Chapter 5: Foundations: History

Chapter 5 Flashcard Set

PREHISTORY AND HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

• Psychology is the study of behavior and the mind.

• Behavior, a natural process subject to natural laws, refers to the observable actions of a person or an animal.

• The mind refers to the sensations, memories, motives, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective phenomena particular to an individual or animal that are not readily observed.

• The ancient Greeks’ speculations on the nature of the mind heavily influenced the pre-history of psychology as a science.

Dualism

• Dualism divides the world and all things in it into two parts: body and spirit.

• Dualism is a theme that recurs often in early psychology, but the distinction between body and spirit prefigures current debates around the difference between the brain (that is, the command center of the central nervous system) and the mind (that is, the sensations, memories, emotions, thoughts, and other subjective experiences of a particular individual).

René Descartes (1596–1650)

• An early modern philosopher, continued the dualist view of the human being.

• He believed that the physical world and all of the creatures in it are like machines, in that they behave in observable, predictable ways.

• Descartes believed that humans were the exception to this rule because they possess minds.

John Locke (1632–1704)

• extended Descartes’s application of natural laws to all things, believing that even the mind is under the control of such laws.

• Locke’s school of thought is known as empiricism—the acquisition of truth through observations and experiences.

• Locke proposed that humans are born knowing nothing; Locke used the term tabula rasa (Latin for “blank slate”) to describe the mind of an infant.

  • It is a philosophical concept that suggests that all people are born with no pre-existing mental content or knowledge and that knowledge is acquired through experience.

    • It is the idea that everyone is a “blank slate” upon entering the world and that their beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives are shaped by the environment and the experiences that they have.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

• Believed that the idea of a soul or spirit, or even of a mind, is meaningless.

• Hobbes’s philosophy is known as materialism, which is the belief that the only things that exist are matter and energy.

• Charles Darwin (1809–1882) - proposed a theory of natural selection, according to which all creatures have evolved into their present state over long periods of time.

• Evolutionary theory - affected psychology by providing a way to explain differences between species and justifying the use of animals as a means to study the roots of human behavior.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)

• The founder of the science of psychology.

• Wundt was trained in physiology and hoped to apply the methods that he used to study the body to the study of the mind.

Edward Titchener (1867–1927)

• was a student in Wundt’s laboratory and was one of the first to bring the science of psychology to the United States.

• Structuralism, entails looking for patterns in thought, which are illuminated through interviews with a subject describing his or her conscious experience.

William James (1842–1910)

• An American psychologist, opposed the structuralist approach.

• He argued that what is important is the function of the mind, such as how it solves a complex problem.

• James, heavily influenced by Darwin, believed that the important thing to understand is how the mind fulfills its purpose.

  • This function-oriented approach is appropriately called functionalism.

• Dorothea Dix was crucial in advocating for the rights of mentally ill poor people, and she was instrumental in founding the first public mental hospital in the United States.

• Mary Whiton Calkins was the first female graduate student in psychology, although she was denied a PhD because of her gender.

• Margaret Floy Washburn was not only the first female PhD in psychology, she also served as the second female president of the American Psychological Association (APA), an organization formed in 1892.

APPROACHES

• Approach 1: Biological: Biological psychology is the field of psychology that seeks to understand the interactions between anatomy and physiology (particularly, the physiology of the nervous system) and behavior.

• Approach 2: Behavioral Genetics: Behavioral genetics is the field of psychology that explores how particular behaviors may be attributed to specific, genetically based psychological characteristics.

Approach 3: Behavioralist

• Behaviorism posits that psychology is the study of observable behavior.

  • The mind or mental events are unimportant as they cannot be observed.

• Classical conditioning, first identified by Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), was one of the behaviorists’ most important early findings.

• John Watson (1878–1958) and his assistant Rosalie Rayner applied classical conditioning to humans in the famed Little Albert experiment: they made loud sounds behind a 9-month-old whenever he would touch something white and furry, and voila: he was afraid of everything white and furry afterwards.

• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), through the development of his Skinner Box, described operant conditioning, in which a subject learns to associate a behavior with an environmental outcome.

• Approach 4: Cognitive: Cognitive psychology is an approach rooted in the idea that to understand people’s behavior, we must first understand how they construe their environment—in other words, how they think.

Approach 5: Humanistic

• The humanistic approach is rooted in the philosophical tradition of studying the roles of consciousness, free will, and awareness of the human condition.

• Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) proposed the idea of self-actualization, the need for individuals to reach their full potential in a creative way.

• Attaining self-actualization means accepting yourself and your nature, while knowing your limits and strengths.

