module 2

Question 1

mind body problem

Answer 1

how are mental events related to, or caused by, physical mechanisms of the body

Question 2

dualism

Answer 2

view that the mind and body consist of fundamentally different substances or properties

Question 3

monism

Answer 3

idea that there is only one basic substance in the world - as opposed to dualism

Question 4

physicalism/materialism vs idealism

Answer 4

both forms of monism
physicalism/materialism: there is only physical matter - only the body is real
idealism: only the mind is real

Question 5

neutral monism

Answer 5

mind and body are the same thing

Question 6

structuralism

Answer 6

school of psychology that emerges in late 1800s - focus was on discovering the most basic elements of the mind in order to understand complex though - wilhem wudnt

Question 7

introspection

Answer 7

method used by structuralists - carefully considering and describing internal experiences in terms of basic ‘elements’ of consciousness - also related to self report

Question 8

critiques of structuralism

Answer 8

• methods are too subjective - introspection can’t be objectively verified by others and is difficult to replicate
• too much of a focus on basic applications - simple conscious processes

Question 9

behaviourism

Answer 9

a school of psychology that focuses on studying behaviour instead of the mind - concerned with what can be observed, not mental processes - behaviourists believe that behaviour is learned rather than innate

Question 10

learning in behaviourism

Answer 10

classical conditioning - pavlov
instrumental learning (environment constrains opportunity for reward - have to do something to reach it) - thorndike
operant conditioning (response is required for reinforcement) - skinner

Question 11

positive vs negative conditioning

Answer 11

positive: adding something like an electric shock or a treat
negative: taking something away like removing a treat or turning off a loud sound

Question 12

critiques of behaviourism

Answer 12

inflexible
- doesn’t account for complex behaviour
- assumes that learning is the same for all individuals - ex. ignores latent learning (learning in the absence of conditioning - like tolmans rats forming a cognitive map of a maze) and learning strategies - people apply language rules to new situations = new behaviour

Question 13

cognitive revolution

Answer 13

shift in psychology that occurred in the 1950s - scientists began to accept that we must also study mental states - inspired by a rise in technology and the analogy of the mind as a processor of information, like a computer

Question 14

waugh and norman’s model of memory

Answer 14

an example of research inspired by the cognitive revolution - basically a flow chart that describes two different types of memory - primary and secondary - we process information that enters our primary memory through rehearsal in order to put it into our secondary memory - if we don’t have enough cognitive resources to transfer the information, we forget it

Question 15

cognitive approach

Answer 15

based on the idea that we can measure objective behaviour in order to test theories of underlying mental processes

Question 16

information processing experiments - william hick

Answer 16

measures the relationship between choice reaction time and the amount of information within an event - found that more content slowed reaction time

Question 17

plato’s contribution to cognitive psychology

Answer 17

concept of deductive reasoning - the world is a reflection of reality - bottom up and top down processes interact to create our vision of the world

idea of innate aspect of mental processes leads to the idea of rationalism - innate knowledge and logic leads to reason

Question 18

aristotle’s contribution to cognitive psychology

Answer 18

empiricism - observational reasoning - knowledge comings from forming associations between what we observe

Question 19

psychophysics

Answer 19

studies cognitive phenomenon by linking sensory experiences to physical changes -ex. measuring thresholds

Question 20

mental chronometry

Answer 20

estimating time for a participant to perceive something

Question 21

functionalism

Answer 21

study of psychology that is interested in usefulness rather than basic elements - focus on adaptive functions of our mind with a big emphasis on context
- believed that consciousness is personal and can’t be broken down into parts as it is constantly changing
- hard to study

Question 22

hicks law

Answer 22

a mathematical equation that shows that the more information contained in a signal, the longer it takes to make a response to the signal

Question 23

decision fatigue

Answer 23

making decisions taxes cognitive processing and we have a limited amount of cognitive processing

Question 24

webster and thompsom

Answer 24

information processing has limits - air traffic controller test with simultaenous messages - demonstrated that the amount of information we can process is determined by familiarity

Question 25

ecological validity

Answer 25

the extent to which the findings of research study can be generalized to real life naturalistic settings - have to consider how context affects cognition