History

Question 1

Psychology

Answer 1

• the study of the soul & mind

- the science of mental processes and behaviour

Question 2

Cognition

Answer 2

mental functions pertaining to the action of process of knowing

Question 3

cognitive psychology

Answer 3

the scientific study of how people perceive, learn, remember, think about, and act on information

• rejects introspection as a primary tool
• accepts the existence of internal mental states

Question 4

plato

Answer 4

rationalism

• first approach
• reality lies in the abstract idea of objects that exist in our minds
• truth through reason

Question 5

aristotle

Answer 5

empiricism

• reality lies only in the concrete world of objects that our bodies sense
• truth through observing

Question 6

Descartes

Answer 6

dualism

• mind is immaterial (irrelevant)
• brain is physical

Question 7

Donders

Answer 7

first scientific psychologist

mental chronometry
- measuring how long a cognitive process takes

reaction-time experiment
-measures interval between stimulus presentation and person response to stimulus

mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behavior

Question 8

simple RT task

Answer 8

participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears

measurement of how long it takes to respond to a single stimuli

Question 9

choice RT task

Answer 9

participant pushes one button if light is on right side, another if light is on left side
measurement of how long it takes to react to one of multiple stimuli

Question 10

subtraction method

Answer 10

choice RT - simple RT = time to make a decision

Question 11

how much longer for choice RT than simple RT

Answer 11

0.1 seconds (100 millisecond)

Question 12

assumption of serial stages

Answer 12

processing stages occur one after another, not in parallel

Question 13

assumption of pure insertion

Answer 13

adding an additional stage does not change the length of the other stages

Question 14

Ebbinghaus

Answer 14

• savings curve method for studying forgetting
• the quantitative measurement of mental processes (info we can store in our mind & how long things stick around)
• mental contents cannot always be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behaviour

Question 15

savings method

Answer 15

savings = [initial reps - relearning reps] / initial reps

Question 16

Wundt

Answer 16

First psychology laboratory
Approach: Structuralism
- experience is determined by combing elements of experience called sensations
Method: Analytic introspection
- participants trained to describe experience and thought processes in response to stimuli

Question 17

William James

Answer 17

Wrote the first psychology textbook - principles of psychology
based on introspection

Question 18

John Watson

Answer 18

Behaviorist

• wanted to eliminate the mind as s topic and study directly observable behaviour
• pavlov’s dog
• thought introspection had extremely variable results from person to person and that they are difficult to verify

Question 19

Pavlov’s dog

Answer 19

unconditional stimulus - food
unconditional response - salvation 
neutral stimulus - bell 
conditional stimulus - bell 
conditional response - salvation

Question 20

Little Albert

Answer 20

classical conditioning of fear
9-m old became frightened by a rat after a loud noise was paired with every presentation of the rat
rat is - unconditional response

Question 21

B.F. Skiner

Answer 21

operant conditioning
- shape behaviour by rewards or punishment
- behaviour that is reward is repeated & punished is less likely
radical behaviourism (verbal behaviour)
- children learn language through operant conditioning (imitate speech they hear & correct speech is rewarded)

Question 22

Noam Chomsky

Answer 22

children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement

• they say things they have never heard and not be imitating
• say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for
• language must be determined by inborn biological program

Question 23

Tolman

Answer 23

trained rats to find for in a 4-armed maze
2 interpretations
1. behaviourism predicts that the rats learn ed to ‘turn right to find food’
2. the rats had created a cognitive map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm

when flipped the maze the rats went to the specific arm where they previously found food
- supported dolmens interpretation and not behaviourist

Question 24

Cognitive Revolution

Answer 24

digital computer

• theory of computation
• information theory
• computer science
• artificial intelligence

Question 25

cognitivism

Answer 25

mental functions can be explained by the use of experiments following the scientific method - cognition consists of the internal mental states whose manipulation can be described in terms of algorithms

Question 26

Behavioural Methods

Answer 26

- naturalistic observations - case studies - correlational studies - self-reports - controlled laboratory experiments

Question 27

behavioural methods strength & weaknesses

Answer 27

- generalizability (findings applicable across populations - ecological validity (relevant to real word) - experimental control (cause and effect) - observer effect (presence of researcher) - observer bias (researcher acting as neutral)

Question 28

naturalistic observation

Answer 28

- observing participants in real-life settings without manipulation by the researcher - strengths = high ecological validity - weakness = no experimental control, potential for an observer effect/observer bias - rarely used

Question 29

case studies

Answer 29

- detailed analysis of one or a small group of participants - strengths = highly detailed analysis of rare conditions - weaknesses = observation can be subjective and biased, hard to generalize to the population - occasionally used

Question 30

correlational studies

Answer 30

- measure multiple variables and analyze them for relationships between them - strengths = can look at variables that can't be manipulated, good ecological validity - weakness = no experimental control occasionally used

Question 31

self reports

Answer 31

participants report on themselves using tools such as surveys, interviews, and verbal reports - strengths = large samples generalize well to the population, can look at variables that can't be manipulated - weakness = no experimental control, potential for observer bias and social desirability bias can distort findings

Question 32

controlled laboratory experiments

Answer 32

- carefully controlled tasks with independent and dependent variables - strengths = experimental control - weakness = poor ecological validity, can e hard to generalize to the population, observer effects - frequently used

Question 33

which method has the best ecological validity

Answer 33

naturalistic observation

Question 34

computational models

Answer 34

provide quantitive specifications of theories and explore ideas about the nature of cognition - make specific predictions - test non-intuitive ideas - understand our assumptions and realize what we are overlooking - formal language of psyc

Question 35

types of computational models

Answer 35

``` mathematical symbolic (if then) connectionist reinforcement biological dynamic (enters & exits in diff ways) bayesian (stats) ```

Question 36

variability within each participant

Answer 36

- Practice effects, 1 or 2 reaction times could be explained for the being the first few trials - Distractions, attentional effects - Random error - How quickly after you press the button down does the machine detect that

Question 37

variability between participants

Answer 37

- Different equipment (mouse, keyboard, touch) - Different environments - Different times of day, levels of alertness - Eyesight, bad vs good - How big your screen is, changes size of circle - Motor skills, how quickly they can respond - Computer games vs people who don’t use a computer - Genetic factors