Stuvia Summary Exam 1 Fundamentals of Psychology UvA Year 2 PDF

Summary Exam 1 Fundamentals of Psychology UvA Year 2 geschreven door lottepeerdeman www.stuvia.com Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912...

Summary Exam 1 Fundamentals of Psychology UvA Year 2 geschreven door lottepeerdeman www.stuvia.com Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W1.1 CHAPTER 1 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – THE WIDER PICTURE INVENTION OF WRITING Preliterate civilisations: Civilisation before writing was invented – Three important characteristics of knowledge in these kinds of cultures (Lindberg) 1. Knowledge is confined to ‘know-how’ without a theoretical understanding of the underlying principles 2. Fluidity of knowledge – Knowledge of the actual history of the tribe is limited to two generations and the function of the oral tradition mainly is the transmission of practical skills 3. Animism: The belief that objects and nature are inhabited by spirits with human-like characteristics, which cause events to happen → Tyler: Primitives look at the world like children and endow all things with a nature analogous to their own Lindberg: Scientific thinking cannot occur without written records, because it is only when information is written down that patterns start to emerge and incompatibilities in stories become visible The presence of written records marks the distinction between prehistory and history Protowriting: The use of symbols to represent entities without linguistic information linking them The first written languages: - China (around 6000 BCE) - Egypt (around 3200 BCE) - Sumer (also around 3200 BCE) - America (300 BCE) Three kinds of writing systems: 1. Pictograms: Pictures that resemble the persons, animals and objects they represent 2. Phonograms: Signs to represent sounds of the spoken language 3. Logographs: A sign representing a spoken word, which no longer has a physical resemblance to the word’s meaning The importance of writing → Written records provide external memory about knowledge available at a certain point in time, which allows an accumulation of knowledge → Socrates: The availability of books makes students lazy and discourages them from exercising memory Scriptio continua: Continuous script; writing without spaces between the words – Saenger: Spacing made silent reading possible Orthography: A set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, capitalisation, word boundaries, emphasis and punctuation Scholastic method: Study method in which students unquestioningly memorise and recite texts that are thought to convey unchanging truths Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen INVENTION OF NUMBERS The earliest archaeological evidence of counting dates back to 35,000-20,000 BCE and has been found in Africa Subitising: The ability to look at a small number of objects and instantly recognise how many objects there are without needing to count Tally mark: A form of the unary numeral system used for counting All Indo-European languages share the same roots for the numbers one to ten, but the number names of the teens are very irregular Place coding system: System in which the meaning of a sign not only depends on its form but also on its position in a string (E.g.: the number ‘thirty-two’ consists of a symbol of 2 in the units position and a symbol of 3 in the tens position) Schlimm & Neth: Calculations with Roman numbers are no more difficult to perform than those with Arabic numerals once one is familiar with the operations THE FERTILE CRESCENT Fertile Crescent: A region in the Middle East with a high level of civilisation around 3000 BC, which included the Ancient Mesopotamian and the Ancient Egyptian civilisations - Ancient Mesopotamia - Mathematical knowledge - Astronomy – Calendar and determining the times for planting and harvesting - Ancient Egypt: - Geometrical knowledge - Devising of a calendar consisting of 12 months of 30 days and an extra 5 days at the end of the year ANCIENT GREECE Philosophy: Critical reflection on the universe and human functioning Hippocrates: Father of (modern) medicine Heraclitus: Argued that everything was constantly changing and that even if one does the same thing twice, it was different because the conditions were no longer exactly the same Plato: - The first thinker to call philosophy a distinct approach with its own method - Two worlds: - Intelligible world: Made up of anything derived from reason alone; the world of unchanging reality - Sensible world: The imperfect and changing world that surrounds us Allegory of the cave: Symbolic representation of the two worlds, where prisoners in a cave, facing a wall, see only shadows of objects cast by a fire behind them – Only the philosopher can escape the cave through reason, and enter the intelligible world Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Dualism: The theory that the mental and the physical are, in some sense, distinct - The soul is the entity defining the person – Immortal, made up of the leftovers of the cosmos-soul 1. Reason: Part of the soul that allows humans to get access to the realm A neck separates the two of the ideal forms – Guides a person to a virtuous life in search of to avoid temper from abstract, non-worldly perfection – Situated in the brain polluting the divine soul 2. Temper: Part of the soul that deals with sensation and emotions – Mortal – Situated in the heart 3. Appetite: Part of the soul that deals with lower passions (such as lust and greed) – Situated in the liver - Rationalism: A philosophical approach that states that reason is the primary sources of knowledge – Claims that truths can be known independently of sensory experience and that innate ideas are crucial for understanding the world Aristotle: - Divided knowledge into three kinds: 1. Productive knowledge: Concerned with making things 2. Practical knowledge: Concerned with how men ought to act in various circumstances 3. Theoretical knowledge: Concerned with the pursuit of truth → Consisted of a series of axioms, acquired through observation and intuition, from which the remaining knowledge was derived by means of logic - Sub-lunar region: Space from the Earth up to the Moon – Less orderly; everything there is a mixture of four elements (air, earth, fire and water) – All objects have a propensity to travel in a straight line to their natural place - For earth and water the natural place is the centre of the Earth – Explains why soil, water and solid objects fall to the ground - For air and fire the natural place is the Moon’s orbit – Explains why air and fire go upwards - Super-lunar region: Space from the Moon to the end of the universe – Filled with aether, a divine and incorruptible element – Contains immaculate stars moving in perfect harmony - Horror vacui: Disbelief in the possibility of a vacuum – Nature abhors a vacuum; every space in the cosmos is filled with some form of matter - Syllogism: A deductive argument consisting of three propositions: a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion - Teleology: The explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise – Final causes – Animistic elements - All beings have a soul/psyche (i.e. the principle of life): 1. Vegetative soul: Plants have the capacity for growth, reproduction and nourishment 2. Animal soul: Lower animals have the power for locomotion, sensation, memory and imagination 3. Rational soul: Human beings have all of the above and intellectual thought, which allows them to reason consciously and to lead virtuous lives Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen The development of four prestigious schools: 1. Academia – Founded by Plato 2. Lyceum – Founded by Aristotle 3. Stoa: Based on self-control, fortitude and detachment from distracting emotions 4. Garden of Epicurus: Based on a virtuous and temperate life with the enjoyment of simple pleasures obtained by knowledge and friendship Hellenistic culture: The fusion of the ancient Greek world with that of Western Asia, Northeastern Africa and Southwestern Asia through the big expansion under Alexander the Great - Euclid: Contributed to geometry, which resulted in the organisation of all available evidence within a coherent framework, known as Euclidian geometry - Herophilos & Erasistratos: Physicians who extended Aristotle’s work on the human anatomy based on dissections - Archimedes: Contributed to geometry physics - Ptolemy: Contributed to astronomy THE ROMAN EMPIRE The Romans had much admiration for and interest in the Greek culture, so the expansion of the Roman empire did not lead to the collapse of Greek culture – Greek methods and learning were transferred to Rome ↓ However: The Romans were more interested in practical questions than the philosophical debates that preoccupied the Greeks → Roman legacy is much more dominated by technological inventions and improvements than profound philosophical writings Towards the end of the second century, political stability in the Roman Empire began to fade away → Division between an East and a West Empire - West Roman Empire – Rome as the capital city - Sharp decline in scientific endeavour because of political upheaval and economic downfall - Language barrier emerged between the Romans and Greek science, as individuals were more inclined to learn Latin than Greek – Myers-Scotton: The motivation to learn a second language decreases as a function of economic dominance - Only the works that were thought to be of interest to the Romans made it into Latin and were preserved – Catholic education was not the sort to foster critical thinking – Plato’s works were widely available because they coincided with the views of the Christians - West Roman Empire eventually fell in the 5th century to German tribes - East Roman Empire – Constantinople as the capital city → Byzantine Empire - Dominance