Summary: Experimental Psychology - Lectures

Read the summary and the most important questions on Experimental Psychology - lectures

• 1 Lecture #1

• 1.1.2 brief history

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• What is the difference between the continental ratonalists and British empiricists regarding acquiring knowledge?

  Continental rationalists: knowledge is innate or inborn -> nativism
  British empiricists: knowledge is acquired

• Who are three examples of people that belonged to the continental rationalists?

  Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes

• What does Descartes's dualism mean?

  dualism: the mind is not supreme: body and mind are separate entities* that interact (via the pineal gland).
  *e.g., because bodily reflexes do not involve the mind/free will, the body and mind must be distinct

• Who fueled the stimulation of Psychology to evolve into a science in the 19th century?

  In the 19th century, Psychology started to evolve into a science, which was fueled a lot by Charles Darwin (evolution theory, natural selection). Darwin didn’t make a distinction between animals and humans; works the same for both.

• What did Hermann von Helmholtz study in the 19th century?

  One of the first psychologists to conduct experiments was Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894). He studied, for example, the conduction velocity of the nerve impulse.

• What does the Just Noticeable Difference of Gustav Fechner mean?

  Inspired by Ernst Weber (1795–1878), Gustav Fechner (1801-1871) introduced the Just Noticeable Difference (JND), which is still widely used in psychophysics. JND is the minimum difference in stimulation that a person can detect 50% of the time (more on this later).

• What does the additive factor logic of Sternberg mean?

  Sternberg, inspired by mental chronometry came up with the additive factor logic and said: if things are independent, they add up (if you get one stimulus and another at the same time, if they are completely independent, patterns add up). If they interact, they don’t add up. So, if the joined activity is different than the sum of the isolated activities, we call that an interaction

• Why is mental chronometry important?

  The reason this is important is because this is still widely used today: this additive factor logic is still used in modern day research where brain activity (measured with EEG or fMRI, for example) in an experimental condition is subtracted from a control condition or when two experimental conditions are subtracted.

• What do the followers of structuralism believe about the focus of study?

  Consciousness should be the focus of study via analyses of the basic elements that constitute the mind (Wilhelm Wundt; 1832-1920), which is  achieved by breaking down consciousness into sensations and feelings via analytical introspection.
  
  Example: (some melody is played to a participant:) “I hear tones of different duration, pitch and loudness (sensations), that are structured in an unfamiliar rhythm which makes me feel confused (subjective interpretation/feelings)."

• What are the three elementary states of consciousness according to Edward Titchener?

  Structuralism of Wundt was further developed by Edward Titchener (1867-1927) who proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness (Sensations [sights, sounds, tastes], Images [components of thoughts], and Affections [components of emotions]) and identified thousands of ‘elemental qualities of conscious experience’.