• Carl Rogers (1902–1987) stressed the role of unconditional positive regard in interactions and the need for a positive self-concept as critical factors in attaining self-actualization.

Approach 6: Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic

• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) developed a theory of human behavior known as psychoanalytic theory.

• Freud was concerned with individuals and their mental problems.

• Freud drew a distinction between the conscious mind—a mental state of awareness that we have ready access to—and the unconscious mind—those mental processes that we do not normally have access to but that still influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

• Approach 7: Sociocultural: According to this approach, cultural values vary from society to society and must be taken into account if one wishes to understand, predict, or control behavior.

Approach 8: Evolutionary

• The evolutionary approach draws upon the theories of Darwin.

• Behavior can best be explained in terms of how adaptive that behavior is to our survival.

• Approach 9: Biopsychosocial: The biopsychosocial approach emphasizes the need to investigate the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors as contributing to a behavior or a mental process.

DOMAINS

• A question that concerns the effect of drugs on behavior refers to the biological domain.

  • But a question that deals with relationships between drug users and their families refers to the social domain.

    • And a question that considers treatment options for someone addicted to drugs deals with the clinical domain.

• Other domains include:

  • Cognitive (What thoughts might someone entertain to justify their drug use?)

  • Counseling (How might a school counselor talk to a student about drugs?)

  • Developmental (At what ages might someone be more susceptible to peer pressure?)

  • Educational (How effective are school-based programs?)

• Yet other domains include:

  • Experimental (dealing with experiments)

  • Industrial-organizational (dealing with workplaces)

  • Personality (dealing with—you guessed it!—personality)

  • Psychometric (dealing with how to measure things in psychology)

  • Positive domain (which focuses on positive aspects and strengths of human behavior).

Chapter 6: Foundations: Methods and Approaches

Chapter 6 Flashcard Set

EXPERIMENTAL, CORRELATIONAL, AND CLINICAL RESEARCH

• An experiment is an investigation seeking to understand relations of cause and effect.

• The manipulated variable is called the independent variable.

• The dependent variable is what is measured.

• The presence of the doll in both groups is the control variable, because it is constant in both groups.

• The researcher identifies a specific population, or group of interest, to be studied.

• Because the population may be too large to study effectively, a representative sample of the population may be drawn.

• Representativeness is the degree to which a sample reflects the diverse characteristics of the population that is being studied.

• Random sampling is a way of ensuring maximum representativeness.

  • Once sampling has been addressed, subjects are randomly assigned into both the experimental and control groups.

Sampling Bias

• The bias of selection from a specific real area occurs when people are selected in a physical space.

• Self-selection bias occurs when the people being studied have some control over whether or not to participate.

• Pre-screening or advertising bias occurs often in medical research; how volunteers are screened or where advertising is placed might skew the sample.

• Healthy user bias occurs when the study population tends to be in better shape than the general population.

• Single-blind design means that the subjects do not know whether they are in the control or experimental group.

• Double-blind studies are designed so that the experimenter does not inadvertently change the responses of the subject, such as by using a different tone of voice with members of the control group than with the experimental group.

• Correlational research involves assessing the degree of association between two or more variables or characteristics of interest that occur naturally.

• If an unknown factor is playing a role, it is known as a confounding variable, a third variable, or an extraneous variable.

• One way to gather information for correlational studies is through surveys.

• Clinical research often takes the form of case studies.

• Case studies are intensive psychological studies of single individuals.

Experimental Design

• Two important features of studies are the conceptual definition and the operational definition.

  • Whereas the conceptual definition is the theory or issue being studied, the operational definition refers to the way in which that theory or issue will be directly observed or measured in the study.

• Internal validity is the certainty with which the results of an experiment can be attributed to the manipulation of the independent variable rather than to some other, confounding variable.

• External validity is the extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other contexts in the “real world.”

• A related concept is inter-rater reliability, the degree to which different raters agree on their observations of the same data.

• STATISTICS : Descriptive statistics summarize data, whereas inferential statistics allow researchers to test hypotheses about data and determine how confident they can be in their inferences about the data.

Descriptive Statistics

• The mean is the arithmetic average of a set of numbers.

• The mode is the most frequently occurring value in the data set. (If two numbers both appear with the greatest frequency, the distribution is called bimodal.)

• The median is the number that falls exactly in the middle of a distribution of numbers.

• These statistics can be represented by a normal curve.

• The range is simply the largest number minus the smallest number.

• Variability refers to how much the numbers in the set differ from one another.

• The standard deviation measures a function of the average dispersion of numbers around the mean and is a commonly used measure of variability.

• Percentiles express the standing of one score relative to all other scores in a set of data.