of the Greek language and culture - Lasted till 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Decline of scientific advancement due to the emergence and eventual dominance of the Christian religion – Attention was more directed towards religion-related and cultural topics - Eastern Schism: Division of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in the 11th century ARAB EMPIRE The Arabian peninsula had been untouched by Alexander’s military campaigns, and was thus not much affected by Byzantine culture Interest in science increased when the dynasty of the Abbasid family came to power and a period of stronger political stability and patronage began - Translation of Greek and Sanskrit works into Arabic started - The House of Wisdom, a research institute, was founded in Baghdad in the 9th century - Islamic scholars advanced Greek/Indian knowledge in medicine, astronomy, mathematics and optics MIDDLE AGES Dark Ages: A name that humanistic Italian scholars in the 14th and 15th centuries used to refer to the Middle Ages in Western Europe – Emerged from a longing for a return to the great ancient civilisations Demise of ancient science in the West was not due to the Church but due to the fall of the Roman Empire! – The Church actively promoted the foundation of universities The revival of learning in the West: - Charles the Great: Efforts to improve the education in his Carolingian Empire, particularly in Aachen, around 800 - Better agricultural techniques – Population explosion between 1000 and 1200 - Renewed urbanisation - The foundation of larger cathedral schools with broader educational aims – The rise of universities in Bologna, Oxford and Paris → Ius ubique docendi: The right to teach everywhere after acquiring a master’s degree – Lead to increased mobility of the masters and the harmonisation of the curricula - Scholars became aware of rich cultures on the outskirts of Western Europe – Translation of Arabic and Greek texts into Latin – Arabic and Greek books were integrated within the curriculum - Aristotle’s teachings were not received well at some universities at first - Aristotle claimed that the universe, including the Earth, was eternal, without beginning or end, whereas the Bible clearly indicated the beginning (i.e. Genesis) and the end of life (i.e. the Last Judgement) - Aristotle saw the soul as the actualisation of the potentialities of the body, which could be interpreted as meaning that the soul was unable to exist without a body and, therefore, ended together with the body, whereas the Bible preached about an independent and immortal soul - Aristotle had come to his conclusions on the basis of observation and logic rather than biblical revelation and church tradition Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen RENAISSANCE Renaissance: A cultural movement based on an imitation of the classical Greek and Roman civilisations – Started in Italy in the 14th century and lasted until into the 17th century Luther: Revolted against the perceived greed and corruption of the Papacy → Protestant Reformation: Movement against the Roman Catholic Church, which was important for the development of science, because it emphasised the need for education, critical thinking, hard work and worldly success → Reformed Churches: Stressed much more than the Catholic Church the need for education and critical thinking Introduction of book printing in Europe (Gutenberg): - Knowledge came much more within reach – Before, scholars only had access to the few books in the library of the institute to which they were attached - Relief of the constant danger of loss or destruction of books - Manually copied books contained many transcription errors, which could now be solved by having someone knowledgeable proofread the first version - Scholars could work on the same copy of a book COLONISATION Colonisation: - Allowed contact with other cultures and inventions - Led to one of the very first indications that Aristotle was not infallible – Aristotle believed that the middle zone around the equator was uninhabitable, because it was boiling hot, but the Portuguese crossed the equator in 1473 BIASES IN HISTORY WRITING Biases in history writing: - Writings tend to focus on individuals – The history of science is presented as a succession of discoveries and insights made by geniuses that far exceeded the intellectual level around them - Zeitgeist: ‘Spirit of the age’; the intellectual climate of the period – Word used to indicate that the time was right for a certain discovery; the discovery did not originate from a single genius, but from a much wider development leading to the discovery – ‘L’art c’est moi, la science c’est nous’ (Bernard) - Matthew effect: The tendency to give more credit to well-known scientists than they deserve – Contributions from less well-known colleagues and contemporaries are ascribed to the most famous person of the era - Hindsight bias: The tendency to assume that individual scholars knew more than they did - Ethnocentrism: The tendency to attach excessive weight to the contribution of one’s own group and the group of one’s readers - Writings about the contributions of one’s own group are much more easily available - History reviews are summaries of summaries Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Kuhn: Science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, and science as we know it now is only one of the possible interpretations of reality – History writing becomes a reinterpreted, distorted account of the past The distortions in history writing are due to simplification of what has happened because it has to be summarised – Inaccuracies do not detract from the basic message LECTURE W1.1 Representation: When things are denoted with symbols and relations between things are represented with relations between symbols → With writing, representations can be brought into someone’s head without the other being physically present – Shared representations are made possible Theories of truth: The question of what makes some representations true and others false Discovery of agriculture – The possibility of creating a community in which different people fulfil different roles – A hierarchy typically emerges, in which higher ranked individuals have time Key questions in Greek antiquity: - Ontology: The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence or being - Epistemology: The branch of philosophy that deals with the study of knowledge - Aesthetics: The branch of philosophy that deals with the question of what is beauty - Ethics: The branch of philosophy that deals with the question of what is good Panta Rhei: ‘Everything flows’ – Principle by Heraclitus Invariance principles: Principles or laws in various scientific disciplines that describe the constancy or stability of certain properties or relationships under specific transformations Where does knowledge stem from? 1. Rationalism: Knowledge is primarily derived from reason and intellect – Emphasis on innate knowledge, a priori reasoning and the importance of the mind’s capacity for intuition and deduction - Nativism: The view that knowledge, ideas or abilities are innate or inherent in the mind rather than acquired through experience or learning - Anamnesis: The idea that knowledge is not acquired but is recollected from a pre-existing, innate state of the soul 2. Empiricism: Knowledge is primarily derived from sensory experience, observation and experimentation – Emphasis on experience, evidence gathered through the senses and induction - Tabula rasa: ‘Blank slate’ Meno’s slave: A philosophical thought experiment presented by Plato in which Socrates guides a slave boy through a series of questions to demonstrate that the boy can discover geometric truths through reason alone, even though he has not been formally taught geometry Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Peripatetic principle: Refers to the general approach and method of Aristotle’s philosophy, which often involved walking and discussing philosophical topics with his students while strolling through the Lyceum Aristotle: Everything consists of matter and form - Matter (hyle): What gives a substance its physical and material existence – Passive principle - Form (morphe): The fundamental properties that distinguish one type of thing from another – Closely tied to the function or purpose – Active principle - Difference with Plato: Forms are the essence of being, not just something that exists in our heads Correspondence theory of truth: True statements ‘correspond’ with states of affairs in reality Important schools in the Hellenistic period: - Stoicism: Encourages indifference to external circumstances, emphasising that one’s well-being depends on internal factors, particularly one’s own virtue and character - Epicureanism: Posits that the highest good is pleasure, and that one should aim to minimise pain and achieve ataraxia (i.e. tranquillity) by avoiding unnecessary desires and anxieties - Scepticism: Advocates for the suspension of judgment on all matters due to the inherent uncertainty and relativity of knowledge (Pyrrho) Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W1.2 CHAPTER 2 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND ITS AFTERMATH THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Scientific revolution: Name given to a series of discoveries in the 17th century that enhanced the status of science in society Three critical insights in the scientific revolution: 1. The realisation that the Earth did not form the centre of the universe - Geocentric model/Ptolemaic system: Model of the universe in which the Earth is at the centre - Heliocentric model: Model of the universe in which the sun is at the centre (Copernicus & Galilei) 2. Mechanistic world view: World view according to which the universe is seen as operating according to