list of famous psychologists (5)

8/12/2019 List of Famous Psychologists (5)

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1.Gazzaniga, M.S. (1967):The split brain in man.

Michael Gazzaniga, along with Roger

Sperry, cut the corpus callosum that

connects the two hemispheres of the

brain. They found that the hemispheres

of the brain were still able to operate,

albeit isolated from one another, as therewas no longer any connection between

them. This resulted in the discovery of

the specific functions of the left and right

brain and hemispheres.

2.Rosenzweir, M.R.,Bennett, E.L., and

Diamond, M.C. (1972):

Brain changes in

response to experience.

Rosenzweir, Bennett, and Diamond

studied the brain activity of rats placed

in normal cages and rats placed in cages

with toys, ladders, tunnels, etc. They

found that the latter group, which had

experienced with toys, had affected

activity of cholinesterase in the brain,and eventually that cerebral cortex

volume had increased. This resulted in

the discovery of memory traces.

3.Bouchard, T., Lykken, D.,McGue, M., Segal, N., and

Tellegen, A. (1990):

Sources of human

psychologicaldifferences.

Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, and

Tellegen all studied various pairs of

twins. They discovered that identical

twins raised together had the most

similar IQ in comparison to identical

twins raised apart or fraternal twins.

This led to the discovery that both

genetics and environmental factorsinfluenced intelligence.

4.Gibson, E.J., and Walk,R.D. (1960): The visual

cliff.

Walk and Gibson built a special table

covered by glass that had a big drop on

one side. They took infants ranging from

6 to 14 months and encouraged them to

crawl over the shallow or deep side of

the table. They found that most of their

subjects would not crawl over the deep

side. This led to the discovery thatinfants developed depth perception at a

very young age, which was later

estimated to be at around 2 months.


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5.Fantz, R.I. (1961): Theorigin of form

perception.

Fantz tooks infants and exposed them to

various shapes and surroundings. His

studies found that infants preferred to

look at complex patterns, three

dimensions, and human faces and voices.

His research led to the discovery of formperception.

6.Aserinsky, E., andKleitman, N. (1953):

Regularly occurring

periods of eye mobility

and concomitant

phenomena during sleep.

Aserinsky and Kleitman observed the

twitching eyes of sleeping subjects for

certain periods of time and measured

their brain activity during that period.

They discovered that sometime during

Stage Two of sleep, subjects would have

twitching eyes, brain waves similar to

beta waves, body conditions near

waking levels, and dreams. This led to

the discovery of REM sleep.

7.Hobson, J.A., andMcCarley, R. W. (1977):

The brain as a dream-

state generator: an

activation-synthesis

hypothesis of the dream

process.

Hobson and McCarley proposed that

brain activity during REM sleep resulted

in dream synthesis. The higher centers of

the cortex are active during these

periods, while the frontal lobes are not,

resulting in the often-bizarre nature of

dreams. This idea would later become

the activation-synthesis hypothesis.

8.Spanos, N. P. (1982):Hypnotic behavior: a

cognitive, social,

psychological

perspective.

Spanos theorized that hypnotic behavior

is actually within the voluntary behavior

of conscious humans. He stated that

people believed that they were being

hypnotized because their behavior fit

their standards of hypnotic behavior.

This explanation led to the cognitive and

social perspectives concerning hypnoticbehavior.

9.Pavlov, I. P. (1927):Conditioned reflexes.

Pavlov discovered that dogs would

salivate whenever they say their food.

Thus, he would ring a bell whenever a

dog saw their food and salivated.

Eventually, the dog would salivate at the

sound of the ringing bell alone. This


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experiment led to the process of classical

conditioning, and established Pavlov as

one of the founders of behavioral

psychology.

10. Watson, J. B. andRayner, R. (1920):

Conditioned emotional

responses.

Watson and Rayner showed a white rat

to a baby named Little Albert whilesimultaneously playing a loud noise

which scared Little Albert and caused

him to cry. Eventually, after presenting

this scenario to the baby several times,

Little Albert would cry upon sight of the

rat, having been conditioned to be

scared of it. This experiment proved that

phobias could be learned through

classical conditioning.

11. Skinner, B.F.(1948): Superstition in

the pigeon.

Skinner attempted to create a

pigeon-guided missile during

WWII. This missile consisted of a

missile with a picture of a target

which would be reflected inside

the missile, where a pigeon,

trained to recognize the target

through operant conditioning,

steered the missile by pecking at

the target. To Skinners dismay,

the U.S. government canceled the

project, causing Skinner to

complain that no one would take

us seriously. This proved to be

somewhat true, as the experiment

did show signs of success.


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12. Bandura, A., Ross,D., and Ross, S.A. (1961):

Transmission of

aggression throughimitation of aggressive

models.

Bandura conducted a study which

involved having a preschool child in a

room in which the experimenter and a

model interact with toys in front of the

child. In one condition, the model played

with the toys in a non-aggressivemanner, ignoring the Bobo inflated dollthat was placed nearby. In another

condition, the model beat the Bobo doll

in an aggressive manner. After watching

the model, the child was observed alone

in the same room. Children exposed to

the first condition ignored the Bobo doll,

while children exposed to the second

condition beat the Bobo doll in the same

manner as the model had. Bandura used

this study to conclude that behavior canbe learned through observation, and

later used it to create the social learning

theory.

