Chapter 1: The Evolution of Psychological Science

What is the mind?

the private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings

What is behavior?

observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals

What is psychology?

the scientific study of behavior and mental processes

The foundation of psychology was built within __________ ?

philosophy

Early philosophers described how the ________ worked

mind

What did Plato (428-347 BCE) believe?

philosophical nativism

What is philosophical nativism?

knowledge was innate

What did Aristotle (384-322 BCE) believe?

philosophical empiricism

What is philosophical empiricism?

believed the mind was a blank slate at birth, all knowledge is acquired through experience

What did Descartes (1596-1650) believe?

philosophical dualism

What is philosophical dualism?

that the mind and body were separate, nervous system was described as a machine (reflex example)

What did Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) believe?

philosophical materialism

What is philosophical materialism?

the mind and the body are not different, the mind is what the brain does, mental phenomena are caused by physical phenomena

What did John Locke (1632-1704) believe?

philosophical realism

What is philosophical realism?

perceptions of the world are an exact copy of the events objects in the world that we experience through our senses

What essay did John Locke write? What did it discuss?

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, discusses

issues of philosophical empiricism and the concept of the "blank slate"

What did Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believe?

philosophical idealism

What is philosophical idealism?

perceptions aren't exact copies but are brain's best interpretation of the information received through the senses, to gain this interpretation, the mind uses some innate built-in basic knowledge of the world

Immanuel Kant believed that the mind contains _________ that are not

gained through experience?

assumptions

Who were the three scientists behind localization of brain function?

Franz Gall (1758-1828), Pierre Flourens (1794-1867), Paul Broca (1825-1880)

What did Franz Gall (1758-1828) do/believe?

informal observations that mental abilities increase with brain size and decrease with damage, suggested that mental abilities were localized in specific areas, suggested that size of bumps or indentations would indicate the level of functioning in brain below

What did Franz Gall develop?

phrenology

What is phrenology?

the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.

What did Pierre Flourens (1794-1867) do/believe?

removed specific parts of brain from dogs, birds, and other animals; observed that actions and movements changed, behaviors did not resemble those from normal animals with intact brains

What did Pual Broca (1825-1880) do/believe?

Studied patient with problems speaking (could only say "tan", could understand what was said to him, could communicate with hand signals), the patient had damage to part of left hemisphere called the Broca's area

What is the Broca area?

motor speech area

What is the Wernicke's area?

language comprehension

The observations made by Gall, Flourens, Broca, and many others demonstrated that cognitive abilities are ____________ in specific areas within the brain

localized

Gall went too far with phrenology but the foundation of his ideas were correct, which were?

mental abilities are localized in specific areas

Who helped develop the physiology of the brain?

Herman von Helmholtz (1821-1894)

What did Herman von Helmholtz do?

measured the speed of nerve conduction in the legs of frogs

How did Herman von Helmholtz translate his experiment to humans?

applied a stimulus to specific areas on the leg and then recorded reaction time, found longer reaction times on lower areas of the leg, calculating the difference in reaction time between stimulation of two points allowed for estimate of conduction speed

What is the reaction time of frogs v. humans determined by Herman von Helmholtz?

frog- 90 feet per second, human- 165-330 feet per second

In the late 1800s a large number of scientists interested in psychology began to focus on the nature of consciousness, what were the two primary approaches?

structuralism and functionalism

What is structuralism?

the goal was to separate consciousness into its most basic parts, uses analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind, the units of conscious experience

What did Wilhelm Wundt do for structuralism?

was a student of Helmholtz, opened the first psychology lab in 1879, used reaction times to measure time between perception and interpretation of a stimulus, father of psychology

What did Edward Titchener do for structuralism?

focus was on identifying basic elements of consciousness, obtained detailed descriptions of conscious images and sensations, "hard introspective labor" (identify and report everything)

What is functionalism?

the goal was to study how mental processes enabled us to adapt to the environment

What did William James do for functionalism?

didn't think that consciousness could be broken down into separate elements, studied the function and purpose of mental processes