deterministic laws of physics and mathematics – Events are believed to follow predictable patterns (Descartes) - Discards the notion that things have spiritual intentions as assumed by the animistic view - Discards the notion of perceived goals and aims of things as assumed by Aristotelian teleology 3. Laws of physics: Fundamental principles that describe the behaviours of the physical universe - Principia Mathematica: Book in which Newton presented his laws of physics ↓ Considered to be the primary reason for the increased status of science – Scientists after Newton felt less need to keep abreast of philosophical issues, and philosophers without scientific knowledge saw their status sharply decreased Natural philosophy: An early stage in the development of the sciences, commonly used before the boundaries between what is now called physics, chemistry, biology, etc. were distinct Descartes: - First western philosopher after the Ancient Greeks to value independent thinking - ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ → Radical scepticism - Cartesian dualism: The theory that the mental and the physical are radically distinct - Like Plato, believed the soul had innate knowledge, which could be recovered on the basis of reasoning – Rationalist - Res cogitans: A thinking and non-extended substance – Characterised by consciousness, thoughts, feelings and other mental activities – Not spatially located; does not have physical properties – Cannot be studied scientifically - Res extensa: Includes all material things, such as bodies, objects and the physical world – Follows the laws of physics - Problem of interaction: How does an immaterial substance (i.e. the mind) interact with a material one (i.e. the brain) – Pineal gland Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Factors that contributed to the scientific revolution: - Emergence of merchants that formed a link between the hand workers and the intellectual elite – Link between theoretical knowledge and practical know-how - Absence of a repressive religion or authority → Church authority was hollowed out by the Western Schism and the Protestant Reformation - People had been waiting for the Last Judgement and the Resurrection of Christ – Both the years 1000 and 1033 passed, and people needed a new project - The division between religious power and worldly power, to some extent, represented the division between mind and body - Invention of book printing – Allowed for the allocation of thought - Invention of the mechanical clock in the 14th century – Served as high-precision equipment needed for scientific experiments - Existence of universities – Provided a place for natural philosophers in society – Also criticised for being too conservative, clinging to old philosophical texts and the scholastic method - Increased access to Greek writings due to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent flight of Greek scholars to Italy – The merge of civilisations allowed for fluidity and dynamism in which new ideas can grow Factors that helped the fledgling science grow: - Absence of major disasters in the 15th to 19th centuries - Protestant Churches encouraged to study science to set themselves apart from the Roman Catholic Church - Foundation of learned societies THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD Bacon: Novum Organum → An interaction between perception and reasoning is required: - Reasoning and perception is limited - Idols of the Marketplace: Errors in reasoning that arise from the imprecise and ambiguous use of language - Idols of the Tribe: Fallacies that all humans commit, and that are inherent to human nature - Idols of the Cave: Individual biases and peculiarities that arise from a person’s unique (cultural) background, education and experiences - Idols of the Theatre: Fallacies that are committed because we believe what authorities say - Different experiments: - Experimenta frucifera: Experiments that yield practical and useful results, Dual commitment to contributing directly to the advancement of human knowledge and the the practical utility improvement of the human condition → Particulars: Distinct, specific and of scientific inquiry unique entities that can be observed and identified in the real world and the pursuit of - Experimenta lucifera: Foundational experiments that may not have immediate fundamental practical applications but uncover fundamental truths about nature → Axioms: knowledge Fundamental principles derived through inductive generalisation Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Experimentum crucis: An experiment that is able to determine decisively whether a particular hypothesis or theory is better than its alternatives (Hooke) - Crucial instances: When an experiments that is strategically chosen to test competing hypotheses shows which among the competing explanations is more valid based on empirical evidence - Empiricism and rationalism become integrated - Advocated for the inductive method, where knowledge is built up from particular observations to form general principles or axioms → Ladder of axioms: The hierarchical structure of axioms, where scientists move from lesser axioms (that are Aristotle passively more specific and pertain to narrower domains) to higher axioms (that are more observed because general and apply to broader aspects of nature) ‘manipulating’ nature - Natural history: Careful, passive observation and the formulation of lower and would disturb it, middle axioms through inductive reasoning whereas Bacon - Experimental history: Method in which one extracts the truth from nature by emphasises the importance of the active manipulation and examining the consequences of the intervention – experiment Corresponds to a higher level on the ladder of axioms Two ways of reasoning: - Deduction: Form of reasoning in which one starts from a number of premises, from which new, true conclusions can be drawn if the rules of logic are followed - Induction: Form of reasoning in which one starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences in the observations; is needed in science to turn observed phenomena into scientific laws, but does not guarantee that the conclusions are true In the scientific revolution, there was a growing awareness that a lot of knowledge was still to be discovered, instead of natural philosophy trying to reconstruct vanished knowledge from ancient times on the basis of the fragments that had survived INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Five positive outcomes of the impact of science on society: 1. Mechanical devices lightened the burden of manual labour and increased the production of goods – Industrial revolution: Name to refer to the socioeconomic and cultural changes in the 19th century caused by the invention of machines - Recipe knowledge: Involves practical, routine actions that individuals perform without conscious reflection on the underlying structures or meanings (Schütz) - Illusion of knowledge depth: A cognitive bias where individuals believe they have a deeper understanding of a topic or subject than they actually possess (Keil) 2. People started to live longer on average 3. Better health 4. People became more literate → Scientific research required strong intellectual capacities, which put the emphasis on the individual rather than the family of origin 5. Due to new communication methods, people knew more about the world Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen ENLIGHTENMENT Age of Enlightenment: Name given to the western philosophy and cultural life of the 18th century, in which autonomous thinking and observation became advocated as the primary sources of knowledge, rather than reliance on authority Positivism: View that authentic knowledge can only be obtained by means of the scientific method – Saw religion and philosophy as inferior forms of explanation - Law of three stages (Comte): 1. Theocratic stage: Human thought is characterised by a theological or religious explanation for natural phenomena – Transition from animism, to polytheism, to monotheism 2. Metaphysical stage: Supernatural explanations are replaced by abstract and metaphysical concepts – Explanations for natural phenomena are sought in terms of abstract principles and forces - Metaphysics: Branch of philosophy that explores fundamental questions about reality, existence, the nature of being and the relationship between mind and matter 3. Positivistic stage: Knowledge is based on empirical observation, scientific methods and a commitment to verifiable facts - Belief that, because scientific knowledge is always true, it should be the motor of all progress (i.e. it must decide all choices to be made) COUNTER FORCES Counter forces of the rise in status and power of science: - Roman Catholic Church → Clergy presented scientific knowledge as second-rank, detracting individuals from real wisdom, and potentially dangerous if not restrained by religious morals - Protestant Church → Viewed science as more of an ally than the Roman Catholic Church, but scientific knowledge was deemed dangerous knowledge if not guided by religion – The relationship between Protestant religion and science deteriorated in the 1870s, when geological fossil findings became available that did not agree with the general belief of the Church was that creation had taken place in six days some 4000 years before the birth of Christ - Humanities: Academic disciplines that continued the traditional study of the ancient classics, increasingly supplemented with teachings of contemporary literature and art - Burke: Society contains an implicit wisdom as a result of its century-long growth and evolution, and we risk destroying this if we try to change the customs too often and too drastically on the basis of the newest insights - Romanticism: Movement that reacted against the mechanistic world view and the rationalism preached by the Enlightenment – Emphasised emotion, imagination, individualism and a connection with nature – Stressed that the universe was constantly changing and, therefore, could not be understood as a machine that operated according to fixed, eternal principles - The supposedly strong antithesis between Romanticism and science seems to be based on thin grounds! Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Snow: Argued that there was a growing divide between scientists and literary intellectuals (i.e. humanists), and this division had detrimental consequences for both intellectual communities and society as a whole The scientific revolution escaped the attention of nearly all historians up to the first half of the 20th century → Three factors that hindered historians’ awareness of the impact of science on society: 1. Historians were part of the humanist culture and did not feel affinity with science 2. To historians the accumulation of scientific knowledge seemed like a slow, steady process 3. Many historians questioned whether the developments in science are steps forward or just steps without direction Hannam: The knowledge which took centre stage in the 17th century was not all completely out of the blue; there had been similar thoughts before, but these had never been put into a coherent framework or reached the critical power to force a breakthrough in human thinking as happened in the 17th century – There has been more continuity in human thought than suggested by the word ‘revolution’ LECTURE W1.2 Augustine of Hippo: - First theory of learning – ‘When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out’ - First to discover the unconscious - Problem of other minds: A philosophical issue that arises from the difficulty of knowing whether other beings, aside from oneself, have minds and conscious experiences → The argument from analogy (i.e. based on one’s own experience of having a mind, it is reasonable to infer that other beings with similar observable behaviours also have minds) as a solution to this problem Brahmagupta: Invented the number ‘0’ – Results in a positional number system in which the position of a number indicates whether it’s a multiple of ten’s or hundred’s and the possibility of negative number Retrograde motion: The apparent backward or reverse motion of a celestial object, particularly a planet, as observed from a vantage point on another celestial body, such as Earth Galilei: - Artificial conditions provide insight into the natural world - Observation that there are mountains on the moon was extremely important, mostly because it showed that Aristotle was fallible Reification: The process of regarding an abstraction or an idea as if it were a concrete, tangible thing – Can be very problematic Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Science has institutionalised Bacon’s distrust (E.g.: experiments; statistical tests; peer review; replication studies) – ‘Twist the lion’s tail’: Expression used to describe intentionally engaging in behaviour that might provoke a powerful adversary ↓ De Groot: Empirical cycle Physics envy: A term used in the social sciences and humanities to describe a perceived desire to achieve the level of precision, mathematical rigor and predictive power that is often associated with the natural sciences, particularly physics - Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W2.1 CHAPTER 3 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH- CENTURY PRECURSORS TO A SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY Individualisation: Trend in a society towards looser social relations and a greater focus by individuals on themselves than on the groups they belong to – Started sometime around the end of the Middle Ages in western societies Contributing factors of individualisation: - Increased urbanisation and industrialisation put people into more complex and competitive social networks – Increasing diversity in occupations and complexity of social relations - Foucault: Increased control by the state – Information gathering gave people the feeling of standing out of the crowd - Christian religion puts an emphasis on the solitary individual, because each person’s private state of faith and relation to God is the essence of piety - The presence of mirrors in the house made people more aware of themselves and the impression they made on others - Book printing enhanced the interest and fascination for others - Literacy increased and postal services improved, and so-called ‘familiar letters’ became a way to explore, express and share intimate experiences British empiricists: - Locke: - Father of empiricism – Introduced the concept of ‘tabula rasa’ → Gives rise to Locke’s idea of ‘natural rights’; if all people start out as tabula rasa, then they are essentially the same - Berkeley: - Idealism: View within philosophy that human knowledge is a construction of the mind and does not necessarily correspond to an outside world – Asserts that mental phenomena are more fundamental than physical objects - ≠ Realism: View within philosophy that human knowledge tries to reveal real properties of the outside world - Believed that ideas are caused by God – Ideas of God are incomprehensible so we cannot deduce them through reasoning; we only have perception to fall back on - Argued that the method of observation promoted by the men of science did not necessarily lead to a true understanding of the world - Esse est percipi: The existence of an object is dependent on its being perceived – The individual human mind is not sufficient to explain the continuous existence of objects when they are not being perceived, so the concept of God is introduced as the ultimate perceiver - Hume: - Idealist - Challenged the traditional view of causality and argued that our belief in causation is a result of our mental habit, not a direct perception of a necessary Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen link between events – Problem of induction: Questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observation - Assumption of similarity: If two sensations resemble each other, we assume they come from the same entity in the world, but there is no guarantee that this is true Kant: - Agreed with Berkeley and Hume that we cannot have direct knowledge of the outside reality through perception, but he sought to prove that: a) Perception is much richer than postulated by Hume and Berkeley b) Perception can only exist in a world of things that is not in contradiction with it - Noumena/Dinge an sich: The things as they are in themselves, independent of our Transcendental perceptions – The existence of a stable, enduring reality beyond appearances is idealism necessary for making sense of the regularity and orderliness in our experiences - Phenomena: The appearances or manifestations of things as they appear to us, shaped by our senses and mental faculties – Knowledge is limited to phenomena - Tried to reconcile empiricism with rationalism → Categories of understanding: A priori lenses through which we organise and interpret sensory data (such as time, space and cause/effect) - Division of the sciences: - Proper science → Requires the axioms and demonstrations to be written as mathematical laws - Improper science → Historical doctrine of nature/systematic art: A collection of facts, which could be ordered and classified - Physiognomy: The belief that the personality of an individual can be deduced from their appearance, in particular from the shape of the head and the face → Kant believed the judgement of a person’s interior had to be based on their behaviour in addition to their appearance Reid: - Feeling that Berkeley’s and Hume’s idealism had gone one step too far and was alienating philosophical epistemology from science’s ongoing victory march – Time for a return to ‘common sense’ - Common sense realism: Perception directly represents external objects as they are, and does not result in a separate stage of perceptual representations, which may or may not be a truthful copy of the outside world Three parts in metaphysics according to Aristotle: 1. Ontology: The study of the universe and its entities 2. Natural theology: The study of God(s) 3. Universal science: The study of the axioms (i.e. (self-evident truths) and demonstrations on which theoretical knowledge is based 4. Psychology: The study of the human soul → Added in the 17th century Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Wolff: - Rational psychology: Focuses on studying the soul or mind using pure reason and metaphysical principles (E.g.: the question of whether the soul is immortal based on its metaphysical nature) – Preferred - Empirical psychology: Focuses on studying the soul or mind through empirical observations and sensory experience (E.g.: studying how memory works or how sensations are experienced through empirical methods) - Built on introspection (= the mind’s conscious observations of its own activity) - Psychometria: Psychology should aim for mathematical demonstrations Comte: - Strong advocate of positivism; criticised psychology for being too subjective and lacking the positivist principles that, according to him, characterised true sciences - The only ways in which the human mind could be studied scientifically was based on biology and on observation of the products produced by the mind - Hierarchy of six sciences: 1. Mathematics 2. Astronomy 3. Physics 4. Chemistry 5. Biology 6. Sociology Kant’s and Comte’s rejection of psychology as a ‘proper’ science was devastating for the scientific ambitions of psychology Herbart: - Prominent figure in educational philosophy – Emphasised the importance of a systematic and scientific approach to education - Developed mathematical models to explain psychological phenomena in defiance of Kant’s contention that psychology could