Psychology

Birth of Psychology

 1879 – Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzieg, Germany

o 1st lab for the independent study of psychology at the University of Leipzieg
 Made psychology an independent discipline

2 parents of studies

 Physiology and philosophy

 Scholars studying questions about the mind
 BEFORE 1879

Empiricism- 1800s Huge in England

 Locke, Hartley, Mill, Mill

 Idea that human knowledge and thoughts derive from sensory experiences
 “we are machines that learn”
 Law of association by contiguity
o Red apple and tasting delicious = apples are delicious

Darwin

 Species of Origin
 Naturalist
 Living things evolve gradually by natural selection
o Who inherit characteristics that help survive, live to pass it on
 Functions- functions of behavior- how behavior helps it survive and reproduce
 Survival of the fittest
 Led to a focus on the functions of behavior

8 levels of analysis

 Biological
o Neural and genetic
o Neurons- on or off
o Neurons firing- produce a specific type of behavior- traits
o Genetic- behavior and traits from DNA- what’s in DNA impact behavior
 Alcoholism, anger/violence
 Hereditary
 Evolutionary
o Behaviors get passed on or die off
 What becomes evolved? **Adaptive capabilities**
  Learning
o From past experiences-prior experiences
 How previous experiences affect current behavior
 *experience in the environment leads to change in behavior
 Short term??
 Cognitive
o How thoughts, beliefs, and memory impact behavior
o Using what you know to make/change decisions or beliefs
o Cognitive – take in/storeaway and recall information to dictate decision behavior
o *experience in the environment leads to change in knowledge or beliefs and that
change leads to change in behavior
 Social
o How social environment affects behavior
o Social pressure impact behavior
o Emphasize immediate social influences that act on individuals
o *immediate social influences- conformity and obedience
 Cultural
o Characteristics of entire culture
 Way people feel, act
 Economy, religious to explain values and norms
o In typical ways that people feel, think, act
 Sociocultural
o Economy impact behavior
o Gender and age
o Kenneth B. Clark – baby doll experiment 1950s
 How blacks viewed themselves
 Developmental
o How typical age differences that occur in the ways people feel think and act
o Describe changes from infancy to adult
o Affect developmental process

Dualism

 Church’s view
 Each human consists of 2 distinct but intimately conjoined entities
o Material body and immaterial soul
 Body is of the natural world and can be studies
 Soul can’t be studied
 Accepted religious doctrine
Ethical issues in research

 Ethical guidelines in research

o APA- DATE??????
 Anything causing anxiety stress or pain is prohibited

Lessons from Clever Hans

1. Value of skepticism- look to prove wrong, leads to looking more carefully- always try to disprove
theories no matter what
2. Value of careful observations under controlled conditions- careful observations under controlled
conditions is a hallmark of the scientific study
3. Problem of observer-expectancy effects- observer hinting without knowing it

Bias/Error

 Error- random variability in results

o Not devastating
 Bias- non random effects caused by some factor or factors
o Devastating
o Factors extraneous to the research hypothesis

Observer expectancy/subject expectancy

 Blind and double blind

 Observer acts differently in his or her expectations of the outcome
 Subject expect a certain effect, therefore act differently

Parts of the neuron

 Soma
 Dendrites
 Axon
 Myelin sheath
 Glia

Methods for studying the brain

 Accidents- studying pps who have been in accidents

 TMS- Transcranial magnetic stimulation
 EEG- electroencephalogram
 PET- Positron emission tomography
 fMRI- functional magnetic resonance imaging
  CAT Scan
 I now love you.

Gregor Mendel

 Pea guy!
 Selective breeding
 Recessive and dominant genes/alleles

Lobes of the brain

 Parietal lobe
o Receives signals from various parts of the body; responsible for physical sensations;
involved in integrating visual input and monitoring body’s position in space
o Primary somatosensory cortex- registers sense of touch
 Frontal lobe
o Largest lobe of the human brain; thinking and planning
o Thinking and plan
o Primary motor cortex – control of movement of muscles
 Temporal lobe
o Plays role in speech and language
o Primary auditory cortex – devoted to auditory processing
 Occipital Lobe
o Located at the back of the head, contains primary visual cortex
o Primary visual cortex – area where most visual signals are sent and visual processing
begun

Mating Patterns and parental investment

o From an evolutionary persepective- mating is most important behavior

 Sex is the foundation of society
o Polygyny – one male and many females
 Related high female and low male investment
o Polyandry – one female and many males
o Monogamy – one male and one female
o Polygynandry – many females and many males
o –gyn = female and – andr = male
o Parental investment – the time, energy, and risk to survival that are involved in
producing, feeding, and otherwise caring for each offspring
o Triver’s theory – in general, for species in which parental investment is unequal, the
more parentally invested sex will:
  Be more vigorously competed for than the other
 Be more discriminating than the other when choosing mates

Broca’s and Werenike’s Area

 Broca’s area – observed that damage in Broca’s area suffered from aphasia
o Minimum #of words – nouns and verbs
o Non-fluent aphasia
o Neurons in Broca’s area involved with fluent speech
o Difficulty understanding language
o 1)articulating words and sentences in a fluent manner
o 2)transforming grammatically complex sentences that are heard into simpler ones in
order to extract the meaning
 Werenike’s area
o Difficulty understanding the meanings of words
o Difficulty finding the right words to express the meanings
o Fluent aphasia
o Lack of meaning and substitution with pronouns and nonsense words

Classical Conditioning

 Ivan Pavlov
 Trial – pairing of Unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus
 3 types
o Simultaneous conditioning – CS and UCS begin and end together
o Short – delayed conditioning – CS begins just before the UCS and end together
o Trace conditioning – CS beings and ends before UCS is presented
 Acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery
o Ext.- after awhile, the stimulus rarely, if none, brings the respone
o SR- next day, or after time, the stimulus all of a sudden gives the response once extinct
 Stimulus generalization
o Any sound gives the response, generalizes the stimulus
 Discrimination – narrowing down to just one stimulus
o Only one stimulus will give a response
 Operant conditioning
o Reinforcement – something is being presented
o Punishment – something is being taken away
o Schedules
 Intermittent (partial) reinforcement)
 Interval – time
  Ratio – actual number
 Variable – changes
 Fixed – set schedule
 Fixed interval, Variable interval, Fixed Ratio, and Variable ratio
 Continuous reinforcement – everytime

Importance of play and observational learning

 Shows the being how to act, readies the being to survive

o Example, lion cubs playing, readying them for hunting
 Observational learning – good for children to learn how to act. How they eat, and what to eat.
How they are raised and what actions are around them
o Violent parents = violent kids

John Garcia’s Food Aversion

 People will dislike food if they get sick or are in pain

 Relies much on the delay
 If it’s too early, then they wont make the connection, vice versa\

Little albert

 11 months old – afraid of bell

 Conditioned to be afraid of a rat – every time the bell rang, presented the rat
 Generalization

John B. Watson – stimulus response

 Predicted value of the conditioned stimulus

1. Conditioned stimulus must precede the unconditioned stimulus
2. Conditioned stimulus must signal heightened probability of occurrence of the
unconditioned stimulus
3. Conditioning is ineffective when the animal already has a good predictor