• A positive skew means that most values are on the lower end, but there are some exceptionally large values.

• A negative skew means the opposite: most values are on the higher end, but there are some exceptionally small values. This creates a “tail” or skew toward the negative end.

• The correlation coefficient is a statistic that will give us such information.

• The Pearson correlation coefficient is a descriptive statistic that describes the linear relationship between two attributes.

Inferential Statistics

• Inferential statistics are used to determine our level of confidence in claiming that a given set of results would be extremely unlikely to occur if the result were only up to chance.

• Sample size refers to the number of observations or individuals measured.

• The null hypothesis states that a treatment had no effect in an experiment.

• The alternative hypothesis is that the treatment did have an effect.

• Alpha is the accepted probability that the result of an experiment can be attributed to chance rather than the manipulation of the independent variable.

• A Type I error refers to the conclusion that a difference exists when, in fact, this difference does not exist.

• A Type II error refers to the conclusion that there is no difference when, in fact, there is a difference.

  • The probability of making a Type I error is called the p-value.

ETHICS IN RESEARCH

• Occasionally, psychological experiments involve deception, which may be used if informing participants of the nature of the experiment might bias results.

  • This deception is typically small, but in rare instances it can be extreme.

• Stanley Milgram conducted obedience experiments in which he convinced participants that they were administering painful electric shocks to other participants, when, in fact, no shocks were given.

• Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) assess research plans before the research is approved to ensure that it meets all ethical standards.

• Participants must give informed consent; in other words, they agree to participate in the study only after they have been told what their participation entails.

• After the experiment is concluded, participants must receive a debriefing, in which they are told the exact purpose of their participation in the research and of any deception that may have been used in the process of experimentation.

• Confidentiality is another area of concern for psychology.

Chapter 7: Biological Bases: The Brain and Nervous System

Chapter 7 Flashcard Set

INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR

• Physiological psychology is the study of behavior as influenced by biology.

• It draws its techniques and research methods from biology and medicine to examine psychological phenomena.

IMAGING TECHNIQUES

• Imaging techniques allow researchers to map the structure and/or activity of the brain and correlate this data with behavior.

• An EEG (electroencephalogram) measures subtle changes in brain electrical activity through electrodes placed on the head.

• Computerized axial tomography scans, better known as CAT scans, generate cross-sectional images of the brain using a series of X-ray pictures taken from different angles.

• MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) uses extremely powerful electromagnets and radio waves to get 3-D structural information from the brain.

• Functional MRI (fMRI) and PET scans (positron emission tomography) do allow scientists to view the brain as it is working.

FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

• The nervous system can be divided into two distinct subsystems:

  • Central nervous system (CNS)—comprising the brain and the spinal cord

  • Peripheral nervous system (PNS)—comprising all other nerves in the body.

• The brain is located in the skull and is the central processing center for thoughts, motivations, and emotions.

• The brain, as well as the rest of the nervous system, is made up of neurons, or nerve cells.

• Nerves sending information to the brain are sensory (or afferent) neurons; those conveying information from the brain are motor (or efferent) neurons.

• Reflexes are quick and involuntary responses to environmental stimuli.

• The PNS can be subdivided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system.

  • The somatic nervous system is responsible for voluntary movement of large skeletal muscles.

  • The autonomic nervous system controls the nonskeletal or smooth muscles, such as those of the heart and digestive tract.

• The sympathetic nervous system is associated with processes that burn energy.

  • This is the system responsible for the heightened state of physiological arousal known as the fight-or-flight reaction—an increase in heart rate and respiration, accompanied by a decrease in digestion and salivation.

• The parasympathetic nervous system is the complementary system responsible for conserving energy.

NEUROANATOMY

• The brain is divided into three distinct regions that have evolved over time.

• These are the hindbrain, the midbrain, and the forebrain (limbic system and cerebral cortex).

The Hindbrain

• The oldest part of the brain to develop, in evolutionary terms

• Composed of the cerebellum, medulla oblongata, reticular activating system (RAS), and pons

• Cerebellum—controls muscle tone and balance

• Medulla oblongata—controls involuntary actions, such as breathing, digestion, heart rate, and swallowing (basic life functions)

• Reticular activating system (RAS)—controls arousal (wakefulness and alertness).

  • This is also known as the reticular formation.

• Pons—Latin for “bridge,” the pons is a way station, passing neural information from one brain region to another.

  • The pons is also implicated in REM sleep.

The Midbrain

• The midbrain is a region of the brain that helps to control vision, hearing, and other functions related to movement.

• It also plays an important role in processing sensory information from the body and sending it back to other parts of the brain.

