Pysch 1100

Chomsky

• “Language and Mind” (1968)

• psych is hard because it requires intellectual effort to see how such phenomna can pose serious problems or call for intricate explanatory theories

• phenomena can be so familiar that we really do not see them at all

“our perception of the world has withered away; what has remained is mere recognition”

Noam Chomsky

founded first laboratory dedicated to psychology, separating psycholgy from philosphy for the first time as the science of the mind

Wihelm Wundt (germany) 1879

STRUCTURALISM

Titchener in US

who declared that to be a science, psychology must only study the observable and thius must be a science of behavior, rather than of mind; this inaugurates roughly six decades of dominance of American psychology by BEHAVIORISM

John Broadus Watson 1913

COGNITIVISM

Ulric

an arbitrary date for the beginning of cognitivism

1967

THE BOOK “Cognitive Psychology”

outlined areas od study (attention, memory, perception, language) that had begun yielding to investigation in the last decade, and presenting a consensus on the new information processing view of the field that solidified it popularity and led to its rapid ascendance

historical outline of psychology

1879, 1913, 1967

rationalism foundations

plato 347 BC

rationalism modern philosophy people

Descartes (1641) and Kant (1781)

rationalism modern psychology

chomsky 1959

Empiricism foundations

aristotle (322BC)

Empiricism modern philosphy

Locke 1690, Berkely 1710, Hume 1748

Modern psychology Empiricism

Skinner 1967

what is the origin of knowledge? rationalism/nativism

born with innate ideas; experience provides occasion for knowing, “nativism”

what is the origin of knowledge? empiricism/associationism

born as a clean slate “tabula rasa”; experience is source of knowledge; “empiricism”

born as a clean slate

tabula rasa

how is knowledge arrived at? rationalism/nativism

learn by operation of mind-manipulation of concepts and ideas; “raitonalism”

how is knowledge arrived at? EMPIRICISM/ ASSOCIATION

learn by connecting experiences in world; “associationism”

psychology as “the science of knowing and experiencing” KNOWING:

more than just storing information like a computer; animals know how to behave so as to meet goals

psychology as “the science of knowing and experiencing” EXPERIENCING:

more than just registering light wavelengths like a computer

• see. blue, hear note played on clarinet, taste salt

• different from knowledge or information: describe blue to a blind person, describe taste of salt without the word “salty”

• source of all motivation

• knowing and experiencing are natural phenomena, though that is often denied (due to mind-body. problem)

• no other science covers them, ONLY PSYCHOLOGY

mind- body problem

dualism- universe is made of two interacting substances: physical matter (including body) and non-physical immaterial stuff (like soul/ mind/ thought_

• from Descartes around 1640/ early scientific revolution

• how they can interact, no one knows (descartes: happens in pineal gland)

• materialism- universe is made of one kind of substance, physical matter- which they must include mind, if mind is real; merely an assertion though

scientific materialism as a worldview says that all exists is

matter in motion

scientific materialsm defined by

choice of variables to describe nature in 17th century; includes physical variables like mass, length, velocity, momentum, etc; excludes all psychological variables and phenomena that dont fit with the physical, like color, sound, taste, and generally knowing and experiencing

the only plausible candidate for a concept of nature that we’ve had since the 17th century scientific revolution and the division of the world into the physical and non-physical

scientific materialism

scientific materialism: physical description of nature is taken to be reality, rather than a strategy

• animals must interpret that reality and assign meaning (knowing) and quality (experiencing) to it

• therfore knowing and experiencing are viewing as “not part of nature/ just in the head”

psychologt is ABOUT

knowing motivated BY experiencing , yet because the knowing experiencing mind is ruled out of science by conceptual difficulties, psychology is framed without those two basic concepts

consequences of the scientific materialist worldview

• for psychology: try to study mind using the tools of sciece that were created to explicityl exclude mind- paradoxical if not impossible

• for other sciences: their worldview must be wrong!

used to try and make sense of how neural activity could give rise ot knowing and experiencing

computer metaphor

scientific materialism →

neural assumption—> computer metaphor

science since origins in philosophy has dealt with matter and motion: ancient greek philosophy 600 BCE

