Exam 1 Peer Study Guide - Study Guide Psychology 1101...

Study Guide: Psychology 1101 Spring 2009 Exam One
• Approximately what % of psychologists are involved in the treatment of patients?
o 55%
• How was psychology defined in class?
o The scientific study of mental processes and behavior
• What did Ebbinghaus mean with, “Psychology has a long past but a short history.”?
o Philosophical questions dating back to Ancient Greece and before and the development of
reason and the scientific method in the 1700s are the long past. The short history begins in
Wundt’s first official psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany 1879.
• What was Hippocrates noted for in lecture?
o “Father of Western Medicine”; advocates the practice of medicine devoid of religious
rituals
• According to Bacon, how should the “inductive method” proceed? How does induction differ from
deduction? Of what importance is this to the scientific process?
o The inductive method:
 collect reliable information by experimentation
 make minor generalizations based upon your observations
 replicate the observations in order to establish scientific laws
 use laws to generate predications
• According to staunch empiricists, all knowledge is derived from what? How does that match up
with “nativism?” Which of the two theories is consistent with “tabula rasa?”
o Empiricism: tabula rasa: All knowledge is derived from sensory experience; born as a
clean slate
o Nativism: The Socratic Method: all knowledge is innate due to reincarnation
• Was early psychology (e.g. the work of Pavlov, Ebbinghaus, Wundt, et cetera) based more upon
physiological studies or was it more based upon treating patients with disorders?
o Early psychology dealt with understanding human thoughts, behaviors, etc.
 Pavlov: studied learned reflexes
• Classical conditioning
o Dog & food
 Helmholtz: measured the speed of neural signals
• 200 m/s
 Wundt: sought to describe the basic elements of human consciousness and how the
mind assembles those elements into perceptions
• When and by whom was the first officially recognized psychology laboratory created?
o Wundt had the first laboratory in Leipzig, Germany 1879
• What was the main goal of Structuralism as a school of psychological investigation?
o Earliest school (Wundt)
o Sought to determine the “periodic table” of conscious thought
• What does it mean to say that Functionalism emphasized “adaptive advantage?”
o James (first American psychologist) – was a philosopher
o Adaptive advantage – evolutionary significance of certain behaviors (Darwin)
• Did Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory focus more on conscious or unconscious processes?
o Unconscious
o Believed that many physical problems are deep-seated, psychological conflicts which are
pushed out of conscious awareness

• According to behaviorists like John Watson and B.F. Skinner, psychologists should concern
themselves with measuring only what?