PS101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Donald O. Hebb, Gestalt Psychology, Scientific Method
Document Summary
Task of psychology is to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related. Wanted to identify and examine the fundamental components of conscious experience. Mostly focused on sensation and perception in vision, hearing, and touch. Careful, systematic self-observation of one"s own conscious experience. Required training to make the subject more objective and more aware. Subjects exposed to auditory tones, optical illusions, and visual stimuli under carefully controlled and systematically varied conditions. Limitations associated with introspection factored into demise of structuralism. If you depend solely on the subject"s reflection to document a phenomenon, there is no independent objective evaluation of that claim. Function or purpose of consciousness, rather than structure. Heritable characteristics that provide a survival or reproductive advantage are more likely than alternative characteristics to be advantage are more likely than alternative characteristics to be passed on to subsequent generations and thus come to be selected over time.
