PSYA01: First Term Review

How old is the psychology field?

less than 150 years

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, what reals were psychology relegated/dismissed/inferiored to?

philosophy, theology, and anatomy

The word psychology

Greek, literally meaning "the study of the psyche, or soul" (psyche—"breath, spirit, soul" + logia—"study of")

Psychology (CHPT 1 of Modern Day)

The scientific study of both behaviour and mind.

What discipline was the initial thoughts of psychology done from and by?

Done by philosophers // the philosophy of mind

First recorded formal thinkers on psychology and when?

(fourth-century BC) Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle's De Anima in original Greek

Peri Psyches

Aristotle's De Anima meaning in English

On the Soul

Aristotle's De Anima topics and introduced term

nature of thought, sensation, and imagination.

term tabula rasa (or "blank slate")

What is tabula rasa (or "blank slate")

(or "blank slate")
To describe the mind, considering it a place of potential for experience to write upon
The mind is a tabula rasa

What realm does anatomy and physiology fall under?

Generally considered to be in the realm of medicine or biology rather than related directly to the mind

One of the first documented efforts to explain psychological disorders as illnesses (eg: rather than possession by spirits)

was done in the Muslim world. 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi (often Latinized as Haly Abbas)

'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi (often Latinized as Haly Abbas) Significance?

A persian physician who wrote ''The Complete Art of Medicine'' during the 10th century.

"The Complete Art of Medicine"'s significance

One of the first books to both describe the neuroanatomy of the brain and discuss a variety of mental illnesses and their treatments

What happened as psychology began to emerge as a separate discipline?

The information physiologists had collected regarding the brain, sensory systems, and the biomechanics of nerves and muscle movement proved invaluable to the fledgling field.

As psychology first rose, what was the focus?

Focused on answering questions about the mind through behavioural evidence.

As psychology first rose, what was it considered?

Often a union of philosophy and physiology
Had many early psychologists attempting to answer the questions asked by philosophers with evidence gathered by physiologists.

Physiologists definition

study of the functions and activities of organisms

Psych is a science so what method does it use for reaching conclusions?

Scientific method.

Empiricism

The view that knowledge arises directly from what we observe and experience (inherently observational in nature)

What is psych inherantly?

Unobservable

Mind definition

The contents of conscious experience, including sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions

Psych is observable in nature but is the study of the mind (AKA unobservable). How can this be?

Behaviour, actions, words, response times, or even brain activity—to make inferences about what is happening in the mind. Early psychology even used findings from physiology to make inferences (conclusions w/ evidence) about the mind. Reliability up for debate.

Behaviour Definition

Any observable action, including words, gestures, responses, and more that can be repeated, measured, and are affected by a situation to produce or remove some outcome. Behaviour can also refer to biological activity, including actions on the cellular level.

Dualism

The philosophical position that the mind and the body are entirely separate from one another.

"Intuitive" dualists meaning

Believing themselves and others to exist apart from their physical bodies. (Jesus lovers where souls leave for afterlife)

Who's René Descartes?

17th century French philosopher

René Descartes' Beliefs

Argued that the mind is inherently immaterial.
Believed that thought couldn't be explained by the physical body, although the mind could exert its influence over the body through the pineal gland (a small pinecone-shaped structure located near the centre of the brain that is now believed to regulate circadian rhythms [Natural cycle of physical, mental, and behavior changes the body goes through in a 24-h cycle.]).

What René Descartes gave us

Concept of "the reflex"
He argued was the body acting without conscious action—without the mind. The reflex is a concept we still use today in physiology, although Descartes wasn't entirely aware of how reflexes worked....

Reflexes

Where conscious muscle movement involves signals from the brain, reflexes (such as blinking in response to an object moving toward the face or jerking your knee in response to being tapped in a certain way) are handled entirely by the spinal cord.

What did Descartes argue for reflex?

Descartes took his argument further, contending that while all animal behavior was the result of unconscious reflex, human consciousness (e.g., "I think, therefore I am") was evidence for a mind, and thus a soul.

What's this bitch?

pineal gland

How did Descartes momentarily screw up psychology?

Influential in both philosophy and physiology but placed this mind as immaterial. Meaning min forces body to do what it wants it to do, proved studying the body and its behaviour was fruitless. It removed psychology from the realm of science.

How did Dualism go with psych now?

Most psychologists don't like using dualism.

What do psych majors typically lean into in the branches of psychology?

cognative psychology and more newly, is starting to discover the evolution into neurocognitive psychology.

