Week 1 - History and Perspectives & Concepts and Purpose

Question 1

What is The Scientific Method

Answer 1

This method involves collecting data in controlled, objective ways which link theories to evidence so we can:
- describe / observe regularities
- predict / develop a theory and prediction
- understand / test the prediction
- controlled / Evaluate the theory

Abandon, refine, develop

Question 2

What is di Pellegrino’s et al., (1992) Mirror Neuron Study

Answer 2

1. Money at rest: A mirror neuron is at a resting state (No electrical signals)
2. Grasping execution: A mirror neuron fires
3. Observation of grasping movements: a mirror neuron fires

Question 3

What is a theory?

Answer 3

A theory is an argument / set of propositions that claim to say why and/or how something occurs or wil occur
- must predict something specific
- provides ideas which can be tested
- dribes the application of ideas in the real word (e.g. why should an intervation work?)

Question 4

What is Empiricism?

Answer 4

• Testing assumed ‘it’ can be measured
• Theories should be based on available evidence gathered through obervation

Question 5

What are the 3 Early Vision

Answer 5

Behaviourism – the mind is irrelevant; we
are shaped by our environment we have
no free will.
Psychodynamic– the natural mind is
constrained by social pressures and
represses this constraint.
Humanistic – people want to grow and
reach their full potential. The
environment can facilitate or inhibit this.

Question 6

What is the behaviourist approach

Answer 6

Later years of the 19th & early 20th century
–
 Pavlov’s dogs
 Thorndike’s cats
 Skinner’s rats

Question 7

What is the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 7

Linked to Freud’s work around 1900
- Medical training, linked to biological underpinnings (innate drives)
- Therapeutic observations-
- Work with WWI veterans and trauma
- Our mental life and behaviour is determined by unconscious motivations underpinned by instinctual drives and by events in childhood

Question 8

What is humanistic psychology?

Answer 8

• Arises from the work of Rogers and Maslow (late 1950s early 1960s)
   Response to the lack of ‘human’
  elements in psychology
• Conceptual focus - human desire to reach potential
  “The core of man’s nature is essentially
  positive” (Rogers 1961, p.73)
• ‘Actualising tendency’ – people want
  to grow