• The midbrain is located between the forebrain and hindbrain, forming a bridge between them.

• Major components of the midbrain are the tectum and the tegmentum

  • These two act as the brain’s roof (tectum) and floor (tegmentum).

• The tectum and tegmentum govern visual and auditory reflexes, such as orienting to a sight or sound.

The Forebrain

• The forebrain is the part of the brain located at the front of the head, consisting mainly of the cerebrum.

• The forebrain is responsible for higher-level thinking such as abstract thought and decision making.

• It also plays a role in learning, memory formation, and language processing.

  • Additionally, it controls many bodily functions like movement and coordination.

• Contains the limbic system, or emotional center of the brain

• Composed of the thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus

• Thalamus—relays sensory information; receives and directs sensory information from visual and auditory systems

• Hippocampus—involved in processing and integrating memories.

• Amygdala—implicated in the expression of anger and frustration

• Hypothalamus—controls the temperature and water balance of the body; controls hunger and sex drives; orchestrates the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system; and it can be divided into the lateral hypothalamus and ventromedial hypothalamus, the combination of which regulates eating behaviors and body weight.

• Also contains the cerebral cortex, or the wrinkled outer layer of the brain

• This area receives sensory input (sensory cortex) and sends out motor information (motor cortex).

• The cortex covers two symmetrical-looking sides of the brain known as the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

  • These hemispheres are joined together by a band of connective nerve fibers called the corpus callosum.

• The left hemisphere is typically specialized for language processing, as first noticed by Paul Broca, who observed that brain damage to the left hemisphere in stroke patients resulted in expressive aphasia, or loss of the ability to speak.

  • This area of the brain is known as Broca’s area.

• Another researcher, Carl Wernicke, discovered an area in the left temporal lobe that, when damaged in stroke patients, resulted in receptive aphasia, or the inability to comprehend speech.

  • This is called Wernicke’s Area.

• Roger Sperry demonstrated that the two hemispheres of the brain can operate independently of each other.

  • He did this by performing experiments on split-brain patients who had their corpus callosums severed to control their epileptic seizures.

• Damage to these association areas can lead to a variety of dysfunctions, including apraxia, the inability to organize movement; agnosia, a difficulty processing sensory input; alexia, the inability to read; and agraphia, the inability to write.

NEURAL TRANSMISSION

• Nerves are bundles of neurons, the basic unit of the nervous system.

  • Neurons are cells with a clearly defined, nucleated cell body, or soma.

  • Branching out from the soma are dendrites, which receive input from other neurons through receptors on their surface.

  • The axon is a long, tubelike structure that responds to input from the dendrites and soma.

• Some neurons have a fatty coating known as a myelin sheath surrounding the axon.

• The myelin looks like beads on a string; the small gaps between the “beads” are known as the nodes of Ranvier.

• The axons end in terminal buttons, knobs on the branched end of the axon.

  • The gap between them is known as a synapse.

• A terminal button releases neurotransmitters, chemical messengers, across the synapse, where they bind with receptors on subsequent dendrites.

• Leak channels are channels that are open all the time and that simply allow ions to “leak” across the membrane according to their gradient.

• An action potential, also referred to as a nerve impulse, is a disturbance in this membrane potential.

• Excitatory neurotransmitters serve to excite the cell or cause the neuron to fire.

• Inhibitory neurotransmitters inhibit (or stop) cell firing.

• Michael Gazzaniga has not only done pioneering research in this area, focusing on split-brain patients, but also published works in cognitive neuroscience for the general reader.

ENDOCRINE SYSTEM

• The endocrine system provides another way by which various parts of our bodies relay information to one another.

  • This system works through groups of cells known as glands, which release substances called hormones.

• The primary gland is the pituitary gland, which is also known as the master gland.

• Stressful situations cause the pituitary to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the adrenal glands, resulting in fight-or-flight reactions.

• The adrenal glands secrete epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline).

• The thyroid gland, located at the front of the neck, produces thyroxine, which is important for regulating cellular metabolism.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT: BEHAVIORAL GENETICS

• Traits are distinctive characteristics or behavior patterns that are determined by genetics.

• Genes are the basic biological elements responsible for carrying information about traits between successive generations.

• A dominant trait is more likely to be expressed in offspring than is a recessive trait.

• A genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell or of an organism.

  • The genotype is distinct from the expressed features, or phenotype, of the cell or organism.

• Down syndrome occurs when there are three copies of the 21st chromosome, which generally causes some degree of intellectual disability.

• Huntington’s chorea is a genetic disorder that results in muscle impairment that does not typically occur until after age 40.