards’ to one’s own conscious experience

Wilhelm Wundt trained observers to report on their experiences under different experimental conditions. (describe what is going on in their head)

Introspection failed bc people’s self reports were unreliable and everyone says very different things about what is in their heads

Question 12

Functionalism

Answer 12

a more successful approach- William James emphasised this

E.g. attention serves to highlights and focus analysis on certain stimuli

Functionalism focuses on identifying rules or steps by which a particular task is achieved not on the underlying mechanism. (like computer algorithm and software)

Question 13

Behaviourism

Answer 13

One of the early challenges to introspection (they didn’t care about whats in the head)

Argues that subjective experience could not be verified by an objective observer

Only study of observable behaviour qualified as scientific

Question 14

radical behaviourism

Answer 14

Only the study of observable behaviour qualified as scientific

Internal states (thoughts and emotions) are unobservable and thus is not part of scientific psych

Question 15

methodological behaviourism

Answer 15

Acceptable to study internal states (thoughts or emotions) as long as these can be linked to observable behaviours

This approach underlies much of modern Cognitive Psych and Associative Learning

Question 16

Psychoanalysis

Answer 16

another challenge to introspection.

Freud argued that many important psychological events are unconscious.

Question 17

Psych in the brain

Answer 17

We know that psych processes depend on physical activity in brain. But we can’t just focus on neurotransmitters and neurons.

Its also about emotions and memory which cannot be ‘seen’ in the brain
But if we already have a psychological process defined, we can examine brain activity while we manipulate that process

The better our functional understanding of the psychological process, the better we can identify the neural mechanisms responsible for the various steps in that process

Question 18

Psych as a natural science

Answer 18

empirical: based on systematic observations

Experiments: manipulate one variable to observe effects on another with everything else controlled.

Analysis: determine conclusion that can be drawn

Theory- generate predictions and summarise existing knowledge

Public: results are reviewed by others (peer reviewed)

Question 19

Bad news about psych

Answer 19

Psychology won’t teach you mind-reading, psychic healing, palm reading etc.

Question 20

Good news about psych

Answer 20

Tell you about principles of behaviour that are supported by evidence

Current understanding of mechanisms underlying normal and dysfunctional behaviour

How to do research into behaviour and experience

Practical and effective methods for promoting desirable behaviour and reducing distress

Help you develop skills that are highly sought after by employers (problem solving, interpersonal skills, programming, time management etc.)