PSY3360 Midterm II Review

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

Theory proposing that emotions result from our interpretations of our bodily reactions to stimuli

Stream of Consciousness

William James's term for the fluid and continuous quality of conscious thought, which makes it impossible to analyze by breaking it down into separate, static elements.

Pragmatism

A term originated by Charles S. Peirce to describe the evaluation of ideas according to their usefulness in varying situations.

Pragmatic Criterion of Truth

Idea from Charles S. Peirce that truth is determined by a community of serious investigators.

Pragmaticism

Term arising from a dispute between Charles Peirce and William James on the pragmatic criterion of truth. James believed truth was something that was beneficial for an individual to believe.

Place Theory of Vowel Perception

Different parts of the basilar membrane have different areas that are stimulated dependent on the frequency of the sound it receives.

Basilar Membrane

The structure, located in the cochlea of the inner ear, which vibrates and stimulates the hair cells.

Harmonics

A pure-tone component whose frequency is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency.

Vowel Timbre

A given vowel sound has a distinctive timbre, regardless of the pitch.

ahh ooh ehh

Introspection

The systematic observation and reporting of one's own subjective inner experience during psychology experiments.

Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision (Helmholtz)

The theory that there are three kinds of color receptors in the retina, each of which responds primarily to a specific color. The combination of these three colors can form any visible color on the color spectrum.

a color match (in hue, saturation, & brightness) can be produced with just three “primary” colors

Colorimetry

Properties of the human color vision system converted into measurements and numerical specification of visual light.

Primary Color (Helmholtz)

A certain red, green, and blue-violet from the color spectrum which, when combined in various ways can produce all other colors. The three types of cone cells in the eye respond most strongly to these three.

Metameric Match

Psychophysical color match between two patches of light that have different sets of wavelengths.

White Light

A mixture of the three primary colors (red, green, blue) in equal proportions.

Nonspectral Color

A color that is not in the spectrum of visible light.

Unconscious Inference

Helmholtz's idea that some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions/rules that we make about the environment.

if two stimuli project the same image on the retina, the one that's farther away must actually be bigger; ex: the moon

Natural Selection

A process described by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace in which individual organisms that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits.

Social Darwinism

The belief of Herbert Spencer that only the fittest survive in human political, social, and economic struggles. In the United States, this doctrine was used to justify a system of unregulated free enterprise.

Procedural Knowledge

Knowledge of how to do something, such as riding a bike; expressed in behaviors rather than in words.

Declarative Knowledge

knowledge of information that can be expressed in words

Gestalt Psychology

A psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive and organize experiences as wholes that are more than the sum of their parts.

Semiotics

The study of signs and symbols and their meanings or interpretations.

Icon

A sign that resembles the product in some way.

Index

A sign that connects to a product because they share some property.

Symbol

A sign that connects to a product because of a system of other signs.

Abduction

A type of scientific investigation in which you build an inductive-deductive framework by starting in the middle and working outward.

Peirce; developed as an interim between induction and deduction; it means we start with a general idea about a phenomenon and branch outward to guide what we look for

Firstness

What we have with a thing or a sign.

Secondness

What we have with a thing related to a sign.

Thirdness

When a third entity (the interpretant) relates the sign and the thing signified.

Fallibilism

The idea that we search for answers and get closer to an approximation of the truth, but never achieve the absolute truth.

Classical Conditioning

The learning process by which a previously neutral stimulus (CS) acquires the ability to elicit a response (CR) when it is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US).

Operant Conditioning

Conditioning that occurs when organisms learn to actively act on their environment after encountering reinforcing consequences.

Reinforcement Schedule

A pattern in operant conditioning that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced.

Intervening Variable

A third variable, sometimes overlooked, that explains the relationship between two other variables.

Hermann Helmholtz

A German scientist who helped establish physiological mechanism theory and the law of conservation of energy, demonstrated the finite speed of nerve signal transmission, and studied the physical, physiological, and psychological aspects of sensation and perception. He promoted the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision, and the concepts of perceptual adaptation and unconscious inference.

Charles Darwin

An English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, which profoundly influenced all of the life sciences, as well as psychology.

Charles S. Peirce

An American philosopher and mathematician who wrote on semiotics, pragmatism, and symbolic logic.

William James

An American professor who established the first psychology laboratory in America and whose work emphasized the usefulness of psychological ideas, consistent with a philosophical view he called pragmatism.

Wilhelm Wundt

A German physiologist who established the first experimental psychology laboratory and whose work helped develop scientific psychology as a discipline. Maintained that higher mental functions such as language and reasoning could not be studied in the lab, proposing Völkerpsychologie as a separate branch of psychology to study these topics using nonexperimental methods.

