Scientific Foundations Of Psychology Week 9 Notes

this is so farking slow

Wilhem Wundt

1862, he taught “psychology as a natural science”

• Contributions to a theory of perception (1862)

• Lectures on human and animal psychology (1863)

Characteristics Of Wundt Thought

• Mind abd Body: believed origin of mental processes dated to the origin of life itself, with the mind being a meaningful discourse and the phsyical syste another meaningful subject of discourse

• Breadth Of Vision: Explored ethics, logic, sociocultural psychology and physiology

• Voluntarism: To be free, an action must be voluntary

Wundt Opinion/Perspective Of Darwin

Assimilated his ideas, agreeing with the importance of the princple of adaptation

• Animal is not merely passive but acts on its world on the basis of affect and past associations

Key Concepts From Wundt

• Definition of psychology

• Elements

• Sensations And Perceptions

• Association And Appreciation

Wundt’s definition of Psychology

Science that investigates “the facts of consciousness”

• Must discover elements of consciousness to discover combinations that elements undergo and laws that regulate combinations

Wundt: Elements

believed there were mental elements or pure sensations

• Recognized simplae sensation or simple element is not actually simple psychologu

Wundt: sensation

Element on consciousness

Wundt: perception

Generally refers to combination of outward sense impressions

Wundt: Idea

Combinations that may come from memory, previous associations and so on

Wundt: Associations And Appreciation

• Passive combinations: Associations

• Active combinations: appreciations

• Sleeps importance in maintainig cognitive functions such as attention and cognitive combinations

Tridimesnional Theory Of Feeling

Based on pleasure and pain, strain and relaxation, and excitation and quiescence

• ammonia is pain, sweetness is pleasure

• Red is exciting, blue is quieting

• combne to form meaningful compound

• gvien sensation may be pleasureable and exciting/quieting

Principle of Creative Synthesis

Refers to the fact that in all psychical combinations, the product on not a mere sum of all seperate elements that compose such combinations, but represents new creations

Measures Of Variability

Refers to indicators that quantify the extent of dispersion of spread among data points in a data set

• Range, variance and standard deviation

Standard Error

Quantifying the effect and taking away tightly clustered result/histogram

• As sample size increases, the standard error mean decreases

Central Limit Theorm

Adding multiple data and valid points to a sample causes the results to become more accurate, simple and symmetrical

• basically, if we take enough samples, the distribution of their means will be roughly normal even if the original data isn’t

Standard Normal Distribution

Symmetric, bell shaped probability distribution with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of one

Z Scores

Measures that standardize data by expressing how many standard deviations a data point is from the mean in a standard, normal distribution

• Tells us how far a score is from the mean

Percentage Of results That Fall Above and Below The Mean In A Standard Normal Distribution

50%

Percentange of results that fall between the mean and one standard deviation

• 34% on both sides

• 68% of all results fall here

Percentange of results that fall between the mean and two standard deviation

• 14% on both sides

• 28% in total

Percentange of results that fall between the mean and two standard deviation

• 2.5% on both sides

• 5% in total

Probability

• 0 = no chance of happening

• 1 = 100% chance of happening

Standard Error Of Mean

Standard deviation divided by the square root on the number in the sample

• Shows how much sample means tend to vary from true population mean

• gets smaller with a larger amount of participants

• means more precise estimates of the population mean

To Find The Probability Of Individual Score

Look at how far that score is from the population mean, then divide it by the population standard deviation

To Find The Probability Of A Sample Mean

Look at how far the sample mean is from the population mean, then divide this by the standard error of mean

Inferential Statistics

Make conclusions beyond sample

• Sample used to make educated guess about population

Sample Mean

Estimates the population mean

Normal Distriution

Bell curve

Standard Normal Distribution

Converts raw scores into Z scores, has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one

Normal Curve Table And Z Score

• Z table finds probability of score occuring and shows percentage of scores associated with different z scores on standard, normal distributions

low Level probability is known as the

Alpha

Introsepction

Process of reflecting upon yourself and reporting your conscious expreiences as objectively possible

• Relies on abilty to choose what to attend to

• if light is lit in dark room, you must report the smell of wax, warmth of candle and light of candle

Steps In Introspection

1) observer need sot know when experience begins and ends

2) bserver must pay "strained attention"

3) pehnomenon must bear repetition

4) phenomenon must be capable of variation (change stimulus)

Titchner And Structuralism

Aimed to undertand structure of consciousness, trying to develop a periodic table of human consciousness/behaviour

• Broke sensation into quality, intensoity, clearness and duration

• favoured introspection

• consciouness can be broken into series of elements

James And Functionalism

Believed psychological knowledge could be gained through a avriety of methods, like studying introspections of those who are unable or unreliable

• formed against structralism

• Emphasies purpose of consciouness and behaviour in adapting to environment

P Value

Probability that an observed effect is simply due to chance

95% Confidence Interval

Gives us an indication of how the difference between two groups might vary if we did lots of studies