Intro to Psychology - Lawrence Reed Exam 1

Robot challenge

Robots have a hard time doing things that a human can do easily, like visual object recognition, common sense, and reverse engineering the mind. Think of how many lines of code that would take

Psychology

The scientific study of behavior and the mind

Mind

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

behavior

observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals

Nativism

the philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn, Plato was in favor of this view

philosophical empiricism

the philosophical view that all knowledge is acquired through experience, Aristotle believed that the mind was a blank slate

Dualism

how mental activity can be reconciled and coordinated with physical behavior, "The Ghost in the Machine" physical brain and body and the not physical mind Descartes

Materialism

The view that the mind and body are one and the same

Phrenology

A now defunct theory that specific mental abilities and characteristics, ranging from memory to the capacity for happiness, are localized in specific regions of the brain. The more capacities and traits a person has, the greater area they take up in their brain. Frank Joseph Gall 1758

Paul Borca 1824-1880

Worked with a patient who lacked the ability to speak, but retained the ability to comprehend speech

- Broca surmised that this impediment might be related to a specific part of the brain

• This was extremely insightful

William James (1842-1910)

First to take a scientific approach to psychology, First American psychologist and author of the first psychology textbook

Willhelm Wundt

"father of psych" set up first psych lab in attempt to simple self-observation or on philosophical explanation: Structuralism

What are the two original movements within Psychology?

Structuralism and Functionalism

Structuralism

analyzes the mind by breaking it down into its basic components

• Wilhelm Wundt took a structuralist approach

Functionalism

the study of the purpose mental processes serve in enabling people to adapt to their environment

• James, influenced by Darwin, took a functional approach

Physiology

the study of biological process, especially in the human body

Hermann von Helmholtz

studied human reaction time; estimated the length of nerve impulse, applied a stimulus and measured reaction time, toe vs time

Stimulus

sensory input from the environment

reaction time

the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus

consciousness

a person's subjective experience of the world and the mind

Introspection

the subjective awareness of one's

own experiences, Fundamental difficulties

• Invalid - different people see different things

• Unreliable - the same person may see different things at different times

• People are often mistaken about their experiences

• Many events happen outside of our conscious awareness • Sometimes examining something is enough to change it

• Williams James was aware of these limitations

hysteria

a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893)

- Pierre Janet (1859-1947)

Psycholanalysis

A therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Was studying hypnosis in 1890's with Josef Breuer

- Found that hysterical patients experienced catharsis with when talking about problems in a hypnotic state

• Catharsis - emotional release

- Theorized that hysterical symptoms resulted from early sexual molestation

• Leaving memories that were intentionally forgotten

- Discovered that symptoms disappeared when memories were completely recalled

The Tomographic Model

the idea that the mind has an organization or architecture that overflows consciousness and can be described in terms of different levels or compartments

What are the Three components of the Topographic Model?

Unconscious* - the only part of the mind that exists at birth

- Preconscious - everything that can be summoned to consciousness on command (e.g. phone number)

- Conscious awareness - the part of our mind that forms our waking lives

• The desire to bring satisfaction to our

unconscious instincts continues to be the main

Charles Darwin

English natural scientist who formulated a theory of evolution by natural selection (1809-1882)

natural selection

the features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to subsequent generations

Behaviorism

the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).

John Watson

Science requires replicable and objective measures

- Methods used by structuralists and functionalists are subjective

• Private experiences are too idiosyncratic and vague - Lack validity and reliability

- Proposed that psychologists focus entirely on what people do rather than what they experience

Goal to predict and control behavior through the study of observable behavior

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

Studied digestion

- Striking observation

• Dogs naturally salivated to the smell of dog food - This stimulus was "unconditioned," that is, not learned

• After several feedings, dogs began salivating at the sight of the person who fed them

- This stimulus was "conditioned," that is, learned

Studied the physiology of digestion and founded classical conditioning (stimulus-response learning)

Response

action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus

Margaret Washburn (1871-1939)

argued that nonhuman animals have conscious mental experiences; the first woman to receive a Ph.D. degree in psychology

humanistic psychology

an approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Developed the fundamental principles and techniques of operant conditioning and devised ways to apply them in the real world

Reinforcement

The consequences of a behavior determine whether it will be more or less likely to occur again

Noam Chomsky

language development; disagreed with Skinner about language acquisition, stated there is an infinite # of sentences in a language, humans have an inborn native ability to develop language, children can form sentences they've never heard before

cognitive neuroscience

An approach to psychology that links psychological processes to activities in the nervous system and other bodily experiences

Behavioral neuroscience

The field of study that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity

What are some bad reasons for believing?

