NOTES FROM CLASS

PSYC 4008 EXAM 2

What does the history of the research on reflex have to do with the history of psychology?

1. behavior

2. reflexology leads to behavioral psychology

What is the Bell-Magendie law?

1. anatomical separation of sensory and motor function

   1. dorsal root is sensory 

   2. ventral root is motor

   3. at the level of spinal cord 

      1. important/relevant to psychology because it demonstrates anatomical separation of function 

Exercise abt staring at black dot, who was the topic about?

1. Helmholtz

2. idea of indirect realism

   1. we construct reality and in that example, when we do that it may be unconscious inferences about how far away objects are from us, that information is used to produce the size of your perceptual appearance

What else did Helmholtz study? 

1. First to measure the speed of conduction of neural impulse; discovers it is surprisingly slow 

2. unconscious inference, size constancy, speed of conduction of neural impulse, trichromatic theory of color 

Broca’s aphasia

1. unable to produce strings of words, but can comprehend when being spoken to

Wernicke’s Aphasia

unable to understand spoken word, speech fluent but incomprehensible

What perceptual phenomenon is based on discriminating wavelengths of sound?

pitch

What do we call discriminating light wavelengths with the perceptual experiences?

color

What is Müller’s doctrine of specific nerve energy?

1. The idea that what we perceive directly is the activity of our nerves

2. Different stimuli applied to the same nerve produce the same sensory quality 

3. The same stimulus applied to different nerves produces different qualities of sensation 

4. Certain nerves have certain perceptive qualities

5. To stimulate the optic nerve, you will have an auditory experience 

6. supports the idea of in-directive realism 

How did Sherrington come up with the idea of a synapse?

1. By studying the reflex 

2. Synaptic plasticity → Synapses can be strengthened and weakened, providing a physiological basis for associationism 

Who said a reflex has 3 anatomical components?

Sherrington

What are Sherrington’s reflex 3 anatomical components?

1. receptor 

2. conductor 

3. effector 

What are Sherrington’s reflex 3 anatomical components referred to as?

reflex arc

What is physiognomy?

The idea that you can tell certain psychological traits based on body structure

Where did physiognomy come from?

1. Phrenology: a person’s psychology is related to shape and structure of the head 

2. founded by Gall and Spurzheim 

What did Luigi Galvani discover while dissecting frog legs? 

1. Nerve impulses are electrical and discovered animal electricity 

2. ends vitalism 

what type of electricity to move the organ?

intrinsic electricity

Who questioned/challenged phrenology?

Flourens; developed experimental ablation

Who developed a new technique called experimental ablation?

Flourens ; opposes localization of function; attacks phrenology

What is Phineas Gage known for?

personality changed completely after having an iron rod blown through his head

Twitchism is a term for what school of psychology? What it it?

1. Behavior 

2. Came from Edward Tolman 

3. Reflex is simplest form of behavior

   1. automatic 

   2. innate involuntary 

   3. unconscious, invariant response to stim 

What is vitalism?

idea that life is animated by non-physical vital force or entelechy

What is Wundt’ sconcept of immediate experience?

1. The key idea is that you are not abstracting to a mind-independent object 

2. You’re dealing purely with the mind-dependent and not abstracting the mind 

3. you are not inferring or the existence of 

4. this assess does nos abstract to a mind in reality 

5. immediate experience is experience to a mind in reality 

6. the existence of the things external to my mind; but the psychologist deals only that those things that are in mind directly 

What are the hallmarks of Wundt’s structuralism? 

1. is is experimental (variables are manipulated under controlled laboratory conditions) 

2. its principle subject matter is immediate experience 

3. its principle method is introspection

4. its aim to describe the structure of consciousness in two aspects: 

   1. analysis → identification of the elements of experience

   2. synthesis → identification of the laws governing the formation and properties of the compounds

What did Wernicke and Broca do? 

1. discover lessions  in speech production based on illusions in the brain 

2. they used the clinical pathological method, correlate clinical features with underlying pathology, and they found that people with differnet types of aphasia have lesions in particular areas 

What do we talk about tissue stains?

1. Proposed by Golgi

2. discovered a method of staining to color individual nerve cells in their identity

3. Thought functions of dendrites were nutritive

4. believed that axons formed a dense intertwined reticulum (net-like structure) 

Who refined Golgi’s stain?

1. Cajal

2. said neurons were not continuous; proposed that the brain was made of discreet cells (the neuron doctrine) 

3. the structure of the new cell 

What was the issue with the structure of the new cell?

how do nerve cells constitute a holistic structure, a reticulum, or do nerve cells function independently

How do nerve cells function?

1. independently; they’re independent units 

What are some of the reasons that Germany was so advanced in science, including psychology, in the 19th century? 

1. The government promoted competition and awarded success 

2. natural zeitgeist 

3. quick to adopt the idea of research universities and academic freedom 

Johann Herbart writes a book around 1840 and its titled “Psychology as a Science.” What does he say psychology is grounded on? 