never be a science with Newtonian rules Upham: Posited that intellectual philosophy is a science, that it differs from the previous, worthless education in Roman Catholic schools, and that studying it is not a waste of time Bain: Introduction of the nervous system and other physiological information in a textbook of psychology PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION Some natural philosophers started to run Baconian experimental histories that nowadays would be classified as psychology experiments → The emergence of ‘laboratories of experimental psychology’ Human perceptual capabilities: - Hooke: Interested in determining the minimal visual angle that could be discriminated (= just noticeable difference) Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Mayer: Studied the influence of illumination on the capacity of how much detail humans can discern - Weber: Studied the detection of just noticeable differences between stimuli - Psychophysics: Explores the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they evoke (Fechner) The speed of information-processing in the nervous system and mental chronometry: - Von Helmholtz: Measured the transmission speed of nerves in frogs and humans - Mental chronometry: The scientific study of the time course of mental processes (Donders) EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Events that led to the right Zeitgeist for Darwin’s theory about the evolution of species: - Linnaeus: Started his work on the classification of plants and animals in the 18th century and published his Systema Naturae – Had no other option than to classify humans in the same grouping as primates - Fossils and bones were found that could not have come from existing animals - The tax on glass was replaced by an income tax → Proliferation of greenhouses in which exquisite, exotic and continuously evolving plants were cultivated - Discovery that although many plants were capable of self-fertilisation, they seemed to avoid it, and if it happened, the offspring were on average less healthy – Cross-fertilisation produced variation in the offspring that was more vital and sometimes even resulted in the creation of a new type of flower Natural selection: Process in Darwin’s evolutionary theory by which the environment results in the continuation of organisms with favourable features and hinders the reproduction of organisms with unfavourable features - Jenkin: Criticised Darwin’s theory, because when an organism with a new feature is placed amid a group of other organisms, this new feature will not expand but will weaken in the pool of existing features until in the end virtually nothing remains (E.g.: when a white man shipwrecked on an island inhabited by black people becomes part of the community and has children, his whiteness will never become dominant, even if the trait is better suited to the environment) - Survival of the fittest: Term introduced by Spencer to describe the outcome of natural selection; only organisms that fit within the environment and can produce viable offspring survive Common misunderstandings of Darwin’s theory: - The genes induce a change in a plant or animal so that it becomes more adapted to the environment → Genetic material has no knowledge of the environment and so cannot change in a desirable direction; all that happens are random alterations that result in a characteristic that is particularly well adapted to the environment and that increases the chances of the organism to survive and have descendants - Each genetic mutation that survives results in a better, stronger and more complex organism Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Galton: Was convinced that individual differences in mental ability were due to inherited differences in the quality of the senses and set out to prove this DEVELOPMENT OF STATISTICS Crucial difference between physics and psychology → Processes in physics yield very much the same outcome each time they are repeated, but processes in psychology often differ between individuals and differ when an individual does the same task twice Quetelet: Discovered that, whereas individual data points were impossible to predict, such prediction was possible when the analyses were based on the means of hundreds of observations → ‘l’Homme moyenne’ Fisher: Introduced the Latin square (= a systematic method for arranging experimental treatments in such a way that each treatment occurs exactly once in each row and column of a two-dimensional array or table) – Researchers can adapt their methodology so that the influence of confounding variables could easily be factored out in statistical analyses THE ADVANCEMENT OF MEDICINE ‘Patient-as-a-person’-movement: A philosophical and practical shift in healthcare that emphasised a holistic approach to patient care – Underscored the importance of treating patients not merely as the sum of their symptoms or diseases but as whole individuals with unique values, preferences and life contexts LECTURE W2.1 Reductionism: The view that theories of mental properties can be reduced to neuroscientific theories – Focuses on breaking down complex phenomena into simpler components to understand their fundamental elements Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W2.2 CHAPTER 4 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – ESTABLISHING PSYCHOLOGY AS AN INDEPENDENT ADADEMIC DISCIPLINE In the 19th century, Prussia reorganised its school system and installed a new university model – Scientific research now became part of an academic career with its own financing Three social variables that contributed to the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline in modern-day Germany: 1. An academic rather than an amateur role for philosophers and physiologists 2. Better job opportunities in philosophy than in physiology 3. An academic standing of philosophy below that of physiology, requiring the physiologists to maintain their scientific standing by applying their empirical methods to the materials of philosophy Wundt: - Defined psychology as the study of the way in which persons look upon themselves, on the basis of internal physiological changes that inform them about the phenomena perceived by the senses - Opened up the first laboratory of experimental psychology in 1879 - Three groups of methods for three different types of problems: 1. Experimental methods: - Psychophysical methods to study the connection between physical stimuli and conscious states - The measurement of the duration of simple mental processes - The accuracy of reproduction in memory tasks 2. Introspection: The process by which a person looks inside and reports what they are sensing, thinking or feeling - Innere wahrnehmung: Examination of one’s own conscious experiences, thoughts and feelings - Experimentelle selbstbeobachtung: Combines introspection with controlled experimental methods (E.g.: participants were engaged in reaction time experiments, after which were then asked to introspectively report on their conscious experiences during the tasks) ↓ Wundt claimed that experimentelle selbstbeobachtung was a valid scientific method to get information about the contents of consciousness, but innere wahrnehmung was not 3. Historical method: The study of mental differences as revealed by differences between cultures – Wundt believed that the understanding of psychological processes required an examination of cultural and historical influences - Völkerpsychologie: Psychology of the peoples; folk psychology James: - Wrote The Principles of Psychology, the textbook of choice at many colleges and universities in the English-speaking world Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Argued that introspection was the best available method, despite its limitations - Functionalism: Name given to an approach that examined the practical functions of the human mind inspired by the evolutionary theory – Studies how thoughts, feelings and behaviours contribute to an individual’s ability to function effectively in their environment (E.g.: if a functionalist were studying memory, they might be interested in why memory exists and how it helps individuals adapt to their environment) Titchener: - Structuralism: Sought to analyse and understand the structure of consciousness by breaking it down into its basic components or elements (such as feelings, thoughts, sensations and perceptions) (E.g.: if a structuralist were studying memory, they would use introspection to have individuals carefully describe their experiences related to memory; participants might be asked to recall a specific memory and then break down that memory into sights, sounds and emotions) - Criticisms: - Introspection does not intuitively give rise to the experience of elementary sensations → Würzburg school: Group of psychologists who used introspection as a research method, but came to different conclusions from those of Wundt and Titchener – Claimed that many thought processes were unconscious (= imageless thoughts) - The question of what consciousness was made of did not help anybody move forward – Structuralism did not address pragmatic questions - Gestalt psychology: Group of psychologists who argued that the human mind could not be understood by breaking down the experiences into their constituent elements (Wertheimer, Koffka & Köhler) – Thesis was defended by pointing to illusions to note that what we perceive deviates from the stimuli that are presented THE STATUS OF FRENCH PSYCHOLOGY Comte: Psychology is a remnant of the metaphysical stage and the basis of introspection would in time be replaced by proper, scientific explanations provided by biology and sociology ↓ Response: Mill & Spencer: Argued that psychology could be a science and introspection a respectable scientific method 1. The mind can attend to more than one impression at the same time, so why would the mind be unable to attend to its own conscious mental states? 