Elaborate notes on all of the lectures of the course Theoretical Psychology. This is a second year course of the study Psychology at Radboud University. With these notes (and the other course material) my grade was a 7.5.
From phrenology to scientific theory
Famous psychologists in history;
- Wilhelm Wundt; first psychological laboratory in Leipzig (1879) and first psychological
journal.
- Lightner Witmer; founder of clinical psychology and first clinical journal.
- Mary Calkins; designed technique of paired associations of memory and first female APA
president.
- Helen Thompson; first studies of differences between men and women with experimental
methods.
- William James; first bestseller of psychology about integration of psychological knowledge.
- Robert Woodworth; wrote bestseller Experimental Psychology.
Pre-scientific approaches
Theories of the human mind have been designed since the Greeks;
- Aristotle; mental processes proceed by way of associations.
All senses come together in common sense, which is eventually used for thinking,
memory and other mental processes.
He saw the brain as a blank slate; people are born without build-in mental content.
Sensoristic and atomistic; all mental content is due to sensory input, elementary
sensations are the building blocks of the more complex contents of the brain.
- Law of contiguity; if two things repeatedly occur together, then the occurrence of one thing
will remember us of the other.
Hebb’s law; if neurons fire together, synaptic changes occur. -> evidence of long-
term potentiation in the hippocampus of rabbits.
Aristotle and Locke; learning, memory, attention, perception and will work the same
in different content-domains.
- Association is now connectionism!
David Rumelhart & James McClelland; use computer simulations to test whether
theoretical assumptions really explain the findings.
- Franz Josef Gall; phrenology -> brain has domain-specific functions -> vertical faculties.
Different memory functions for different content domains.
Each domain-specific function has a specific location in the brain; locationalism.
When a function is well-developed, it occupies more space in the brain -> lead to
bumps on the skull, development can be assessed by determining the size of the
bump on the skull.
All brain functions are double-sided.
Four types of pseudo-science;
1. Physiognomy; persons character is reflected by features in the face.
2. Mesmerism; magnetic forces which work at the distance, which may cure mental disorders.
3. Mental healing; mental illnesses can be cured by establishing erect thinking.
4. Spiritualism; belief that particular persons (medium) may establish contact with spirits that
are dead.
Debate between William James and James Cattell
James Randi; medium is very clever in hiding that he gets the answers from “the
spirits of the dead” by you. -> cold reading.
Neuroanatomy, time and psychophysics
, Controversy over holism vs. localization (Flourens vs. Gall)
- Flourens attempted to create evidence for his ideas with experiments.
- Performed lesions on rabbits and pigeons;
Lesions to brainstem; loss of vital functions
Lesions to cerebellum; loss of motor coordination
Lesions to cerebral cortex; loss of higher mental functions but not of specialisations.
- Functions are distributed across the hole cerebral cortex; holism.
Patients were pigeons and rabbits, so unclear if this also held for the cortex of
humans.
Broca’s discovery; localization of language aspects in the brain of humans.
- Patient Leborge; damage to left inferior frontal cortex causes speech production difficulties.
Wernicke’s language model; association model of language in the brain.
- Posterior part of the brain – Wernicke’s area – stores auditory images of words.
- Broca and Wernicke are connected, so motor image and auditory image in the brain
integrate.
- Concept images are sensory images of the object that the word refers to; colour, shape etc.
-> embodied cognition; many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are
shaped by aspects of the entire body of the organism.
Wernicke; these concepts are distributed in different areas of the brain
With the concept images in mind, you can activate the word
- Broca’s aphasia; comprehension is spared but difficulty in pronounciation.
- Wernicke’s aphasia; difficulty understanding speech, but speech production is spared.
- Based on sensoristic, atomistic and associative factors.
Conduction of nerve impulses takes time; van Helmholtz and Müller
- Helmholtz measured speech of nerve impulses
Speed of mental processes;
- Donders; participant A has to utter a syllable and participant B has to repeat it
- Determining duration of mental processes;
A. Simple reaction; press a button when a stimulus is presented, perception-action
task.
B. Choice; choosing between two options, perception-recognition-choice-action task.
C. Go/no-go; press a button when the right stimulus is presented, perception-
recognition-action.
- C – A = recognition duration, B – C = choice duration; mental processing takes time and can
be measured.
Sternberg’s additive factors method; identify mental stages of processing.
- Clarity of a stage (low vs. high resolution stimuli) should influence additional stages (choice).
- Number of choices also influences choice process.
Weber; psychophysics
- Just noticeable differences forms a constant ratio
- Fechner; Weber’s observation implies a logarithmic relation between stimulus intensity and
psychological quantities.
Difference between high and lower number corresponds psychologically in a
different way; S = k log R
- Stimuli need to have a certain minimal strength to be observational.
Modularity of the mind
Voordelen van het kopen van samenvattingen bij Stuvia op een rij:
Verzekerd van kwaliteit door reviews
Stuvia-klanten hebben meer dan 700.000 samenvattingen beoordeeld. Zo weet je zeker dat je de beste documenten koopt!
Snel en makkelijk kopen
Je betaalt supersnel en eenmalig met iDeal, creditcard of Stuvia-tegoed voor de samenvatting. Zonder lidmaatschap.
Focus op de essentie
Samenvattingen worden geschreven voor en door anderen. Daarom zijn de samenvattingen altijd betrouwbaar en actueel. Zo kom je snel tot de kern!
Veelgestelde vragen
Wat krijg ik als ik dit document koop?
Je krijgt een PDF, die direct beschikbaar is na je aankoop. Het gekochte document is altijd, overal en oneindig toegankelijk via je profiel.
Tevredenheidsgarantie: hoe werkt dat?
Onze tevredenheidsgarantie zorgt ervoor dat je altijd een studiedocument vindt dat goed bij je past. Je vult een formulier in en onze klantenservice regelt de rest.
Van wie koop ik deze samenvatting?
Stuvia is een marktplaats, je koop dit document dus niet van ons, maar van verkoper sharonvlot. Stuvia faciliteert de betaling aan de verkoper.
Zit ik meteen vast aan een abonnement?
Nee, je koopt alleen deze samenvatting voor €4,39. Je zit daarna nergens aan vast.