13. Rosenthal, R. andJacobson, L. (1966):

Teachers expectancies:

determinates of pupils

IQ gains.

Rosenthal and Jacobson gave teachers at

a California elementary school IQ tests,

telling them that certain students

(actually randomly chosen) would

improve. At the end of the study, the

chosen students actually improved. This

study led to the creation of the

Pygmalion effect, which states that if aperson has greater expectations placed

on them, they will perform better.

14. Gardner, H. (1983):Frames of mind: the

theory of multiple

intelligences.

Gardner proposed that intelligence is not

made up of one entity instead, they aresplit into nine different kinds. Every

individual possesses a unique blend of

these intelligences. This theory led to the

creation of many others that propose

different kinds of intelligence.

15. Tolman, E. C.(1948): Cognitive maps

in rats and men.

Tolman taught three groups of rats thesame maze, one at a time. The first group

of rats were placed in the maze and

reinforced with food upon getting out.

The second group of rats were treated

like the first, but they never received any

food reinforcement until the eleventh

trial. The third group of rats underwent


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the same treatment, but were never

reinforced. At first, the first group of rats

tried solving the maze while the other

groups just wandered around, but upon

receiving reinforcement, the second

group of rats were able to solve the mazealmost immediately. Tolman concluded

that the rats in the second group had

learned the maze and created a cognitive

map while wandering around. They had

stored the information, but had never

demonstrated it, as there was no reason

to. The map remained latent (hidden)

until the rats had a reason to use it.

Tolman called this latent learning,

learning that remains hidden until its

application becomes useful.16. Loftus, E. F. (1975):

Leading questions and

the eyewitness report.

In an experiment, Loftus showed

subjects a 3-minute video clip taken

from the movie Diary of a Student

Revolution, in which 8 demonstrators

run into a classroom, noisily confront the

professor, who is in the middle of a

lecture, and then leave. After the video

ended, 2 questionnaires were

distributed containing a key question

(Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators

who entered the classroom male? orWas the leader of the 12 demonstrators

who entered the classroom male?) and90 filler questions. Half of the subjects

were asked Was the leader of the 4

demonstrators who entered the

classroom male? while the other half

was asked Was the leader of the 12

demonstrators who entered the

classroom male? After a week, subjectswere given a new set of questions, the

key question being How manydemonstrators did you see entering the

classroom? The people who hadincorrectly answered 4 now answered

6.4, and the people who had incorrectly

answered 12 now answered 8.9. Loftus

proposed that this error was due to the


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18. Piaget, J. (1954):The development of

object concept.

Through studying his three children,

Piaget proposed that children form

schemes (mental concepts) as they

experience new situations, objects, and

events. Piaget believed that children first

try to understand new things in terms of

schemes they already possess throughassimilation. The process of altering or

adjusting old schemes to fit new info and

experiences is called accommodation.

Piaget also proposed that there are four

main stages of cognitive development:

the sensorimotor stage, in which infants

begin to interact with objects, the

preoperational stage, in which children

are able to interact with objects, but are

not capable of logical thought, the

concrete operations stage, in which

children are capable of logical thought,

but not abstract thought, and the formal

operations stage, in which children are

capable of abstract thought. Piagets

theory provided the basis of

understanding cognitive development in

subjects trying to compromise what they

had actually seen with later information.

This proved that what people see and

hear about an event after it has occurred

can easily affect the accuracy of their

memories of the event.17. Harlow, H.F.

(1958): The nature of

love.

Harlow isolated eight baby rhesus

monkeys shortly after their birth, placing

each in a cage with two surrogate

mothers a block of would covered in

soft padding and terry cloth and a wire

mesh containing food, both heated.

Harlow recorded the amount of time the

monkeys spent with each mother.

Although the latter mother held food,the monkeys tended to spend more time

with the former mother, thus leadingHarlow to conclude that comforting

contact was an important part of love.


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the 20thcentury.

19. Kohlberg, L. (1963):The development of

childrens orientations

toward a moral order:

sequence in the

development of moral

thought.

Kohlberg outlined a theory of the

development of moral thinking by

looking how people of various ages

responded to stories about people

caught up in moral dilemmas. Kohlberg

proposed three levels of moral

development based on his findings:

preconventional morality (often found in

very young children), in which behavior

is governed by its consequences,

conventional morality (found in mostchildren and adults), in which behavior

is judged by social norms, and

postconventional morality (found in

20% of the adult population), in which

behavior is judged by his own principles.

Kohlbergs theory provided the basis of

understanding moral development in the

20thcentury.

20. Langer, E. J., andRodin, J. (1976): Theeffects of choice and

enhanced personal

responsibility for the

aged: a field experiment

in an institutional setting.

Langer and Rodin gave each of the

residents in a nursing home a

houseplant. Decisions about the care ofthe plant (how much water and sun it

should receive, etc.) were up to the

residents. Residents in the experimental

group were allowed to make other

choices as well, such as whether they

wanted to watch a movie, etc., while

residents in the control group were told

that the staff would take care of the

plants and were not encouraged to make

their own choices. At the end of the

study, it was revealed that the residents

in the experimental group were more

vigorous, active, and associable than

those in the control group. This revealed

that having more control over your

lifestyle reduces stress.

list of famous psychologists (5)

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