2. Introspection can be based on memories, which allows for post hoc awareness 3. How can one find the physiological basis of a mental function, if the latter supposedly does not exist? 4. Introspection is not incompatible with the ‘objective method’, but introspection must be combined with empirical observation and verification Ribot: Argued that one could be a ‘good’ positivist without accepting all Comte’s claims Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Defended the possibility of a new psychology, different from metaphysical thinking and different from Comte’s exclusive attention to physiology and the socio-cultural products of the human mind → This new psychology would study psychological phenomena subjectively (using consciousness, memory and reasoning) and objectively (by relying on the facts, signs, opinions and actions that express them) Mesmer: Was convinced that movements of the sun, the moon, planets and stars influenced the human body by means of ‘animal magnetism’ – Sought to influence ‘animal magnetism’ as a cure for all kinds of illnesses ↓ Charcot: - Became interested in hypnosis because he thought it was related to hysteria (= a condition of distress accompanied by symptoms for which no origin could be found) - Saw similarities between hysteria, epilepsy and hypnosis: - Hysteria: 1. Epileptoid stage: Stage in which the patient felt the onset of the attack 2. Large movement stage: Stage of uncontrolled movements 3. Hallucinatory stage: Stage during which the patient experienced self- generated sensations 4. Delirious phase of withdrawal: Stage characterised by disorganised behaviour and decreased attention - Epilepsy: 1. Aura: Feeling of the attack’s onset 2. Tonic phase: Stage in which the muscles of the body go rigid and the patient loses consciousness 3. Clonic phase: Stage in which convulsions take place - Hypnosis: 1. Lethargy: A sleep state 2. Cataplexy: A sudden loss of muscle function 3. Somnambulism: Performing actions in a sleep-like state without recollection afterwards Criticism on Charcot’s hypnosis: - Nancy criticisms (Liébeault & Bernheim) - Hypnosis is present to some degree in nearly everyone - Charcot’s three hypnotic stages are rarely observed - Delboeuf: The first to stress the impact of demand characteristics on the outcome of psychological studies INTELLIGENCE TESTING Education became compulsory in France in 1882 – Question rose of what to do with children who did not seem to qualify for regular education, but who were not obviously mentally retarded Binet-Simon test: First intelligence test; based on the comparison of a child’s mental age with the chronological age of a child – Made for educational purposes Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Galton: - Claimed that intelligence was hereditary - Eugenics: States that intelligence should be leading in who gets to procreate and who does not PSYCHOANALYSIS Asylum: Name given to the institutions for the insane established from the 16th century on; first modelled after prisons, later after hospitals for chronic patients ↓ Over the 18th century, under the influence of the Enlightenment, the conviction grew that the inhabitants of asylums were not criminals but ailing patients ↓ Moral treatment: An approach to the treatment of mental illness that gained prominence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, that was a departure from earlier, punitive methods of dealing with individuals with mental disorders, and was instead characterised by a more humane approach, focusing on psychological well-being and moral development Neurologists: Name used at the end of the 19th century specialists of the nervous system who were interested in the treatment of milder forms of mental problems outside the asylum Freud: - Psychological treatment: Treatment of mental health problems consisting of conversations between the patient and the therapist – Initiated as an alternative to the prevailing medical and educational treatments - Case studies: The intensive study of individuals within the context of their own world and their relationships (past and present) - Freud’s psychoanalysis was based on introspection – The literal meaning of what the patients said was of little value, because, according to Freud, the patients did not have access to their own unconscious drives – It is the therapist’s task to be attentive to occasional slips during which the unconscious forces revealed themselves, and to reinterpret the contents of the introspection according to the psychoanalytic theory THE STATUS OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UK AND SCOTLAND Up to the end of the 19th century it was impossible to obtain a degree from English universities without swearing an oath of allegiance to the Church of England – Universities were heavily oriented towards the classics (i.e. humanities and mathematics) and unreceptive to natural sciences – Scientific research in England happened outside the universities → To fill the void left by universities, intellectuals interested in psychology twice founded a Learned Society Cattell: Started a new series of intelligence measurements in Cambridge, but, without any prospect of a decent position at the University of Cambridge, left soon → Rivers: Established a psychology laboratory at the University of Cambridge → Was soon overruled by Myers, whose laboratory had to close down due to WWI Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Correlation coefficient: Measures the degree to which two variables are related and whether the relationship was strong enough to be reliable (Pearson) – Used extensively in intelligence testings General intelligence: A hypothetical underlying factor that contributes to performance on a wide variety of cognitive tasks (Spearman) Jacobs: Measured how many spoken items people could repeat, and discovered that the scores of the children in the top half of the class were higher than those of the children in the lower half LECTURE W2.2 1. Thesis: The initial proposition or idea – Starting point of a dialectical process 2. Antithesis: The contradiction of the thesis 3. Synthesis: The reconciliation of the contradictions and the formation of a higher-level, more comprehensive idea Human beings are stochastic (= exhibit randomness or unpredictability) Freud: - Id: Contains innate drives, such as the desire for pleasure, avoidance of pain, and basic instincts – Impulsive, irrational, and not bound by reality or social norms – Shows itself when the censoring ego is not paying attention (E.g.: slip of the tongue; dreams; free associations) - Ego: The realistic and rational part of the psyche – Mediates between the id and the superego - Superego: Strives for perfection and moral ideals Circumplex models: Order emotions around the circumference of a circle centred at the intersection of two orthogonal axes of arousal and valence (Wundt) Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W3.1 CHAPTER 5 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – STRENGTHENING THE SCIENTIFIC STANDING OF PSYCHOLOGY THE STATUS OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE USA The US had a particular interest in science and technology, starting around the mid-1800s: - By 1900 there were already 41 psychology laboratories - In 1892 the American Psychological Association (APA) was founded, giving psychology researchers a forum to meet and discuss their findings - The USA was not interested in abstract science, but in practical accomplishments that at the same time made money, revealed God’s glory, and advanced the American dream – Increasing number of American psychologists started to call themselves functionalists to take distance from the European tradition, which they identified with the introspective study of consciousness and structuralism The Americans saw the differences between participants in response times as evidence for Darwin’s theory – Rather than a nuisance, the individual differences pointed to inherited variability Several US states adopted legislation aimed at preventing marriage or at compulsory sterilisation of certain individuals Lay society associated psychology with paranormal subjects: - Phrenology: View that mental functions are localised in the brain and that the capacity of a function corresponds to the size of the brain part devoted to it (Gall & Spurzheim) – Gave rise to personality assessment on the basis of scalp analysis - Mesmerism - Spiritualism: The belief that the spirits of the dead could be contacted by mediums ANIMAL RESEARCH Anthropomorphic interpretation: Interpreting behaviour of non-human living creatures by attributing human motives and human-like intelligence to them (Romanes) Thorndike: - Based his research on careful observation of animals put in controlled environments - Introduced a puzzle box, in which food was presented which the animal could reach if it managed to solve the puzzle and open the door → Concluded that the animal did not have any ‘knowledge’ of the contingency involved, but made an association between the situation of being in the box and performing the appropriate act (= instrumental conditioning/operant conditioning) - Law of effect: Behavioural law to refer that refers to the fact that behaviours followed by positive consequences are strengthened and more likely to be repeated - Comparative psychology: Study of behaviour of animals, usually with the intention to shed light on human functioning within the framework of the evolutionary theory Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Pavlov: - Classical conditioning: Form of learning in which an association is made between two events in the environment; usually studied with a stimulus that elicits a reflex-like response to which a second, initially neutral stimulus is coupled BEHAVIOURISM