CHAPTER 1 William James (1842-1910)

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was excited by the new field of psychology, which allowed him to apply a scientific approach to age-old questions about the nature of human beings was confused and left medical school in order to travel the world

mind- refers to our private inner experience, the ever-flowing stream of counsciousness that is made of perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings behaviour- refers to observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals, the things that we do in the world, by ourselves or with others psychology- is the scientific study of mind and behaviour functional magnetic resonance (fMRI)- allows scientists to scan a brain and see which parts are active when a person does something structuralists- who tried to analyze the mind by breaking it down into its basic components functionalists- who focused ono how mental abilities allow people to adapt to their environments nativism- the philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn

greek philosopher Plato believed in nativism

philosophical empiricism- all knowledge is acquired through experience

Aristotle believed in empiricism

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)- made contributions to many fields of inquiry, from physiology to philosophy. He is probably best known for his suggestion that the body and soul are fundamentally different

suggested that the mind influences the body through a tiny structure near the bottom of the brain known as the pineal gland

dualism- how mental activity can be reconciled and coordinated with physical behaviour Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)- argued that the mind and body aren`t different things at all, rather the mind is what the brain does Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)- also thought that the brains and minds were linked, but by size rather than glands phyrenology- that specific mental abilities and characteristics are localized in specific regions of the brain

physiology- is the study of biological processes, especially in the human body Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94)- estimated the length of time it takes a nerve impulse to travel to the brain by measuring a person's reaction times to different stimuli

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stimulus- sensory input from the environment reaction time- the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)- trained people to tell him what they saw in their mind, but it was still an issue because they might be telling us something different.

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consciousness- a person's subjective experience of the world and the mind structuralism- the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind introspection- the subjective observation of one's own experience

functionalism- school of thought that followed Structuralism and moved away from focusing on the structure of the mind to a concern with how the conscious is related to behavior what functions does a behaviour have natural selection- the feautures of an oraganism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other feautres to be passed on to subsequent generations clinical psychology- other psychologists were beginning to study patients with psychological disorders.

one could often understand how something works by examining how it breaks, and their obsercations of mental disorders influenced the development of psychology

hysteria- a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences

when the patients were put into a trancelike state through hypnosis, their symptoms disappeared

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)- worked with hysteric patients

theorized that many of the patients' problems could be traced to the effects of painful childhood experiences that the person could not remember, and he suggested that the powerful indluence of these lost memories revealed the presence of an unconscious mind unconscious- is the part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions psychoanalytic theory- the importance of unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts, and behaviours . It required a thorough exploration of the person's early sexual experiences and unconscious sexual

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desires. These topics were not discussed in that time.

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psychoanalysis- bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders. Patients recall past experience. Freud did not conduct psychological experiments Freud's ideas were difficult to test and a theory that cant be tested is of limited use in psychology or other sciences

humanistic psychology- to understand human nature we should look at positive potential of a human

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers introduced this approach in response to what they viewed as the overly pessimistic view of psychoanalysis

behaviorism- all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Behaviors can be measured and
changed

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so far structuralism, functionalism and psychoanalysis were similar in the way that each examined conscious perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings. behaviorism represented a dramatic departure from previous schools or thoughts Watson proposed that psychologists should focus on what people do rather than what people experience behaviour can be observed by anyone and can be measured objectively Watson believed that human behaviour is mostly influenced by the environment

reinforcement- the consequences of a behaviour that determine whether it will be more likely that the behaviour will occur again

Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904-90) introduced this principle after using what is called a skinner box

Illusions- errors of perception, memory or judgment in which subjective experience differs from objective reality Gestalt psychology- a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

Wertheimer`s interpretation of the illusion led to this development

Hermann Ebbinghaus- tried to discover how fast and how well he could memorize meaningless information such as 3-letter nonsense syllables Sir Frederic Bartlett- gave people stories to remember and observed what errors they would make when re-telling it

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often remembered what should have happened or what they expected to happen rather than what did happen suggested that memory is not a photographic reproduction of the past experience and that our attempts to recall the past are powerfully influenced by our knowledge, beliefs, hopes, aspirations, and desires

cognitive psychology- the scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory and reasoning

this developed because psychologists wondered whether the computer might be useful as a model for the human brain

behavioral neuroscience- an approach to psychology that links psychological processes to activities in the nervous system and other bodily processes PET scans- a brain imaging technology that psychologists use to observe the living brain (pg. 25) cognitive neuroscience- a field that attempts to understand the links between cognitive processes and brain activity evolutionary psychology- a psychological approach that explains mind and behaviour in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural selection social psychology- the study of the causes and consequences of interpersonal behaviour cultural psychology- is the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members