PSY 1101 Lecture Notes - Experimental Psychology, Clinical Psychology, American Philosophy

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Kenneth Campbell

Document Summary

Its origins come from the words logos (the study) and psyche (the mind). Logically, therefore, psychology is the study of the mind, but this does not help much if we cannot define what we mean by the mind. Many claim that mental events take place within the mind. By mental events, we mean activities such as attention-consciousness, information processing, thought-language, memory, and decision-making. These labels are, however, still vague and abstract. If psychology is a science, like any other science, we need to define and measure our terms. These vague terms are neither easily defined nor measured. Psychology is (or should be) the study of overt (what we can see ) behaviour. A scientist cannot directly observe mental events because they occur somewhere within your mind (or brain). For this course, we shall use a compromise definition of psychology the study of mental events and behaviour.