Behaviourism: Movement in psychology arguing that observable behaviours are the most important aspect of human functioning to be understood – Denies the relevance of information processing going on in the mind (Watson) - Radical behaviourism: Strong version of behaviourism, defended by Skinner, which denies the relevance of information processing in the mind and holds that all human behaviour can be understood on the basis of S-R associations – Denies the relevance of information processing in the mind (E.g.: suppose a person is learning to play the guitar; radical behaviourism might analyse how the person’s behaviour (practicing chords) is influenced by consequences (praise/discomfort when playing incorrectly)) Behaviourism marked a shift from introspection into one’s own mind to the observation of others’ behaviour – An element that played a role in this shift was the impact of evolutionary theory on American psychology Behaviouristic positivism → Philosophy of science: Branch of philosophy that studies the foundations of scientific research, to better understand the position of scientific research relative to other forms of information acquisition and generation Three ideas that were important for the further development of scientific psychology: 1. One had to be able to represent the elements of a mathematical law as numbers - Operational definition: Definition of a variable in terms of how the variable has been measured - Hull: Mathematical equations with operationally defined variables that allow detailed predictions of behaviour in specified circumstances 2. The distinction was made between independent variables and dependent variables → S-R-psychology 3. Necessity of verification (= confirmation by empirical observation) in science Tolman: Found that rats who were not reinforced should not learn – Contradicted Skinner - Latent learning: The acquisition of knowledge that is not demonstrated in observable behaviour → Purposive behaviourism: Version of behaviourism which saw behaviour as goal-related (E.g.: suppose a person is learning to play the guitar; purposive behaviourism might consider how the person’s expectations and motivations influence engagement in the learning process) COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Technological advances outside the psychological laboratories (E.g.: radio and television transmission, encryption codes, computer programming) Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen Boolean operation: Any type of information can be expressed by means of logical operations involving the values 0 (false) and 1 (true) (Shannon) → Turing machine: Basic (hypothetical) machine operating on the basis of Boolean logic and able to simulate the processing of more complex machines operating according to these principles ↓ McCulloch & Pitts: Argued that the human brain could be thought of as a Boolean device as well Lashley: Questioned the viability of the behaviourist S-R models - In speech, words unfold with such rapidity that it is unlikely that each word can be based upon an S-R association with the previous one - Speech errors made often include the anticipation of words that have not yet occurred Three ways in which the availability of computers changed research for psychologists: 1. Answer to the homunculus problem (= the difficulty of explaining goal-oriented behaviour without making use of an ultimate control centre) – Computers showed as goal-directed functioning but did not require a homunculus → Information feedback: Mechanism in which the current performance level is compared to the desired end- state and the discrepancy is used to bring the performance closer to the end-state aimed for 2. Psychologists could start to simulate the hypothesised psychological processes in computer programs - Turing test: Involves a human interacting with a machine and another human without being able to discriminate the machine from the human 3. Psychologists could think of information transformation in terms of algorithms (= lists of instructions that convert a given input, into the desired output via a fully defined series of intermediate steps) that were run on the input Behaviourism came under increasing pressure: - Miller: Published an article on the limits of human short-term memory – Miller’s law: The average person can hold approximately 7 (± 2) chunks of information in their short-term memory – First empirical evidence that the human mind could be considered as a computer - Neisser: Published a book that summarised the evidence in favour of information processing in the mind, and helped to establish the name of the new movement → Cognitive psychology: Movement in psychology arguing that observable behaviours are the result of information processing in the mind Specific features of cognitive psychology: - Mental representation: Information pattern in the mind representing knowledge obtained through observation or the application of an algorithm - Information processing: Encoding mental representations, transforming them by means of algorithms, and integrating them with existing knowledge Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen 1. Boxes-and-arrows diagram: Flowchart outlining the different information stores (boxes) and information transformations (arrows) involved in the execution of a particular task with observable input and output 2. Computational model: Writing out a computer program that actually performs the various transformations assumed to occur, and that responds in the same way as humans do to multiple, competing input streams – Simulation - Top-down process: Process by which information from a higher processing stage is fed back to previous processing stages and influences the processing at these stages – Begins with a general or high-level concept, idea or expectation ARTICLE BY CHOMSKY (1959) – A REVIEW OF B.S. SKINNER’S VERBAL BEHAVIOUR Skinner: - Echoic operant: Repetition of a word or phrase – Acknowledges the role of imitation in language acquisition - Language behaviours are shaped and maintained through reinforcement - Significant emphasis on the role of the environment in shaping language Chomsky: - Universal grammar: Innate device that allows for the acquisition of language – Nativist approach that regards language as a capacity of the mind - As compared to Skinner who links language acquisition to the environment - Poverty of the stimulus argument: Language as provided by the environment lacks richness and explicit, systematic grammatical rules, which undermines the idea that environmental input accounts for the complex language acquisition observed in early childhood - Individuals can go beyond tact (= a type of verbal behaviour where an individual repeats or echoes a phrase they have heard) and produce grammatically correct sentences that may not directly correlate to past experiences - Red chair example: Humans have the ability to generate an infinite number of novel sentences. In the case of ‘red chair’, one can understand the phrase even if they have never heard it before, and they can use the same structure to describe other objects with different colour – Highlights the inadequacy of behaviourist theories in explaining the complexity, creativity and rule-governed nature of human language - Parents are not precise enough in reinforcing and punishing to explain language acquisition - Children can construct and understand an infinite number of sentences - Children learn language spontaneously - Lawful: The idea of consistent and predictable relationships between stimuli and responses – When presented with an object, different individuals may respond in various ways Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen LECTURE W3.1 Measurement theory: Emphasises a clear and precise connection between theoretical concepts in physics and the measurement procedures used to verify or define those concepts (Bridgman) – Concepts are reduced to measurement → Operationalisations become very popular Behaviourism draws on concepts of Aristotle and Locke → Tabula rasa Language Acquisition Device (LAD): Hypothetical cognitive mechanism or system that Chomsky proposed as part of his theory of language acquisition – Is thought to facilitate language acquisition by providing a biologically determined and language-specific set of principles that guide the learning process Turing → The mind is to software, as the brain is to hardware Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen W3.2 CHAPTER 6 (BRYSBAERT & RASTLE) – THE INPUT FROM BRAIN RESEARCH IDEAS IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ANCIENT GREECE Edwin Smith papyrus: Papyrus from Ancient Egypt that contains short descriptions of the symptoms and treatment of different forms of brain injury Aristotle: Convinced that the heart was the seat of the soul – Function of the brain in Aristotle’s view was to counterbalance the heat of the heart Galen: Found that a pig stopped squealing, but kept breathing, immediately after he severed nerves in the throat, thus demonstrating that the voice came from the brain instead of the heart - The soul lived in the solid parts and produced and stored animal spirits (= spirits that were thought to travel over the nerves between the ventricles in the brain and the body) in the apertures in the middle of the brain, called the ventricles – The spirits travelled between the soul and the organs via the nerves, which were assumed to be hollow tubes IDEAS IN THE RENAISSANCE Research about the brain came to a complete standstill in the Middle Ages and only really took off again in the 19th century – Galen’s views remained the norm until well into the 18th century Vesalius: - Resumed dissections and extended them to humans in the 16th century – Persisted in Galen’s preoccupation with the correct drawing of the ventricles and did not care much about the convolutions