Observation, tradition, authority, intuition

dogmatism

the tendency for people to cling to their assumptions

Dogma

A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true

Empiricism

the view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation

Scientific Method

a procedure for finding truth by using empirical evidence

Theory

a hypothetical explanation of a natural phenomenon

parsimony

the simplest explanation that explains everything is the best one

Hypothesis

a falsifiable prediction made by a theory

Any scientific theory that cannot be disproven

Is worse than useless

Measurement

Systematic observation, to learn about the properties of an event or object.

Define the property we measure and find a way to detect that property

opperational definition

a description of a property in concrete, measurable terms

Instrument

anything that can detect the condition to which an operational definition refers

A good measurement/instrument must have what two qualities?

Validity and Reliability

Validity

the goodness with which a concrete event defines a property, does the instrument measure what its supposed to measure

Reliability

the tendency of a test to produce the same scores again and again each time it is given to the same people

demand characteristics

those aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think someone else wants or expects

naturalistic observation

gathering data about behavior; watching but not intervening

blind experiment

People don't know the theory or the hypothesis of the study,

observer bias

Expectations often influence observation

Double blind

participant AND researcher do not know which subjects are receiving treatment

Frequency distribution

a graphical representation of measurements arranged by the number of times each measurement was made

normal distribution

a mathematically defined distribution in which the frequency of measurements is highest in the middle and decreases symmetrically in both directions

mean

the arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores

Mode

the most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution

Median

the middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it

high standard deviation

data is loosely spread over a range of values

low standard deviation

data is tightly clustered around the mean

positively skewed

a distribution that trails off to the right

negatively skewed

a distribution that trails off to the left

range

the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

You can have the same exact mean, media, and mode, but the distributions can still be different in?

Range and standard deviation

standard deviation

a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score

Variable

a property whose value can vary across individuals or over time

Correlation

two variables are said to "be correlated" when variations in the value of one variable are synchronized with variations in the value of the other

correlation coefficient

a mathematical measure of both the direction and strength of a correlation, which is symbolized by the letter r

Perfect positive correlation

+1

perfect negative correlation

-1

Uncorrelated

0

natural correlation

the correlations we observe in the world around us

third-variable correlation

two variables are correlated only because each is causally related to a third variable

What are some solutions to get rid of all difference to account for possible third variables?

Matched samples and matched pairs

matched samples

a technique whereby the participants in two groups are identical in terms of a third variable

matched pairs

a technique whereby each participant is identical to one other participant in terms of a third variable

experiment

a technique for establishing the casual relationship between variables

Random assignment

Assigning participants to experimental and controls groups by chance

manipulation

Independent variable - study that's being changed

Dependent variable - variable affected by the independent variable

control group

the group of people who are not exposed to the particular manipulation, as compared to the experimental group, in an experiment

Experimental group

Group of people who are exposed to the manipulation

Self selection

a problem that occurs when anything about a person determines whether he or she will be included in the experimental or control group

Configuration symbol

States that beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols

Neurons

Cells in the nervous system that communicate with one another to perform information-processing tasks

- These are the substances in the brain that arranges to form ideas in the mind

The Computational Theory of the Mind

Allows us to

• Keep beliefs and desires in our explanations of behavior while planting them squarely into the physical universe

- Allows meaning to cause and be caused

cell body (soma)

the part of a neuron that coordinates information-processing tasks and keeps the cell alive

Dendrites

Branchlike parts of a neuron that are specialized to receive information and relay it to other parts of the cell body

Axon

A threadlike extension of a neuron that carries nerve impulses away from the cell body.

myelin sheath

A layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fibers of many neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed of neural impulses as the impulse hops from one node to the next.

Do neurons actually touch eachother?

NO!

Synapse

the junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron

glial cells

cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons

What are the major types of Neurons?

sensory neurons, motor neurons, interneurons

sensory neurons

neurons that receive information from the external world and convey this information to the brain via the spinal cord