345 - Chapter 1

Mind

system that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions; definition indicates different types of cognition

What was Donders interested in/what did he do?

studied the time required to make a decision;

reaction time

length of time it takes to respond to the presentation of a stimulus

simple reaction time

reacting to the presence or absence of a stimulus

choice reaction time

time it takes to make a decision

who founded the first scientific psychology lab?

William Wundt - Leipzig, Germany

what is the significance of William Wundt?

father of experimental psychology; structuralism; analytic introspection; suggested that sensations are the building blocks of consciousness

structuralism

overall experience is determined by combining basic sensations

analytic introspection

method of describing experiences and thought processes that occur in response to a stimulus; requires extensive training

what is the significance of Ebbinghaus?

established the forgetting curve and demonstrated that a complex psychological topic can be quantified and objectively studied

What did Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve demonstrate?

memory drops rapidly in the first 1-2 days and then levels off

significance of William James

father of American psychology

John Watson's problems with analytic introspection

variable results and the results difficult to verify

what kind of conditioning did the little albert experiment use?

classical conditioning

what type of conditioning did B.F. Skinner study?

operant conditioning

behaviorism

psychological approach that states that observable behavior is the only valid data that should be considered

Tolman

- recognized for showing cognitive mapping

Chomsky

rejects Skinner's idea of operant conditioning by saying that children say things that are not reinforced or that they have never heard;

Cognitive revolution

1950s; shift from the behaviorist approach to an approach that wanted to explain behavior in terms of the mind; Involved a paradigm shift

Information-Processing Approach

psychological approach that suggests information is processed in a sequence of stages

Broadbent

proposed a flow diagram for attention processing

key brain areas related to rule learning

anterior cingulate - rule selection; PFC - persistent activation sensitive to each rule; caudate nucleus - rule switching; hippocampus - keep track of used rules

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Model of memory--> 3 stages of memory (sensory, short-term, long-term)

Tulving

3 types of long-term memory -- episodic, semantic, procedural