of the brain, which he carried on depicting as intestines - Established for certain that there were three ventricles – Function of the three ventricles became differentiated - Common sense: Front ventricle – Received information from the senses, and included fantasy and imagination - Second ventricle – In the middle of the head – Comprised thought and judgement - Third ventricle – At the back of the head – Contained memory – ‘To have something in the back of the mind’ refers to this Schenk von Grafenberg: Concluded that after brain damage patients sometimes could no longer speak even though their tongue was not paralysed Discoveries in the 17th century: - Scholars turned their focus to the solid parts of the brain rather than the ventricles – Distinction of the cortex and the white matter - Von Haller: If you expose the grey matter and touch it, the animal does not seem to be disturbed, but if you touch the white matter or go into the ventricles, the animal screams, sometimes shows involuntary movements, and often dies – Is the doubt the existence of spirits in the nerves justified? - Increasing interest in reflexes - Descartes: Reflex is a sensory impression that rushes to the brain and reflects back into a motor command to bring about the action – Independent of the will Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen - Procháska: Argued that reflexes were not controlled by the brain but involved the spinal cord and the structures just above it - The new insights did not (yet) lead to improved treatment! BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTRURY Five breakthroughs in the 19th century that altered the model of brain functioning and made modern neurophysiology possible: 1. The discovery of the cerebrospinal axis - Researchers began to realise that a body remained functioning in a vegetative state when the cerebral hemispheres were taken away or disconnected from the structures at the top end of the spinal cord – The brainstem plays a crucial role in regulating automatic and involuntary functions necessary for survival, even in the absence of higher cognitive functions 2. The growing impact of reflexes - Reflex arc: Describes the processes underlying a reflex; a signal is picked up by sensory receptors, transmitted to the spinal cord through an afferent nerve, transferred to interneurons, which activate motor neurons that send a motor command over an efferent nerve to initiate the withdrawal movement (Hall) – Nerves did not move in two directions - The reflex was no longer one mode of action in the nervous system among others, but the basal unit from which the remaining nervous functions evolved - Start of research on classical conditioning, which was seen as a psychic reflex 3. The localisation of brain functions - Brain equipotentiality theory: Theory saying that all parts of the brain have equal significance and are involved in each task → Localisation theory: Theory saying that brain processes are localised, meaning that only part of the brain underlies a particular mental function (Gall & Spurtzheim) - Bouillaud: Argued that speech was controlled by the left and right frontal parts of the brain - Flourens: Concluded that the spinal cord was vital for the conduction of brain signals, that the cerebellum was involved in movement, the medulla was vital for vegetative functioning and that perception, memory and will were controlled by the cerebral hemispheres – Strongly defended the equipotentiality of the cerebral hemispheres - Broca: Argued that speech production is controlled by the left anterior frontal lobes – Broca’s aphasia: A non-fluent aphasia in which the output of spontaneous speech is markedly diminished and there is a loss of normal grammatical structure - Wernicke: Argued that speech comprehension is controlled by the left posterior frontal lobes – Wernicke’s aphasia: A type of aphasia in which individuals have difficulty understanding language 4. The discovery of the nerve cell - The availability of better microscopes + New techniques to stain the brain tissue (Golgi) - Ramón y Cajal: Argued that the grey matter consisted of separate neurons communicating with each other Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen 5. The disentangling of the communication between neurons - Galvani: Noticed that a dissected leg of a frog contracted each time his assistant touched a bare nerve with his scalpel and the electricity generator nearby produced a spark - Neurotransmitter: Chemical substance used to communicate between neurons – Released from the synapse when a signal arrives through the axon NEUROPSYCHOLOGY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Results of the World Wars: - Holmes: Examined the consequences of small-scale wounds at the back of the head - Bodamer: Described soldiers who lost their ability to recognise faces as a consequence of an injury to the rear of the brain (= prosopagnosia) Neuropsychology: Branch of psychological research and practice that looks at the relationship between brain and behaviour – Research traditionally focused on understanding the consequences of brain damage and localising the affected tissue In the 1970 and 1980s, a number of neuropsychologists became dissatisfied with the way in which neuropsychology was investigated: 1. The localisation issue turned out to be difficult to address based on human brain injuries - All that could be done was to establish a correlation between symptoms measured while the patient was alive and brain damage observed after the patient had died - The damage caused by brain injuries and strokes is usually widespread and not limited to one specific brain structure, making it difficult to decide which part of the damage was responsible for the symptoms 2. Results of the examinations rarely went beyond a list of symptoms displayed by various patients – There was little theory behind the enterprise, and little effort to link the various findings and draw implications for normal, healthy functioning Cognitive neuropsychology: Part of neuropsychology aimed at understanding and treating the behavioural consequences of brain damage within the information processing models proposed by cognitive psychologists Deep dyslexia: A condition of strongly impaired reading after brain injury – Particular symptom: when patients try to identify a word, they do not read the word itself but a semantically related word (Morton & Patterson) - Logogen system/lexicon: Could be compared to a mental dictionary; it contained all the words known to a patient - Visual logogen system: For the recognition of written words - Auditory logogen system: For the recognition of spoken words - Output logogen system: For the production of speech - Cognitive system: - Three routes: 1. Grapheme phoneme conversion route: Directly converts letters into sounds 2. Direct connection between the visual logogen system and the output logogen system Gedownload door: yaraduysker | [email protected] € 912 per jaar Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?  Stuvia - Koop en Verkoop de Beste Samenvattingen 3. Via the visual logogen system, through the cognitive system, to the output logogen system – Origin of the semantically related errors observed in deep- dyslexia patients BRAIN IMAGING Non-invasive techniques: Methods in neuroscience that allow the study of the workings of the brain without surgery or the use of irreversible interventions Electrophysiological techniques: - Electroencephalogram (EEG): Outcome of measurement of electrical brain activity by means of sensors placed on the scalp (Berger) - Event Related Potential (ERP): A way of studying brain activity by measuring the electrical signals produced in response to specific events or stimuli - Magnetoencephalography (MEG): Measures the magnetic fields generated by electrical currents (= electromagnetic induction) – High temporal and spatial resolution Haemodynamic techniques: - Positron emission tomography (PET): Based on measurement of a radioactive tracer injected into the bloodstream - fMRI: Based on the measurement of blood with oxygen vs. blood without oxygen – Blood with oxygen (oxyhaemoglobin) has different magnetic properties than blood without oxygen (deoxyhaemoglobin) → Active brain areas use more oxygen than relatively inactive brain areas, and thus require more local blood flow → Leads to localised changes in the magnetic resonance signal from that part of the brain Measuring effects of ‘virtual lesions’: - Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): Stimulation of a brain region by means of a coil placed on the head – Allows temporary interference with the processing of a small part of the brain – Complementary to fMRI Cognitive neuroscience: The scientific study of the biological mechanisms underlying cognition – Largely based on brain imaging techniques, TMS and the measurement of electrical activity - Arguments in favour of cognitive neuroscience: - Localisation of the brain activity while a person is performing a task does provide information about the processes involved (E.g.: the brain regions normally involved in moving the feet are activated when participants see a picture of a person kicking something or are asked to read the word ‘kick’) - It is now recognised that although the brain is compartmentalised into regions with specialised functions, all tasks require the interaction of several areas distributed over distant parts of the brain - Arguments against cognitive neuroscience: - Referred to as ‘blob spotting’ by critics – Kihlstrom: Argued that the conclusions based on brain imaging have a strong resemblance to the claims made by the 19th-century phrenologists At the end of the 20th century a group of researchers argued that a similar approach could be used in the study of faulty thinking in mental disorders → Cognitive neuropsychiatry Gedownload door: yara