PSYC 203 - Chapter 1: The Science of the Mind

Wilhelm Wundt

One of the early psychologists who helped establish psychology as a scientific discipline and used introspection to study conscious mental experiences.

Edward Titchener

A psychologist who developed and promoted structuralism, an approach that used introspection to study the basic components of conscious experience.

Introspection

The process through which one “looks within” to observe and record the contents of one’s own mental life.

Limits of Introspection

Introspection can only provide information about conscious mental experiences. People cannot directly report unconscious processes, so claims about unconscious mental events are difficult to test through introspection alone.

Behaviorist Movement

An approach that focused on observable behavior rather than mental processes. Behaviorists studied how behavior changes in response to stimuli, rewards, and punishments.

Edward Tolman

A psychologist who argued that learning is not simply a change in behavior caused by rewards and punishments; instead, organisms can acquire new knowledge about their environment.

Transcendental Method

A method in which an investigator first observes an effect or consequence and then works backward to ask what process must have occurred to produce that effect.

Gestalt Psychology

An approach to psychology emphasizing that people perceive and understand organized wholes, rather than simply experiencing individual pieces of information.

Cognitive Revolution

A shift in psychology away from behaviorism and toward studying mental processes such as memory, attention, beliefs, and knowledge.

Cognitive Psychology

The study of mental processes such as memory, perception, attention, thinking, and problem solving.

Response Time (RT)

The amount of time, usually measured in milliseconds, needed for a person to respond to a particular event, such as answering a question or pressing a button.

Cognitive Neuroscience

The effort to understand mental functioning by studying the brain and nervous system.

Clinical Neuropsychology

The study of brain function using cases in which brain damage or illness has disrupted a brain structure or cognitive ability.

Patient H.M.

A famous patient studied in clinical neuropsychology who experienced severe memory problems after brain surgery. His case provided important evidence about the brain systems involved in memory.

Transition in Psychology

Introspection → Study conscious experience directly

Behaviorism → Study observable behavior and how it changes with stimuli, rewards, and punishments

Transcendental Method → Start with observable effects and work backward to infer the mental process that must have produced them

Cognitive Revolution → Return to studying mental processes, using measurable evidence such as response time (RT) and accuracy

Cognitive Neuroscience + Clinical Neuropsychology + Neuroimaging → Connect mental processes to brain structures and activity by studying brain damage, patient cases, and brain measurements

Patient H.M. → A major clinical neuropsychology case showing how damage to particular brain structures can disrupt memory.