John B. Watson

An American psychologist and primary promoter of behaviorism, which asserted that psychology's proper subject matter is observable behavior and that the goal of psychology is the prediction and control of behavior.

B. F. Skinner

An American psychologist and behaviorist known for the development of operant conditioning.

F. C. Donders

A Dutch physiologist who devised the subtractive method and used this mathematical formula to measure reaction times and make inferences about the speed of mental processes.

Herbert Spencer

An English philosopher who contributed the phrase "survival of the fittest" and promoted Social Darwinism.

Gustav Fechner

A German scientist whose work showed the possibility of a mathematically based experimental psychology, creating the field known as psychophysics.

Christine Ladd-Franklin

An American mathematician and vision researcher who promoted an evolutionary theory of color receptors; she unsuccessfully challenged Titchener's policy of banning women from his invitation-only group, the Experimentalists.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

A German physiologist who devised an experimental approach to studying memory using nonsense syllables.

Clark Hull & Kenneth Spence

American psychologists best known for their development of a mathematically based mechanistic behaviorism.

Define Speech Perception

discovered the sensory code for vowel perception

Define Color Vision

used color mixing experiments to determine that there are three kinds of color sensitive receptors (cones) in the retina

What did Thomas Young and James Clerk Maxwell discover?

They discovered colorimetry - making additive combinations of red, blue, & green they could produce any desired color.

Newton

demonstrated that a ray of sunlight could be split apart into its component wavelengths into a spectrum containing a rainbow of hues from blue-violet (short) to red (long).

locus of monochromatic

the pure color which exists outside of the triangle because being monochromatic, the colors are totally saturated, so when they match the hue of a blue-green mixture, then by definition they are more saturated so you need to mix it with more of primaries to pull it back into the triangle (where color matching happens).
monochromatic: by definition, fully saturated

Blind Variation/Selective Retention

Campbell): quality is a probabilistic consequence of quantity; higher number of combinations means there's more likely that some will be successful; related to cultural evolution because that's how it happens: so many variations but only what's best is what stays. Variation means everyone isn't the same, and retention means that some make it while others don't. Think finches, there is a variety of them, but the ones that are not adapted to an environment are weeded out for ones that are.
Basic mechanism of natural selection. Blind variation from generation to generation is tightly constrained by what's already there. Selective retention is when you see if something like a reproductive advantage is present so it will remain (like Tibetan people who live in high altitudes)

span of apperception

(Wundt): the basic experiment is like Kim's book: training a 12-year old to be a spy in colonial India; in training to get info in brief time, his teacher throws jewels on a tray, he'll glance at it and respond with what's on it with just a glance - the experiment involves a brief display with stuff and see how much of that you get right on the report - 7 (but more like 4) - fairly limited; how much information you can get into your brain with just a glance at a stimulus
finite capacity to process or hold in mind information from the environment
perception is thoughtlessly taking in, while apperception is recognizing/interpreting something
My notes: important notion in terms of cognitive psych of 1950-60's, when cog psych reemerged. Basically, how many items can you put in working memory at a brief glance at something.

Leibniz & Wundt.

fixation of belief

we search for answers and stop when we find what works well enough for present purposes

James’s Pragmatism

Ideas and knowledge can never be absolutely certain, but only subject to varying degrees of "pragmatic belief"; extends to psychology and philosophy

Wundt's reservations of introspection

It reveals dimensions of consciousness that should not be considered as "elements" the ways chemicals are; self-reports can be distorted

The dilemma of procedural vs declarative knowledge

Is what we can say we know about ourselves and the world what we really know? Do we know about the world primarily from internal thinking or from external experience?

Principles of perceptual organization (gestalt)

Proximity, similarity, common fate (organization), and pragnanz (simplicity)

Proximity principle of perceptual organization

Objects near each other are viewed as a group

Similarity principle of perceptual organization

We tend to group similar items together

Common fate (organization) principle of perceptual organization

Objects functioning or moving in the same direction appear to belong together

Pragnanz (simplicity) principle of organization

When confronted with complex or ambiguous objects, the brain will make them appear as simple as possible

Creative synthesis

Related to Wundt's apperception; our sensational responses to stimuli are subjective, and the combination of them create a more complex whole that differs fundamentally from any of its components

Psychic causality

Related to Wundt's apperception; a different set of rules that determine apperceptive processes; not reducible to the purely mechanistic processes of physical causality

formants

Helmholtz's harmonics; a characteristic component of the quality of a speech sound; they are distinctive frequency components produced by speech, musical instruments, or singing; determine the phonetic quality of a vowel