Textbook - Chapter 3

Question 1

Although Kant seemed to agree with both the rationalist and the empiricist perspective, in reality, he _

Answer 1

could not align with the two viewpoints because they were in opposition to one other

*Instead, Kant bridged the gap between rationalism and empiricism, much like how we have now reconciled the opposition in the the nature versus nurture points of view

Question 2

define nature and nurture

Answer 2

• nature is the genetic predisposition or biological makeup of an individual
• nurture includes our life experiences and that there is an interplay of the two at any given time

Question 3

What is the interplay between nature and nurture?

Answer 3

• our environment and our experiences influence the expression of our genes
• In return, our genes may impact our interactions with our environment

Question 4

What big argument was made in Kant’s book Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)?

Answer 4

our understanding of the world is not merely a duplicate of the world as is
*ex. brain can identify a half obstructed chair or person behind podium, percieve as a whole

Question 5

how does the he human mind actively construct knowledge?

Answer 5

Sensory input is continually incorporated and synthesized into our understanding of the world
- also make connections between events and experiences that occur at different times, shaping our understanding of the world in a spatio-temporal format, which is given meaning by our cognitive capabilities

Question 6

While Kant was exploring sensory, perceptual, and cognitive aspects of the mind, what debate were some of his 18th-century contemporaries engaged in?

Answer 6

the nature of the soul and its influence on human behaviour

Question 7

What was Kant’s opinion on the debate of the nature of the soul and its inflence on human behaviour?

Answer 7

• suggested that any discussions about the soul were challenging because there was no way to objectively measure something that was intangible
  *the focus should be on answering questions that objectively explore the human experience

Question 8

In Kant’s book “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,” he argued that psychology could not be established as a science because _

Answer 8

it is not possible to express human thought in mathematical (objective) format

Question 9

What was Kant’s opinion on introspection?

Answer 9

thought it would alter the process of thought itself while the person is asked to reflect on their thinking process
*This made it impossible to study an ever-changing mental experience accurately

Question 10

What did Johann Friedrich Herbart do?

Answer 10

(1776-2841)
- (Motivated by Kant), took on the bold mission to apply mathematics to studying the mind
- attempted to propose a new system of thinking about psychology, similar to the natural sciences, where all phenomena are governed by specific laws and measurable through mathematical calculations

Question 11

Although Herbart’s formulations aimed at describing the activity of the human mind, _

Answer 11

eventually, they proved too complex
- nevertheless, his work had profound implications on the origins of psychophysics

Question 12

Despite Kant’s skepticism, and Herbarts complex mathematical mind-body formulas, early 19th century thinkers persevered to _

Answer 12

establish psychology a scientific discipline
*the focus now on designing experiments so that they may understand human behaviour from sensory, perceptual, and cognitive viewpoints

Question 13

if we wanted to understand human behaviour and learning (from sensory, perceptual, and cognitive viewpoints), we had to first think about _

Answer 13

• ways in which people process the world through their sensory organs (the eyes, ears, nose, etc.)
• how this information is processed (perceptually) by the brain
• how the brain engages in thinking through attention, learning and memory processing (cognition)

Question 14

What did Wilhelm Wundt do?

Answer 14

• In 1879, Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, marking a significant milestone in the history of psychology
• His approach to psychology, structuralism, aimed to analyze the basic elements of consciousness
• believed that through breaking down conscious experiences into their fundamental components, such as sensations, feelings, and perceptions, one could gain insight into the structure of the mind

Question 15

In his laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments using the method _

Answer 15

introspection
- a method in which participants were trained to carefully observe and report their own thoughts and sensations in response to differing experiences
- asking research participants to report exactly what they experienced as they engaged in a specific mental task, such as while with viewing colours, reading a page in a book, or solving a math problem

Question 16

By recording participants’ introspective reports, Wundt sought to identify _.

He focused on studying _

Answer 16

• the elemental building blocks of mental processes
• immediate experiences, or “consciousness elements,” such as the perception of colour, tones, and touch sensations.

Question 17

How was reaction time used by structuralists?

Answer 17

systematically assess how long it took participants to complete different tasks and then link the complexity of the task to its completion time

Question 18

Through experiments on auditory stimuli, Wundt discovered that _

Answer 18

it took people longer to label a sound they had just heard in comparison to whether they had heard any sound at all

*The outcome of Wundt’s work was important - helped us realize that there can be differences in the amount of time it takes for the brain to detect a stimulus than to perceive that stimulus

Question 19

While structuralism played a foundational role in the development of psychology as a science, it faced criticism for _

Answer 19

its reliance on introspection, which is subjective and difficult to standardize

Question 20

When was psychophysics established and who gets credit for forming it?

Answer 20

mid 19th century
- Gustav Fechner

Question 21

What was Gustav Fechner interested in studying?

Answer 21

• interested in studying the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce
• In 1860, Fechner published his seminal work “Elemente der Psychophysik” (Elements of Psychophysics), which laid the groundwork for the discipline

Question 22

In his book “Elemente der Psychophysik”, Fechner introduced _

Answer 22

• the methods and principles of psychophysics, including his famous logarithmic formula (known as Fechner’s law), which related physical stimuli to psychological responses and also began to address the prevailing critique that human behaviour could not be studied through objective science

Question 23

Fechner’s work marked a turning point in psychology by providing _

Answer 23

an objective approach to designing experiments to assess the relationship between physical stimuli and mental experiences

Question 24

A major approach in psychophysics focused on discrimination - describe what this means

Answer 24

• ex. a listener is presented with two or more stimuli of different intensities and then asked if they are different
• In discrimination tasks, the experimenter is interested in obtaining an estimate of the smallest differences in a stimulus parameter (e.g., sound level) to which the auditory system is sensitive
  ***listener’s sensitivity to the stimulus - can they detect it or not if it increases or decreases in intensity?