Thale’s concept of matter, later Democritus and atoms 400 BCE motion: naturalistic (non-supernatural) account of motion and change culminating in Artistoles physics 350 BCE

scientific revolution 1600s and after

all nature viewed as matter in motion matter

Dalton

atomic theory in 1803

Einstein’s

confirmation of atoms 1905 motion

combined space and time into one fabric

Einsteins relativity 1915

number of neurons

10 billion to a trillion (most popular estimate is 86 billion)

number of connections in each neuron

10,000

parts of neuron

dendrites, cell body (soma), axon, terminal endings (or terminal buttons)

how does a neuron “fire” (what is the nerve impulse?

an action potential fires, sending an electrical signal down the length of the axon, which can then be transmitted to the next cell

how does it cause the next neuron to fire? (how does it communicate?)

releasing chemical messengers called neurotransmitters at the synapse, which then bind to receptors on the receiving neuron

nerve impulse=

action potential

action potential step 1

1- start with electrical resting potential: inside of cell is 70 mV more negtaive than outside due to Cl- ions inside and Na+ ions outside (so RESTING POTENTIAL ia -70mV)

action potential step 2

stimulation of neuron lets Na + ions, which makes the inside more positive: -70, -69, -68, -67

action potential step 3

when enough Na+ ions get in for the potential to be reduced to -55mV, suddenly the doors (ion gates) to the cell membrane are flung open allowing Na+ to rush in

action potential step 4

so much NA+ ENTERS that the potential doesnt just go to 0- it shoots all the way up to +40 mV, so the inside is now positive relative to the outside (the ACTION POTENTIAL)

action potential step 5 conclusion

ion pumps work to reduce potential back to -70mV by pushing positive ions out (K+ because Na+ goes out slower; then ANOTHER pump takes Na+ back out and puts K+ back in)

threshold

-55mV: below that voltage there is no action potential- firing is “all or nonr”

action potential travels down length of axon by

depolarizing neighboring areas

action potential travels NOT at a speed of electrical current in wire but

at about 50-100 m/sec

gap between two neurons

synapse

____ on membrane of dendrite are like little locks to be opened: neurotransmitters are the keys, and this is what opens ion gates to allow Na+ inside in the first place

receptor molecules

neurotransmitters may open a gate to let ___ inside

Na+

neurotransmitters may open to let Na+ inside:

excitatory

hindbrain:

medulla, pons, cerebellum

pons

aurosal and attention

medulla

breathing, heartbeat, blood circulation

cerebellum

integration of muscles to perform fine movements, but no coordination/ diretion of these movements; balance

midbrain

forms movements into acts; controls whole body respnes to visual and auditory stimuli

forebrain

thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, limbic system, cerebral cortex

thalamus

sensory and motor relay center (to various cerebral lobes)

hypothalamus

controls responses to basic needs

basal ganglia

regulates muscle contractions for smooth movements

limbic system

memory (hippocampus) and emotion (amygdala)

cerebral cortex

four lobes (frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal)

corpus callosum

connects hemispheres

higher motor, sensory, and intellectual functions

cerebral cortex

personality in brain explosion sent iron rod thorugh skull removing part of frontal lobe

phineas gage

identified region in patients brian responsible for speech

paul broca

identified separate region responsible for comprehension

carl wernicke

frontal lobe

planning; social behavior; motor control; front of brain

parietal lobe

somatosensory (Sense of touch); on top and toward back of brain

occiptial lobe

vision; back of brain

temporal lobe

hearing; memory- side of brian

left hemisphere

language

right hemisphere

spacial abilities

front of brain

expression/actions/plans

back of brain

reception/perceptions/interpretations

pre-frontal lesions damage

loss of planning, moral reasoning, sensitivity to social context

apraxia damage

“no doing”- failure in sequencing sompopnents of actions; inability to organize movements

agnosia

“no knowing”- deficit in interpreting, categorizing, labeling, knowing

aphasia

disorder of language

expressive aphasia

cannot produce speech

receptive aphasia

cannot understand speech- and then can not produce speech

wernickes area location

back of brain

wernicke’s area function

language comprehension

classical conditioning: US

unconditioned stimulus: food in mouth; input to a reflex

classical conditioning: UR

unconditioned stimulus: initially results in investigatory response, then havituation; after conditioning, results in CR

CR: conditioned response

response to CS, measure amplitude, probability, latency

Franz Joseph Gall discoveries

1) recognizing the cortex as functional tissue

2) identifying commissures (connecting pathways)

3) discovering the crossing of ascending nerve pathways from the spinal cord to the opposite brain hemispheres

4) differentiating between grey matter (for processing) and white matter (for signal transmission