TOP Quiz 3

Objective Reality

Objective Reality

reality that is outside of your mind, for example a chair

Subjective Reality

inner reality of your mind, the chair is beautiful

Thresholds

The lowest point at which a particular stimulus will cause a response in an organism

Reaction Time

The time that elapses between the onset or presentation of a stimulus and the occurrence of a specific response to that stimuli

Bell-Magendie Law

Two types of nerves: Sensory nerves that carry impulses from brain and Motor nerves that carry them away

Helmholtz

A monumental figure in the history of science who did pioneer work in the areas of nerve conduction, sensation, perception, color vision, and audition

Weber

Used a Two-point threshold and just noticeable difference,  he was the first to demonstrate systematic relationships between stimulation and sensation.

Fechner

for just noticeable differences to vary arithmetically, the magnitude of a stimulus must vary geometrically. According to Fechner, sensations that occur below the absolute threshold and are, therefore, below the level of awareness

Vitalism

A belief that living organisms possess a vital force or energy that cannot be explained by physical or chemical processes alone.

Sensation

Involves sensing the existence of a stimulus

Perception

determination of what a stimulus is

Broca

Found evidence that part of the left frontal lobe of the cortex is specialized for speech production or articulation.

Wernicke

Discovered an area on the left temporal lobe of the cortex associated with speech comprehension

Nerve Conduction

How quickly an electrical impulse moves through your nerves

Theories of Color Vision

Separate receptor systems on the retina are responsive to each of the three primary colors: red, green, and blue–violet.

Voluntarism

Wundt’s school of Psychology, through apperception individuals could direct their attention toward whatever they wished

Introspection (Wundt)

carefully and objectively as possible analyze the content of their own thoughts

Introspection (Titchener)

Their job was to describe the basic, raw, elemental experiences from which complex cognitive experience was built

Structuralism

Titchener, describe the structure of the mind

Wilhelm Wundt

Founder of experimental psychology as a separate discipline and the school of voluntarism

Ebbinghaus

The first to study learning and memory experimentally

Titchener

Created the school of structuralism. Unlike Wundt’s voluntarism, structuralism was much more in the tradition of empiricism-associationism

Inheritance

inherited traits, reactions, patterns of behavior and our take on life. They are passed down through the genes and persist over time, and we carry them with us, from situation to situation.

Social Darwinism

if given freedom to compete in society, the ablest individuals will succeed and the weaker ones will fail, and this is as it should be.

Natural Selection

the process by which such forces as competition, disease, and climate tend to eliminate individuals who are less well adapted to a particular environment and favor the survival and reproduction of better adapted individuals, thereby changing the nature of the population over successive generations.

Lemark

Proposed that adaptive characteristics acquired during and organism’s lifetime were inherited by that organism’s offspring

Spencer

applied Darwinian principles to society by saying that society should maintain a laissez-faire policy so that the ablest individuals could prevail. Spencer’s position is called social Darwinism

Darwin

Devised a theory of evolution that emphasized a struggle for survival that results in the natural selection of the most fit organisms. By showing the continuity between human and nonhuman animals, the importance of individual differences, and the importance of adaptive behavior

Stages of Early US Psychology

1. Moral and Mental Philosophy, 2. intellectual philosophy, 3. the U.S. renaissance, 4. US functionalism

Habits

Those learned patterns of behavior that James and others believed were vital for the functioning of society

Functionalism

stressed the role of consciousness and behavior in adapting to the environment

Structuralism

a method of interpreting and analyzing such things as language, literature, and society, which focuses on contrasting ideas or elements of structure and attempts to show how they relate to the whole structure

William James

emphasized the function of both consciousness and behavior. For him the only valid criterion for evaluating a theory, thought, or act is whether it works. In keeping with his pragmatism, he claimed that psychology needs to employ both scientific and nonscientific procedures. Similarly, on the individual level, sometimes one must believe in free will and at other times in determinism.

Munsterberg

Stressed the application of psychological principles in such areas as clinical, forensic, and industrial psychology

Pragmatism

The belief that usefulness is the best criterion for determining the validity of an idea.

Radical Empiricism

philosophical doctrine put forth by William James. It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations.

Stream of Consciousness

(James) the mind as consisting of an ever-changing stream of interrelated, purposive thoughts rather than static elements that could be isolated from one another

Theory of Emotions

people first respond and then have an emotional experience. For example, we run first, and then we are frightened. An implication of the theory is that we should act according to the way we want to feel.

Continuity

The tendency to experience stimuli that follow some predictable pattern as a perceptual unit

Zeigarnik Effect

The tendency to remember uncompleted tasks longer than completed ones

Top-Down Analysis

The top-down approach seeks to identify the big picture and all of its components. These components are usually the driving force for the end goal.

Closure

The tendency to perceive incomplete objects as complete

Insight

Learning that involves perceiving the solution to a problem after a period of cognitive trial and error

Law of Pragnanz

Because of the tendencies of the force fields that occur in the brain, mental events will always tend to be organized, simple, and regular. According to the law of Prägnanz, cognitive experience will always reflect the essence of one’s experience instead of its disorganized, fragmented aspects

Proximity

The tendency to perceptually group together stimuli that are physically close.

Isomorphism

The Gestaltists’ contention that the patterns of activity produced by the brain—rather than sensory experience as such—causes mental experience.

Elementalism

The belief that complex mental or behavioral processes are composed of or derived from simple elements and that the best way to understand these processes is first to find the elements of which they are composed.

Similarity

The tendency to perceive as units stimuli that are physically similar to one another

Field Theory

branch of physics that studies how energy distributes itself within physical systems

Productive Thinking

(Wertheimer) the type of thinking that ponders principles rather than isolated facts and that aims at understanding the solutions to problems rather than memorizing a certain problem solving strategy or logical rules

Inclusiveness

when there is more than one figure, we are most likely to see the figure that contains the greatest number of stimuli

Figure-ground Relationships

The most basic type of perception, consisting of the division of the perceptual field into a figure and a ground, which provides the background for the figure

Life Space

(Lewin) the totality of the psychological facts that exist in one’s awareness at any given moment.

Constancy

The tendency to respond to objects as being the same, even when we experience those objects under a wide variety of circumstances.

Kohler/Koffka

considered a cofounder of the school of Gestalt psychology

Wertheimer

Founded the school of Gestalt psychology with his 1912 paper on the phi phenomenon

Lewin

An early Gestaltist who sought to explain human behavior in terms of the totality of influences acting on people rather than in terms of the manifestation of inner essences. was mainly responsible for applying Gestalt principles to the topics of motivation and group dynamics.

Principle of Associated Habit

certain actions become habits when they serve a purpose, like satisfying desires or relieving sensations. When our mind enters a similar state, even weakly, these habits may kick in, even if they're not currently useful.

Principle of Antithesis

When our mind is in a certain state, it leads to certain habits that are useful. But when our mind shifts to the opposite state, we have a strong and automatic urge to do actions that are completely opposite, even though they serve no purpose. In some situations, these opposite actions can be very expressive.

Psychometry

psychic ability to gain information about an object or person by touching it. It involves sensing energy imprints left on the object and interpreting them to gather insights and emotions.

Law of Relativity

states that the laws of physics are the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion. It means that the perception of time, space, and motion can vary depending on the observer's frame of reference. This principle is a fundamental concept in Einstein's theory of relativity.

Psychophysics

The study of the relationship between physical stimuli and our psychological experiences. It explores how our senses perceive and interpret the world around us.

Time Sense

The ability to perceive and understand the passage of time, including an awareness of the duration of events and the ability to estimate time intervals accurately.