1. History Flashcards by Anny W

What is Empiricism vs. Nativisim

Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes from our own experience, and nativism emphasizes the role of biological factors/innate abilities

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Who supported Empiricism

John Locke, David Hume, Stuart Mill

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Who supported Nativism

Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant

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What was Wilhelm Wundt’s approach to psychology

Structuralism: the search for the building blocks of the mind
Best studied in a lab

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What is Structuralism vs. Functionalism

Structuralism believed consciousness was built up of individual units. They preferred lab settings so they could control all variables
Functionalism says that we should primarily focus on explaining the mind’s functions, and so we need to see the whole organism in real life situations

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What was William James’s approach to psychology

Functionalism: Experimental psychologists should try to explain the functions of the mind

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Who’s primary experimental method was introspection?

James Baldwin

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What is Introspection

Ask highly trained observers to describe their conscious experiences

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What are some problems with Introspection?

There are parts of human cognition that do not occur with conscious awareness

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What is Behaviourism

Argued that scientists should only focus on observable behaviour, emphasized on the relationship between inputs + outputs
View of psychology as a purely objective science

Skinner

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What is a key assumption of Gestalt Psychology

Psychological phenomena should be studied in its entirety and not be reduced to simple elements.
Believed that we experience things as a whole experience or object (top down)

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What is Francis Galton most known for?

Study of mental imagery as a cognitive ability
was interested in individual differences (genetically intelligence)

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What are 4 key points that acted as precursors to the cognitive revolution

Human factors engineering
Developments in the field of linguistics
Developments in Neuroscience
Development of computers and AI systems

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What is the Person-Machine System

Part of Human factors engineering, the idea that machinery operated by a person must be designed to with the operator’s physical + cognitive limitations in mind

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Why was Human Factors Engineering prevalent to cognitive science?

Recognition that individuals are limited capacity processors of information
Broadbent

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What did Noam Chomsky do?

Studied linguistics and realized humans have an innate capacity to acquire language that is not grounded by laws/conditioning
Counter to behaviourism

What did Donald Hebb do?

Suggested that some kinds of functions like visual perceptions are constructed over time by building cell assemblies

What did Donald Hubel and Torsten Weisel do?

Visual Cortex of cats experiement
- Certain cells in cats were specialized to respond to specific kinds of stimuli
- Early exposure shaped brain development

What did the work of Donald Hebb + Donald Hubel & Torsten Weisel collectively show?

Causes of cognitive revolution - neuroscience side.
Showed that cognitive functions can be localized to specific parts of the brain

What is the Computer Metaphor of the Mind?

Comparison of people’s cognitive activities to a computer
- We need to be fed information (data/acquired through senses)
- Have structures that allow us to process and store information

What are four major paradigms used by psychologists to frame their research

Information Processing
Connectionism
Evolutionary Approach
Ecological Approach

What is a paradigm

Way of structuring knowledge based on what its proponents consider to be important
- includes assumptions
- specifies experimental methods

Describe the information processing approach and its assumptions

Spawned by human mind/computer analogy, and that cognition can be thought of as information
Assumes that:
- cognitive abilities are interconnected “systems”
- people are general purpose symbol manipulators
experimentally, scientists focus on:
understanding the nature of the representations

Describe the connectionist approach

There is no central place where information is stored
Called neural networks (neuron inspired)
Units are connected by weights that are modifiable by learning

once activation is strong enough on interrelated connections, a response will come to mind

what are two types of connections in the connectivist approach

activation: positively weighted connection between units inhibition: negative weights

what are key differences between information processing + connectionist approaches

info: assumes cognition unfolds step by step in order (serial) connectionist: assumes cognitive processes occur simultaneously (parallel)

what are key similarities between information processing + connectionist approaches

both: assumes cognition is best understood by studying basic mechanisms assumes these mechanisms are stale across situations + is best tested in a lab

Describe the evolutionary approach

argues that we should understand cognition by understanding our evolutionary pressures cognition as an evolved system

what did cosmides and tooby predict for people's reasoning skills (evolutionary psychology)

they predicted that people's reasoning + decision making is better in social situations

describe the ecological approach to cognitive psychology

cognitive activities are shaped by the culture/context in which they occur

what did daniel smilek and allan kingstone do for ecological approach to cognitive psychology

Attention in everyday life: - investigating eye movements to real life static and dynamic displays - eye fixations are concentrated to eyes and faces of people on scene - thus eyes, head position, body positions are main cues for people to understand the gist of a scene

What philosophy did john watson support

behaviourism

What are some research methods in cognitive psychology

naturalistic observation introspection experiments quasi-experiments

what are the advantages + disadvantages of naturalistic observation

advantages: - ecological validity: occurs in the real world and not just in the lab disadvantage: - lack of experimental control - observer's recordings are only as good as what they believe important to record

explain experiments vs. quasi-experiments

experiments: manipulate one ore more independent variables to see how the recorded var changes quasi-experiments: includes independent variables that cannot be controlled by the experimenter (ex. sex, ethnicity, age)

What is a between-subjects vs within-subjects design

between: different participants are assigned to different experimental conditions and the researcher looks at differences between the two groups within: same participants are exposed to more than one condition, and researchers look at difference in performance

What did lave, murtaugh find when they studied arithmetic calculation everyday life? (ecological approach)

they found that people buying groceries : - constructed the problem themself - often contained many answers vs. just one correct one tldr: people's methods of calculation varied with context despite learning the same methods of calculation in schoool

Mode, quality, intensity, and duration together comprise __________ that Wundt proposed ___________.

the four building blocks; as the basis for any conscious thought or idea.