PSYCH 111 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Anxiety, Memory, Temporal Lobe
PSYCH 111
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Psych 1/04
• Definition: study of the mind
• The systematic study of mind and behavior
• Areas of Specialization
• Developmental
• Clinical
• Cognitive
• Bio
• Social
• Educational
• Personality
• Organizational
• Nature vs. Nurture?
• A combination of both
• Complicated interactions between both
• Brain or Mind or Behavior? (what should we/psychologists focus on)
• Conscious Experience vs. Unconscious?
• René Descartes (1596-1650)
• French philosopher
• Dualism (body vs. mind)
• Body: directly observable, obeys natural laws, controls reflective behavior
• Soul: observable only through interaction with body, source of free will/thoughts,
uniquely human
• John Locke (1632-1704)
• Empiricism (contradicts dualism)
• Nothing spiritual, just a body
• Rejected the notion that there is a soul divorced from the body
• Believed that all knowledge and thought were derived from sensory experience
• Believed in a. Model of the mind as a blank slate — we are the product of our
sensory experiences
• IDEAS COME FROM EXPERIENCE
• Dualism debate still here
• Not as body vs. soul, but as differences in approach and emphasis
• Can we explain all behavior in terms of neural processes?
• Or are there lots of interesting and important things about behavior that cant be
“reduced” to neural processes?
• Philosophy to Science
• Descartes and Locke didn’t run a lot of experiments
• Most of their data came from their own heads
• Wundt (1832-1920)
• Structuralism
• Elements of thought
• Interested in breaking down conscious experience to its purest elements
• Method of Introspection
• Rely on a personals description of sensations they experience in response to some stimulus
(ex: picture), and try to break those descriptions down into “basic elements”
• William James (1842-1910)
• Functionalism
• Asked what is the reason for structuralism? Whats the point? Whats it for?
• Evolution?
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Psychoanalysis
• Need to dig deeper into the “unconscious mind”
find more resources at oneclass.com
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• Used the iceberg example (most of what goes on in a mind is unconscious, can’t
understand a person without unconscious)
• Behaviorism: Study only observable behavior
• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
• John Watson (1878-1958)
• Psychology should study behavior, not the unobservable mind
• We should look for the causes of behavior in the environment
• No fundamental difference between human and animal behavior
• Understanding behavior requires no reference to any unobservable event occurring
within the individual
• Cognitive revolution
• Use behavior to reveal mind
• Goals of scientific psychology
• Description of events
• Explanation fo why things occur
• Decay vs. rehearsal
• Prediction of future events
• Rapid decay if rehearsal is prevented
• Welsh vs. Chinese vs. English digit span (how many numbers in a row a person can
remember — avg. is around 7)
• Welsh = smallest digit span, Chinese = largest digit span
• Theory
• An organized set of principles that describes, predicts, and explains some phenomenon
• Hypothesis
• A specific testable predictions, often derived from a theory
• Types of Research Designs
• Descriptive: systematic observation
• Case studies: in-depth study of one person
• Survey: ask a lot of people questions
• Naturalistic: observe behavior in the “real world” (natural setting)
• Correlational
• Measure two or more things, and find correlations (connections) between them
• Difference between causation vs. correlation
• Correlation: a statistical measure of how closely two variables are associated
• Can range from -1 to 1
• Experiments
• Only why to find out if X causes Y
• Independent variable
• Any variable that the researcher manipulates in an experiment
• The proposed causes of change in the dependent variable
• Dependent variable
• A variable that is being measured in an experiment
• Depends on independent variable
• Psychologists like to measure things…
• Reaction time
• Eye movements
• Physiological: brain images, heart rate, brain waves, pupil size, etc.
• Infants: HAS (high amplitude sucking), looking time
• The Evil Dr. Zilstein (Schacter, 1959)
• Create 2 groups by manipulating levels of fear and anxiety. See if they differ in tendency to
affiliated with others.
• Fearful groups told that the shocks will be painful, other group told they would be no big
deal.
• Fearful group preferred to wait together
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Fall 2018: definition: study of the mind. Psych 1/04: areas of specialization, developmental, clinical, cognitive, bio, organizational. Personality: nature vs. nurture, a combination of both, complicated interactions between both, brain or mind or behavior? (what should we/psychologists focus on, conscious experience vs. unconscious, ren descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher: dualism (body vs. mind, body: directly observable, obeys natural laws, controls reflective behavior. Soul: observable only through interaction with body, source of free will/thoughts, uniquely human. Empiricism (contradicts dualism: nothing spiritual, just a body, rejected the notion that there is a soul divorced from the body, believed that all knowledge and thought were derived from sensory experience, believed in a. Model of the mind as a blank slate we are the product of our sensory experiences. Reduced to neural processes: descartes and locke didn"t run a lot of experiments, most of their data came from their own heads, wundt (1832-1920)