How do modern psychologists use behaviour now?

Today's psychologists use behaviour to make inferences about the mind, an endeavor that has been quite successful thus far.

Examples of inferences using behaviour (modern)

1) Commonly believed that many mental illnesses are a direct result of problems with brain function or chemical imbalance.

2) Psychologists have been able to map specific kinds of mental processing (e.g., visual perception) to specific areas of the brain.

Not an example of "behaviour" as defined by psychologists?

The subjective emotions someone feels

Necessary broad definition of Psychology

"study of behaviour and mind"

3 primary areas for psychologists to work

Basic research

Application

Clinical work

Basic research psychologists job

Attempt to understand the fundamental principles that govern behaviour and mind.

most basic research in psychology is conducted with perfectly healthy people, not clinical populations; in fact, much psychological research is done with introductory psychology students.

How do we as students discover new knowledge in the field of psychology?

If we are required to complete a number of "research credits"

Basic research psychologists specific aspect interests

Social interaction

Memory

How neurons interact w/ one another

Name all *larger, primary basic research areas*

Abnormal psychology

Behavioural genetics

Cognitive psychology

Developmental psychology

Behavioural neuroscience

Personality psychology

Social psychology

ABCD - BPS (Someone doesn't know their abc's lol)

Abnormal psychology research

Is interested in explaining how and why unusual and maladaptive behaviour patterns develop by examining thoughts and emotions as well as the underlying biology of mental illness.

Behavioural genetics research

Attempts to explain individual differences in behaviour patterns in terms of variation in genetic structure and expression.

Cognitive psychology research

Is broadly interested in how people process information and includes areas such as attention, perception, memory, problem solving, language, and thought.

Comparative psychology

Is the study of the behavior of non-human animals, and it is often (but not always) interested in making a comparison to human psychology in an effort to discover underlying universals.

Developmental psychology

Studies the way that people develop across the lifespan, including how our thoughts and behaviors change as we age.

Behavioural neuroscience

(Sometimes called cognitive neuroscience or neuropsychology) tries to understand how specific brain regions or activities produce behaviour, allowing psychologists to understand the physical underpinnings of their observations.

Personality psychology

Studies individual differences, investigating how and why people act differently based on their enduring characteristics or traits.

Social psychology

Is interested in how an individual's thoughts and actions are influenced by the social environment and the presence of others.

Where are most psychologists who do basic research employed?

Academic settings:
Colleges and Universities

Where are select few psychologists who do basic research employed?

by Governments and Private Industries

Psychologists who do independent basic research education

Ph.D. (doctorate of philosophy)

Why psychologists who do independent basic research need a PH.D.

Required in many settings (professors who do research as well as teach)

Basic research

Investigating the how and why of behaviour, without regard for the ways the information will ultimately be used

Most research in psychology is done with clinical or special populations, such as prisoners. True or False

False! Studying special populations can lead to skewed results. It's important to base our conclusions on research conducted on a wide variety of individuals.

An example of basic research?

Attempting to understand the causes of depression is basic research because it only seeks to understand depression, it doesn't try to fix it or improve on a way to address it.

Applied psychology

The use of psychological principles to solve practical problems, typically by influencing behaviour or changing the environment to match existing behaviour.

research and practice

Applied psychology goal

Change behaviour to solve some practical problem, like resolving mental health issues, improving workplace efficiency, or improving educational outcomes.

Also might solve a problem by devising a way to alter the environment so that it better matches the behaviours people already engage in.

Applied research

Research done in an effort to discover a new or more effective way to solve a specific practical problem.

Applied practice

The actual application of discovered techniques to solve specific practical problems.

What's most research in psychology today's focus on?

Taking research that was originally basic in nature and applying it to practical problems.

Roots in basic research

Translational research

Research that attempts to take basic findings and turn them into solutions for practical problems.

Roots in basic research

Necessarily based on an attempt to apply discoveries from basic research to practical problems

Translational research example

memory when you remember faster if you already first learned it boom. yeh

Applied psychology as a whole is typically broken up according to the problems that psychologists in the field. So name em.

Consumer behaviour

Educational

Human factors

Forensic & Legal

Health

Industrial and Organizational

Political

School

Consumer behaviour

Understanding the decisions consumers make about products and services.

Educational

Improving learning in classroom and other educational settings.

Human Factors

Designing products or processes in ways that improve usefulness or comfort for the people using them.

Forensic and Legal

Applying psychological principles to features of the legal system.