1. experience

2. math 

3. metaphysics

4. the idea of mathematical description of mind

5. the concept of limens (thresholds) which he applied to apeprception (derived from Leibniz)

What is psychophysics?

1. new science that develops around 1850 

2. Weber and Fechner were the 2 leaders 

3. studies the mathematical relationship between physical properties of stimuli and the psychological experience that produced

4. talking about simple psychological experience

Who is the founder of psychophysics?

1. Gustav Theodor Fechner

2. view of materialism, calls it Nachtansicht

What’s the main idea behind Weber’s Law?

1. the principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) 

2. his law relates the just noticeable difference: the minimum change is stimulation required to detect the difference between 2 stimuli 

3. Weber was the first to do an experimental description of a psychological threshold; first detemination of a difference threshold

   1. pioneered research on tacticle (touch) and kinesthetic (muscle/joint) senses 

   2. best known for work with perceived differences between weights which leads to the first quantitative law in psychology

Sometimes the just noticeable difference is big, sometimes little, what does this depend on? 

the intensity of the standard stimulus 

Purpose of the complication experiment and the subtractive method?

1. measuring a simple psychological process and complicating it 

2. The reaction time of a simple mental task is determined, then the task is “complicated” by adding another mental process (mental chronometry) 

What was trying to be done with the experiment and subtractive method?

measuring reaction time; speed of mental processing

What are Wundt’s elements of mind?

1. intensity, quality e.g., redness, duration

What does every sensory experience have associated with it?

feelings

What are Wundt’s 3 dimensions of feelings?

1. pleasantness 

2. unpleasantness 

3. excitement calm 

4. strain relaxation 

What topic did Ebbinghaus discover?

memory

What did Ebbinghaus discover

1. invented the nonsense syllable 

2. discovered certain memory phenomena such as space practice, massed practice, automatic passive association; generated the first learning and forgetting curve for over 1000 lists of nonsense syllables, using himself as the subject; discovers memory savings

What is the purpose of Ebbignhaus’ nonsense syllable? 

to use stimuli that don’t have any pre-existing associations with it; eliminating the effects of prior familiarity

Ebbinghaus’ spaced vs massed practice

review or practice of new skills with a time delay between trials (distributed or interleaving) in lieu of review or practice of new skills in long single sessions (cramming) 

Ebbinghaus’ serail position effect 

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list, leaves the middle items the least remembered 

Ebbinghaus’ memory savings?

difference in the time it takes to memorize a list at test compared to retest

Who was the person that followed Ebbinghaus?

GeorgeMuller; more interested in active processes

What was Kulpe’s view of imageless thought? Why was it important? 

1. Imageless thought refers to the type of thinking that occurs without sensory information, such as visual content

2. This is evidenced by an individual’s ability to identify objects without having visual mental representations

What is the idea about the relationship between images and ideas?

theres no imageless idea; all ideas have an image associated

What student challenged the no imageless idea?

What is the difference between Ebbinghaus anf Muller? 

Ebbinghaus → is interested in how passive associations are formed 

Muller → interested in the active process to be used to inform association; association performed passively

Wundt talked about creative synthesis and thought that the mind could manipulate experience, and bring some new into existence. What idea is this? 

1. emergentism and holism (another name is creative synthesis) 

2. attention/apperception is under the voluntary control of the will (i.e., voluntarism) 

How did Weber study?

In a study sense and touch

Who called materialism night vision or night view?

Vac Norman

What is ecological memory?

1. the study of things as they occur in nature 

2. rather than studying things that are contrived or official lab

3. memory for more realistic everyday events rather than abstract lists 

What’s the species probelm?

1. Simple answer: organisms that look alike and interbreed 

2. problem: 1) different species may be very similar morphologically, and 2) not all a species reproduce sexually 

What’s uniformitarianism (aka gradualism) ?

1. earth’s structure is shaped by natural forces that are always in operation

2. geologic change is slow/gradual; the earth is very old 

3. the uniformity across time 

4. associated with Hutton and Lyell: a uniformitarian 

5. What we get from Hutton are the idea of deep time (time periods behind comprehension) and gradual geological change (slow change, over a long period of time creates a drastically different earth) 

What could we be talking about when we discuss the Malthusian catastrophe?

how to even out the population into resources

What is the Malthusian checker?

when population growht outpaces means of subsistence the population is decreased by war, famine, pestilence, and death 

Where did the idea of struggle for survival central to Darwin’s theory come from?

1. Thomas Malthus

2. it’s inevatibly, the population exceeds, we need to subsistence and there is a struggle among the people or scarce resources 

If our state of the existence of the watch is proof of the existence of the watchmaker, what is this called? 

1. Argument from design (aka intelligent design or theological argument). The argument is: since the universe is evidently designed, it must have a designer 

2. associated with william paley 

3. natural theology is the attempt to prove the existence of God and other theistic precepts through natural facts and reason (as opposed to revelation) 

What contribution did Lamarck make to evolutionary theory?

use/disuse and inheritance of acquired characteristics; things that are used, they get perpetuated and they’re not fall out in evolution 

What were the 2 main interests of functionalist psychologists?

contiguity of home species and individual differences

George Romanes was the first to do what?

