7/30/2019 PSYA01 Chapter 1

1/4

CHAPTER 1

William James (1842-1910)

* was excited by the new field of psychology, which allowed him to apply ascientific approach to age-old questions about the nature of human beings

* was confused and left medical school in order to travel the world

mind- refers to our private inner experience, the ever-flowing stream ofcounsciousness that is made of perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings

behaviour- refers to observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals,the things that we do in the world, by ourselves or with others

psychology- is the scientific study of mind and behaviour

functional magnetic resonance (fMRI)- allows scientists to scan a brain and seewhich parts are active when a person does something

structuralists- who tried to analyze the mind by breaking it down into its basiccomponents

functionalists- who focused ono how mental abilities allow people to adapt to theirenvironments

nativism- the philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate orinborn

* greek philosopher Plato believed in nativism

philosophical empiricism- all knowledge is acquired through experience

* Aristotle believed in empiricism

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)- made contributions to many fields of inquiry, fromphysiology to philosophy. He is probably best known for his suggestion that thebody and soul are fundamentally different

* suggested that the mind influences the body through a tiny structure nearthe bottom of the brain known as the pineal gland

dualism- how mental activity can be reconciled and coordinated with physicalbehaviour

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)- argued that the mind and body aren`t differentthings at all, rather the mind is what the brain does

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)- also thought that the brains and minds werelinked, but by size rather than glands

phyrenology- that specific mental abilities and characteristics are localized inspecific regions of the brain

7/30/2019 PSYA01 Chapter 1

2/4

physiology- is the study of biological processes, especially in the human body

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94)- estimated the length of time it takes anerve impulse to travel to the brain by measuring a person's reaction times todifferent stimuli

*stimulus- sensory input from the environment

* reaction time- the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)- trained people to tell him what they saw in theirmind, but it was still an issue because they might be telling us something different.

* consciousness- a person's subjective experience of the world and the mind

* structuralism- the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind

* introspection- the subjective observation of one's own experience

functionalism-school of thought that followed Structuralism and moved away from focusingon the structure of the mind to a concern with how the conscious is related to behaviorwhat functions does a behaviour have

natural selection- the feautures of an oraganism that help it survive andreproduce are more likely than other feautres to be passed on to subsequentgenerations

clinical psychology- other psychologists were beginning to study patients withpsychological disorders.

* one could often understand how something works by examining how itbreaks, and their obsercations of mental disorders influenced thedevelopment of psychology

hysteria- a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result ofemotionally upsetting experiences

* when the patients were put into a trancelike state through hypnosis, theirsymptoms disappeared

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)- worked with hysteric patients

* theorized that many of the patients' problems could be traced to the effectsof painful childhood experiences that the person could not remember, and he

suggested that the powerful indluence of these lost memories revealed thepresence of an unconscious mind

* unconscious- is the part of the mind that operates outside of consciousawareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions

* psychoanalytic theory- the importance of unconscious mental processes inshaping feelings, thoughts, and behaviours . It required a thoroughexploration of the person's early sexual experiences and unconscious sexual

7/30/2019 PSYA01 Chapter 1

3/4

desires. These topics were not discussed in that time.

* psychoanalysis- bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness tobetter understand psychological disorders. Patients recall past experience.

* Freud did not conduct psychological experiments

* Freud's ideas were difficult to test and a theory that cant be tested is oflimited use in psychology or other sciences

humanistic psychology- to understand human nature we should look at positivepotential of a human

* Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers introduced this approach in response towhat they viewed as the overly pessimistic view of psychoanalysis

behaviorism- all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Behaviors can be measured andchanged

* so far structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis were similar in the waythat each examined conscious perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings.

* behaviorism represented a dramatic departure from previous schools orthoughts

* Watson proposed that psychologists should focus on what people do ratherthan what people experience

* behaviour can be observed by anyone and can be measured objectively

* Watson believed that human behaviour is mostly influenced by theenvironment

reinforcement- the consequences of a behaviour that determine whether it will bemore likely that the behaviour will occur again

* Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904-90) introduced this principle after using whatis called a skinner box

Illusions- errors of perception, memory or judgment in which subjective experiencediffers from objective reality

Gestalt psychology- a psychological approach that emphasizes that we oftenperceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

* Wertheimer`s interpretation of the illusion led to this development

Hermann Ebbinghaus- tried to discover how fast and how well he could memorizemeaningless information such as 3-letter nonsense syllables

Sir Frederic Bartlett- gave people stories to remember and observed what errorsthey would make when re-telling it

7/30/2019 PSYA01 Chapter 1

4/4

* often remembered what should have happened or what they expected tohappen rather than what did happen

* suggested that memory is not a photographic reproduction of the pastexperience and that our attempts to recall the past are powerfully influencedby our knowledge, beliefs, hopes, aspirations, and desires

cognitive psychology- the scientific study of mental processes, includingperception, thought, memory and reasoning

* this developed because psychologists wondered whether the computer mightbe useful as a model for the human brain

behavioral neuroscience- an approach to psychology that links psychologicalprocesses to activities in the nervous system and other bodily processes

PET scans- a brain imaging technology that psychologists use to observe the livingbrain (pg. 25)

cognitive neuroscience- a field that attempts to understand the links betweencognitive processes and brain activity

evolutionary psychology- a psychological approach that explains mind andbehaviour in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time bynatural selection

social psychology- the study of the causes and consequences of interpersonalbehaviour

cultural psychology- is the study of how cultures reflect and shape thepsychological processes of their members