Health

Improving physical health and healthcare by applying psychological principles.

Industrial & Organizational

Helping organizations improve member performance, motivation, or other role-related outcomes.

Political

Understanding the role of psychology in the political process, and the role of politics in psychology.

School

Using psychology to improve the academic and social experiences of children in school.

Research

Explination>Solution

Practice

Solution>Explination

Clinical psychology

A form of applied psychology that focuses on identifying, preventing, and relieving distress or dysfunction that is psychological in origin.

Another form of applied psychology with a focus on mental health and wellness.

By far, the most dominant type of work that occurs in psychology.

"helping" focus.

Psychiatrists

Medical doctors that focus on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.

Required to first complete medical school before completing a residency in psychiatry as their area of specialization.

Focus on pharmacotherapy (prescribing medications)

Counseling psychologists

Generally focus on helping people deal with ongoing life problems or stressors, or dealing with the transition from one life situation to another

Diagnose and treat less severe forms of mental illness

Marriage and family therapists, career counselors, and addiction counselors.

Master's (counselors) or Ph.D.

Nature-Nurture Debate

To what extent is the human experience shaped by nature, and to what extent does the environment play a role?

Nativism

Hypothesizes that some forms of knowledge are innate.

Biological determinism

Nativism's logical extreme.
The view that all human behavior is controlled by genetic and biological influences.

Phrenology

The pseudoscientific study of the shape of the human skull in an attempt to associate brain areas with specific characteristics, thoughts, or abilities.

The brain areas are associated with specific functions—has been verified in more recent decades, although the proportions of the skull have nothing to do with it.

When the scientific study of psychology emerged in earnest

Latter half of the nineteenth century.

Wilhelm Wundt other name

Father of modern psychology

First person to self-identify as a psychologist (bc of interest in the mind)

Because of both the work he did in his laboratory and his efforts to establish psychology as its own discipline (Hunt, 1993). Many of his first experiments involved testing response time, such as how quickly people could respond to a presented sound.​

Wilhelm Wundt's significance

Established the first psychological laboratory in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany

Wilhelm Wundt's background studies

He conducting research in psychology prior to the lab's founding

Trained as a physiologist and medical doctor, but also as a competent philosopher.

Applied experimental process to psychology

Wilhelm Wundt's interests

Sensation and perception—how people understand the world and turn it into ideas and thoughts. Mental experience—the mind—was his major area of study.

Edward Titchener

One of Wundt's most successful students

Along with Wundt, treated the mind much like chemists and physicists of the day treated the world itself: They wanted to break it down into fundamental pieces.

Popularized the approach of breaking conscious experience into elementary parts, a movement in psychology that came to be known as structuralism (and whose contributors are known as structuralists).

John Dalton

Worked on the atomic theory in the early 1800s was particularly influential, as he demonstrated that substances such as water contained definitive proportions of hydrogen and oxygen. Many of the early thinkers in psychology adopted a similar position, attempting to break down immediate conscious experience into its basic elements.

Introspection

A method refined by Wundt to understand the components of mental processes by relying on trained participants' self-reports of their thoughts, feelings, and mental images.

Wundt and Edward Titchener

Believed that psychology should focus on decomposing immediate conscious experience into its basic elements and understanding how those elements combine to create experience

(Wundt, 1896), they believed that self-reports of conscious experience should be the primary form of evidence in psychology.

Making inferences about the mind is one of the fundamental problems psychology as a science faces.

Systematic introspection

One of the first strategies to make inferences about the contents of the mind, it was an effort to standardize the way that people reported their own experiences. So that one person's experiences could be compared to another's more effectively.

Titchener's laboratory used the technique extensively
(he developed an extremely detailed manual that was designed to train a person how to introspect "properly" (Titchener, 1901)) a laboratory at Cornell University.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, psychology as its own scientific discipline had begun to take off how?

Popularization of experimental psychology in North America

Wundt's students spreading the study to other European countries as well as North America. Titchener himself immigrated to the United States and founded a laboratory at Cornell University.

Psychological Association (APA)

Founded in 1892 (Boring, 1929)

Structuralism

The first movement in the history of psychology, which focused on breaking down immediate conscious experience (such as sensations and feelings) into their constituent parts.

Primary goal of structuralism?

William James: American physician and philosopher

First person to offer a course on experimental psychology in the United States beginning in 1875 at Harvard University.

William James Argument

Structuralism provide little to no actual insight into the workings of the mind