1. animal intelligence compared to psychology 

2. famous in a negative way for use of methods that are not considered very scientific 

What were the 2 methods Romanes used? 

1. anecdotal method: simply storytelling about animal behavior

2. anthropomorphism: attribution of human characteritics to animals, e.g., attributed abstract reasoning, emotions, morality etc. to animals low on the phylogenetic scale 

3. romanes was criticized for these methods 

Morgan: opposition to Romanes; What is Morgan’s cannon? Did Morgan influence the development of behaviorism? 

1. a follower of Romanes, but saw the flaws in Romanes approach 

2. argued for the Law of Parsimony → the simplest explanation of behavior is the preferred explanation (aka Morgan’s CANON) 

   1. MORGAN’S cannon was a turning point in comparative psychology 

Who is Galton?

1. first to try to measure intelligence; used sensory discrimination and reaction time 

2. proposed that intelligence could be assessed by measuring sensory thresholds, sensory acuity, reaction time 

3. the study of individual differences started 

4. he thinks intelligence is inherited 

What kind of evidence did Galton use to support his idea that intelligence inherited?

1. studied Atlis families in Britain and noticed that more eminence had more likely to have higher intelligence 

2. eminence runs in the family and he thinks tha’s because it’s transmitted genetically 

3. used survey method to study 180 members of aristocracy, and asked if their methods are inherited or acquired (self report data moment)

What other methods did Galton use to support that idea?

1. twin studies

   1. identified and surveyed families of 94 twin pairs about the physical and psychological characteristics of the twins 

   2. did not distinguish between identical and fraternal twins, but did distinguish between twins that were very similar and those that were not 

   3. his main question was whether twins remained similar or not under changing life experiences 

      1. twins that were dissimilar at birth never became similar even when they led very similar lives 

      2. conclusion: environment does not explain variation

         1. surveyed British scientists and asked them: are your talents due to your hereditary gifts or were they acquired to experience?; most of them decidely said it is innate

What is the difference between positive and negative eugenics?

1. positive eugenic: encourage good genes, you do that by encouraging people who have desirable or fit traits to have children 

2. negative eugenics: preventing the unfit from having children 

What measures did Galton use for intelligence? 

1. a person station in life or eminence 

2. in terms of the development of intelligence testing, the more influential thing was his use of sensory humanity, sensory discrimination, and reaction

3. he thought that intelligence was related to neural efficiency 

Galton’s contribution to statistics

developed statistical concepts e.g., standard deviation (average difference), co-variation (refined by Karl Pearson, Galton’s collaborator) as the “ correlation coefficient” or Pearson’s r)  and “regression toward mediocrity” 

What’s eugenics?

the sites and a controlling human evolution through artificial selection

Who was Candolle; what did he discover about intelligence; what was his conclusion about the inheritance of intelligence ? 

1. Candolle did amore comprehensive survey of 100s eminent men in several European countries

2. he found theat eminence occurs more in democratic than totalitarian societies and in countires with a high standard of living

3. concluded tha topoortunity has a powerful influence on eminence/intelligence 

4. a vigorous debated between Galton and Candolle ensued

Who challenged Galton’s nativist theory?

Candolle also studied eminence, where he found that eminence occurs more in effluent countries and more in democracies 

How did Galton respond to Candolle?

1. Galton counters with two methodological “innovations”: survey method and twin study

2. English Men of science: their nature and nurture  1874

3. sent surveys to 180 members of the royal society

4. asked respondents if their “gifts” were inherited or acquired

What’s the main idea of the great chain of being? What are its assumptions?

1. a hierarchy perfection 

2. Existence is arranged in a hierarchy of perfection 

3. God created everything in one of the ideas; he created things in a particular hierarchy, and that hierarchy is eternal and immutable 

Who was Alfred Russel Wallace and how is he important to Darwin?

arrived at theory of evolution by natural selection at same time but independently of Darwin 

Why did Darwin wait 20 years to publish his theory of evolution?

He thought it would be like confessing to a murder; afraid to go public due to the possible backlash 

The effect of evolution on psychology compares: functionalism, comparative psychology and individual differences: 

1. comparative psychology compares phylogenetically different species to understand how we evolved

2. Darwin writes a comparative psychology book on how animals express emotions, and are not fundamentally different in terms of mental capacity

What’s ethology

a spin off of compartive psychology, and it’s biological view after; considered to be the biology of behavior, particularly innate behavior 

What are the central tenets of Darwinism?

1. Random variation exists among individuals of a species; otherwise, there would be no basis for selection 

2. Inherited variation: Some of this variation is inherited; Darwin called descent with modification 

3. Fitness: heritable variations can make individuals more or less successful in the struggle for survival (reproduction) 

4. Natural selection: the differential survival and preservation by reproduction of successful variations due to natural forces (as opposed to artificial selection) 

5. individuals with traits that increase survival have mroe offspring, making those traits more common 

6. evolution is a change inheritable traits in a population across generation