Question 25

Describe how discrimination tasks work in more detail

Answer 25

• the experimenter may choose 5 to 10 values of a stimulus parameter, for instance, seven values between 12 and 18dB, of a 1000-Hz tone
• then presents each value approximately 100 times (in the example this would make 700 total trials)
• listener is asked to indicate on each trial “Yes, I detected the tone” (Y) or “No, I did not detect the tone” (N)
• the experimenter then tabulates the proportion of times the listener said “yes” for each stimulus value. These data are then used to plot a psychometric function.

Question 26

What is a psychometric function?

Answer 26

relates a measure of a listener’s performance (such as proportion of “yes” responses) to a value of the stimulus” such as sound level in decibels

Question 27

In studying the sensory and perceptual capabilities of their participants, researchers began to map thresholds - what are thresholds in this context?

Answer 27

the point at which a stimulus is detectable or distinguishable to an observer
* ex. in healthy participants there is a lower limit below which a stimulus will never be detected and an upper limit above which it will always be detected

Question 28

define absolute threshold

Answer 28

the minimum intensity of a stimulus that can be detected by an observer
- represents the point at which the stimulus becomes detectable at least 50% of the time
- ex. the absolute threshold for vision is the lowest level of light that a person can detect.

Question 29

define difference threshold (or Just Noticeable Difference, JND)

Answer 29

the smallest detectable difference between two stimuli
- measures the smallest change in stimulus intensity required for an observer to notice a difference
- ex. the difference threshold for weight is the smallest additional weight that can be added to an object and still be perceived as heavier

Question 30

Ernst Weber (1795 - 1878) concluded that JNDs are _

Answer 30

a constant proportion of a stimulus (known as Weber’s Law)

Question 31

Although the psychophysicists helped us realize the variations that exist in our ability to detect and perceive stimuli of varying intensities across different sensory systems, critics argued that _

Answer 31

perception involved more than simply combining sensory elements

Question 32

Gestalt psychologists suggested_

Answer 32

the brain creates a perception that is more than simply the sum of available sensory inputs, and it does so in ways that are common and predictable across people

Question 33

Gestalt psychologists named and described

Answer 33

• a set of principles by which we organize incoming sensory information
• as a result, Gestalt psychology has been influential in our understanding of how humans sense and perceive information

Question 34

functionalists drew inspiration from Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of natural selection, suggesting that _

Answer 34

• the physical traits of organisms evolved due to their utility or functionality to the animal
• the functionalists extended Darwin’s ideas to psychological attributes, theorizing that the human brain also evolved to help us survive based our the demands of our environment (questioned the purpose of various behaviours)

Question 35

What did James Mark Baldwin do?

Answer 35

• established a laboratory at UofT with the aim to understand mental activities via the goal or purpose of those processes
  *functionalism

Question 36

How did functionalism have important consequences in the shaping of modern psychology?

Answer 36

• functionalists advocated that psychology and thus psychological research should have practical applications and be useful in solving real-world problems
• this school of thought also helped establish behaviorism which we discuss in more detail in the next chapter as a major force in 20th-century psychology

Question 37

_ is one of the oldest and most extensively studied learning paradigms

Answer 37

Pavlovian conditioning

Question 38

What was Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s background?

Answer 38

(1849–1936).
- physiologist, born in Ryazan, Russia
- initially studied to become a priest but later shifted his focus to chemistry and physiology by earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Saint Petersburg in 1875 followed by a doctorate in physiology in 1883

Question 39

What did Ivan Petrovich Pavlov do?

Answer 39

Pavlov’s most famous experiments involved dogs, in which he investigated the digestive system by studying their salivary responses
- he noticed that dogs began to salivate not only in response to food but also in anticipation of food when they associated the presence of the experimenter or other cues with feeding time

Question 40

Dr. Todes’ research, which examines the original writings of Ivan Pavlov, has revealed inaccuracies in the translation of some of Pavlov’s ideas by English language interpreters. What are some inaccuracies?

Answer 40

• US was termed “unconditional”, not unconditioned by Pavlov
• Pavlov was not interested in training dogs to salivate to different stimuli

Question 41

Define Unconditional Stimulus (US):

Answer 41

A stimulus that naturally and automatically elicits a response without prior conditioning
- Example: Food.

Question 42

Define Unconditional Response (UR)

Answer 42

The natural, automatic reaction to the unconditional stimulus
- Example: Salivation in response to food.

Question 43

Define Conditional Stimulus (CS)

Answer 43

A previously neutral stimulus that, after being repeatedly paired with the unconditional stimulus, begins to elicit a response on its own
- Example: A light being turned on before feeding the dog

Question 44

Define Conditional Response (CR)

Answer 44

The learned response to the conditioned stimulus.
- Example: The dog salivating when the light is turned on, even in the absence of food.