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Theoretical Psychology Summary Radboud University
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Lecture 1 - From phrenology to scienti c theoryIntroduction
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
• Was suggested to be a postman in school Helen Thompson (1874-1947)
• Three nobel prize nominations • rst studies about psychological di erences
• First psychological laboratory in Leipzig between men and woman (1910)
• First psychological journal • Used experimental methods
• Had 188 doctoral students
• Wrote approximately 50,000 pages William James (1842-1910)
• Challenged the 2,500-year-old theory of • Started out as a painter
association • wrote the Bestseller: Principles of
Psychology (1890) —> Integrated
Lightner Witmer (1867-1956) psychological knowledge
• Founder of clinical psychology
• Student of Wundt Robert Woodworth (1869-1962)
• Founded rst journal: the Psychological • Bestseller: Experimental Psychology (“The
Clinic (1907) Columbia bible”)
• First psychological clinic (1896) • Still taught in his mid-eighties
Mary Calkins (1863-1930) The ‚Millers‘
• First female president of APA (1905) • Johannes Müller, George Müller, George
• Student of William James Miller, Earl Miller
• Designed technique of paired associates
Pre-scientific approaches
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
• Associationism: Mental processes proceed by associations
• Tabula rasa: mind lacks content at birth (blank state)
• Assumed that mind gets lled by perception
• Senses provide domain-speci c sensory images that come
together in the domain-general common sense/supra-modal
where associations are formed between domain speci c images so
they can be used for other processes
• Law of contiguity: “If two things repeatedly occur simultaneously,
the presence of one of them will remind us of the other.” —> Basic
law of associationism
John Locke (1632-1704)
• With the time of enlightenment (Kant: „Dare to understand“) modern psychology/association
theory begin (after period where religion dominated views)
• Empiricism: all knowledge obtained via senses (blank slate/tabula rasa)
• Nativism: assumes innate mental knowledge (René Descartes, Plato)
• Blank slate/white paper: We are born without built-in mental content
• Sensoristic: All mental content is sensory in nature
• Atomistic: elementary sensations are the building blocks of more complex contents
• Associative: More complex contents are created by association
Long-term potentiation
• Neuronal basis of the law of contiguity
• Hebb’s law: cells that re together wire together (If two nerve cells are simultaneously
stimulated for a period of time, the synapse binding them is strengthened)
• The discovery of Long-term potentiation proofed Hebbs law (Discovered in 1973 in the
hippocampus of rabbits)
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, Connectionism (Modern form of associationism)
• Rumelhart & McClelland used computer simulations to test whether theoretical assumptions
explain existing theoretical ndings
• Aristotle and Lock assumed mental faculties are domain-general (Horizontal faculties)
• e.g. emory works the same for math, language, …
• Gall assumed mind exists of Domaine speci c functions (Vertical faculties)
• e.g. di erent memory functions for di erent content domains
• Phrenology: di erent functions have di erent locations in brain (localization), the better
developed a function is the more space it takes up (bumps on skull = very well developed), all
functions were believed to be bilaterally
Pseudo-sciences
• Physiognomy: persons character is re ected by facial structure
(e.g. Lombroso’s‚criminal type‘ = high forehead)
• Mesmerism: healing through magnetic forces
• Mental healing: healing through correct/positive thinking
• Spiritualism: mediums can have contact with spirits of the dead (famous debate between
Spiritualist James & skepticisms Cattel —> ‚mediums‘ might get their information through „Cold
reading“ / asking the client many questions)
Neuroanatomy, time, and psychophysics
• Domain-speci c (localized) proposal by Gall challenged by holistic view of Flourens
• Flourens experimented with the brains of pigeons and rabbits
• Removal of brainstem: loss of vital functions
• Removal of cerebellum: loss of motor coordination
• Removal of cerebral cortex: loss of higher mental functions, but not of specializations
• Could not nd speci c regions for perception and memory (—> thought those must be
distributed over whole brain = holism)
• Broca’s discovery: Damage to left inferior frontal cortex causes speech production di culties
( rst discovered in patient Leborgne / ‘Mr Tan’)
• Wernicke’s discovery: damage to the posterior part of the left superior
temporal gyrus resulted in speech comprehension problems in a patient
Wernicke’s language model: Association theory of language
• Model is: Sensoristic, Atomistic, Associative
• Wernickes area stores auditory images of words
• Brocas area stores motor images of words
• Brocas und Wernickes are connected via bers —> can activate each other
• Auditory images (hearing a word) can also activate concept images
(meaning / sensory image of word —> e.g. ‚apple‘ = ‚red‘, ‚sour‘)
• Embodied cognition: concepts are represented in terms of sensory images
& motor motor features
• According to Wernicke concept images are distributed throughout the brain,
but images for speech perception and articulation are localized
• Boras aphasia: di culty producing speech & repeating heard words
• Wernickes aphasia: di culty understanding speech & repeating words
• Conduction aphasia: repetition of words impaired but production & comprehension spared
Speed of nerve impulses
• Conduction of nerve impulse takes time
• Johannes M ller: impulse conduction is „in nitely fast“ and therefore cannot be measured
• Helmholtz didn’t believe Müller and did experiments on frogs to measure speed of nerve
conduction —> conduction of the nerve impulse takes time and can be measured
• Helmholtz also conducted experiments in humans but the measurements were much more
varied because people rst had to process the stimuli (later experiments showed humans &
frogs both had a conduction speed of 30 meters per second)
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