Pysch Unit 1-5 Key People + Experiments

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Contribution: Forgetting Curve; spacing effect

Belief: Memory decays rapidly without rehearsal

Elizabeth Loftus

Contribution: Misinformation Effect; False Memories

Belief: Memory is reconstructive, not a perfect recording

Key Experiments: Leading questions altered eyewitness recall (car crash studies)

Patient HM

Contribution: Memory systems separation

Condition: Anterograde amnesia after hippocampus removal

Key Finding:

• ❌ Could not form new explicit/declarative memories

• ✅ Could form procedural memories

Noam Chomsky

Belief: Language is innate, biologically programmed

Key Concept: Overgeneralization proves rule-learning, not imitation

Benjamin Whorf

Contribution: Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

Belief: Language shapes thought and perception

• people who speak different languages have a broader sense of the world

Ivan Pavlov

Contribution: Classical Conditioning

Belief: Learning occurs through association

Key Experiment: Dogs salivating to bell paired with food

John B Watson

Contribution: Behaviorism; Classical Conditioning of emotions

Belief: Psychology should study observable behavior only

Key Experiment: Little Albert (conditioned fear)

BF Skinner

Contribution: Operant Conditioning

Belief: Behavior shaped by reinforcement & punishment

Key Experiments: Skinner box (rats, pigeons)

Language View: Language learned through reinforcement (environment)

Albert Bandura

Contribution: Observational Learning; Social Learning Theory

Belief: Learning includes cognitive processes

Key Experiment: Bobo doll (children imitate aggression)

Paul Broca

Contribution: Broca’s Area (speech production)

Key Finding: Damage → broken speech (Broca’s aphasia)

Carl Wernicke

• Contribution: Wernicke’s Area (language comprehension)

• Key Finding: Damage → word salad, fluent but meaningless speech

Harry Harlow

Contribution: Attachment Theory (contact comfort)

Belief: Attachment is based on comfort, not nourishment

Key Experiment: Rhesus monkeys preferred cloth mothers over wire mothers

Solomon Asch

Contribution: Conformity

Belief: Group pressure can override obvious reality

Key Experiment: Line judgment task (Asch Effect)

Stanley Milgram

Contribution: Obedience to authority

Belief: Ordinary people obey authority even against conscience

Key Experiment: Shock generator obedience study

Philip Zimbardo

Contribution: Situational influences on behavior

Belief: Situations can overpower personality

• social roles and scripts

Key Experiment: Stanford Prison Experiment

Sigmund Freud

Contribution: Psychoanalytic / Psychodynamic Perspective

Belief: Behavior driven by unconscious conflicts

Key Concepts: Repression, unconscious mind, childhood experiences

Abraham Maslow

Contribution: Hierarchy of Needs

Belief: Humans strive toward self-actualization

Perspective: Humanistic

Carl Rogers

• Contribution: Person-Centered Therapy

• Belief: People are inherently good; need unconditional positive regard

  • Humanist

Eleanor Gibson

Contribution: Depth Perception in infants

Key Experiment: Visual Cliff

Finding: Depth perception is at least partly innate

Rosenthal

Contribution: Pygmalion Effect

Belief: Expectations influence performance

Key Finding: Higher expectations → higher outcomes

Eric Lenneberg

Associated With: Critical period hypothesis

Belief: There is a biologically determined window for language acquisition

Evidence: Language deprivation cases

Weber’s Law

Focus: Difference threshold (JND)

Finding: Detection depends on proportional change

Young & Helmholtz - Trichromatic Theory

Focus: Color vision

Finding: Three cone types (red, green, blue)

• Color processing