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Study Questions Lecture 1 2. How would you define psychology? Psychology is the scientific study of the mental processes, brain and behavior and the relations between them. 3. Does behavior always require a brain and intention? No. See Braitenberg vehicle and moth example. 4. Why does psychology study principles, general laws rather than individual cases? Psychology studies general laws because these rules give more cues to human behavior, and can still help us understand individual behavior etc. General laws are more useful. 5. Still individual cases (especially neuropsychological) are interesting, why? They are interesting as they help us further understand the general principles and can initiate research to understand general principles. 6. How can we get insight in mental states? Experiment, observation and tests. 7. How can we get insight in he role of genes (see also lecture 3)? Twin studies, considering the nature vs. nurture debate… 8. What is meant by Nature and Nurture (see also lecture 3)? Nature vs. Nurture is a debate in developmental psychology as to how our behavior arises. Nature is an extreme hereditary position. Nurture (environmentalists/ behaviorists) tabula rasa. Interactionist is inbetween. 9. Why is understanding of history important? What are potential problems with historical accounts? Problems: memory is far from perfect. Interference by time, perspective, later interpretation. Presentist bias: a tendency to discuss/analyze the past in terms of the present. Lecture 2 10. What does the case of Alhazen tell us about the history of a scientific field? Alhazen was a middle eastern scientist in 965AD. Developed the modern form of the scientific method, studied optics, many consider him to be a leading figure in the development of experimental science/psychology. 11. What do we mean by Zeitgeist? Zeitgeist is the ‘spirit of the times’. Dominant set of ideas motivating the actions of members of a society in a particular time. 12. The establishment of Wundt’s lab is often seen as the start of psychology, is that correct? It was the start of scientific psychology. 13. What does trepanation potentially tell us about what people in the stone age were thinking about the structure that we now call ‘brain’? Drilling into skulls to expose the brain lets us know that even in ancient times, mental illness and neurological conditions were theorized to take place in the brain. 14. Why was the Edwin Smith Papyrus so significant? Imhotep the disputed author. Documented the head wounds of soldiers. Left side of the brain controls right side of body and vice versa. Brain is responsible for speech. Touching the brain can lead to epileptic seizures. Told us that the seat of the soul is different to the source of our behavior, specific functions are localized in the brain. 15. The Egyptians kept the heart and threw away the brain? What does that tell us (keep in mind the difference between Brain, Soul (mind)? The Egyptians thought the heart was the seat of the soul and thinking and feelings came from the heart. 16. Why was the discovery of the ventricles important for thinking in terms of specialized brain areas? Described by Herophilus of Chalcedon, gave rise to the 3 cell doctrine. Each ventricle had a function. 1: collection of sensory information. 2: cognition/thinking. 3: memory. Important as it suggested DaVinci was thinking of specialized regions of the brain having different functions. 17. What is meant by Phrenology? 18. Who were the key players in this movement? 19. Why do you think it was appealing to many persons (think in terms of cerebral specialisation/localisation)? Knowing psychological traits e.g. personality by feeling bumps in skull. Completely invalid. Key players were Franz Josef Gall (1757-1828) and his student Spurzheim (1775-1832). It kind of made scientific sense using theory of localization. 20. What did Flourens do? Tested Gall’s indeas of localistationism by inducing brain damage in rabbits and pigeons. With no cerebral hemispheres, perception and judgment gone. Removal of cerebellum, problems with motor function. Removal of brain stem, death. 21. What happened to Phineas Gage and why was this considered an example of cerebral specialization? 1848, iron rod through frontal lobe, led to personality change. A famous story of functional specialization but highly mythologized. Personality changes could also be due to pain, disfigurement etc. 22. What is lobotomy and reflect on the Zeitgeist of the time. Zeitgeist, was thought of completely scientific, but now cruel and dangerous. Some patients that were mentally ill were made calm and docile, some were killed or institutionalized. 23. What is Broca and his patient Tan known for? Broca’s area – named after ‘tan’ who lost speech and motor function but language comprehension was intact. And what about Wernicke? Wernicle’s area – patient talked without any comprehension in their language (fluent aphasia). 25. Would you rather be a Broca patient or a Wernicke patient? And why? (think also in terms of possible future use of BrainComputer-Interaction (BCIs) Broca, BCIs could help remedy fluent aphasia, or translate Broca’s area cognition into speech. 26. What is meant by brain plasticity and who role does age play? Brain can be ‘re-wired’ given time and experience. More recovery from drastic brain changes if they happen in youth. E.g. girl with right brain removed at early age, retained almost full function. 27. What is neuro-imaging in general? Neuro-imaging allows scientists to study the structure and activity of the brain: fMRI, EEG etc. 28. Why do some consider/criticize neuro-imaging as ‘modern day phrenology? It still studies the specialized functions of the brain; sometimes imaging doesn’t give us many insights into cognition as a whole. 29. When someone says ‘the brain is a network of highly specialized areas that need to talk to each other’ do you agree? Yes, interactions between specialized areas is important in brain function. Lecture 3 30. What, in general, is the NatureNurture debate about? Touched upon this earlier. Extremes of a continuum. Nature – most knowledge present at birth. Nurture – we must learn and that’s how we acquire knowledge. 31. What was Molyneux’s question to John Locke? The question Molyneux asked (to John Locke, see later) was whether a man who has been born blind and who has learnt to distinguish and name a globe and a cube by touch, would be able to distinguish and name these objects simply by sight, once he had been enabled to see.” 32. Why was Locke the right person to ask? John Locke was a philosopher that theorized that all knowledge was delivered from the senses. British empiricist (nurture). 33. What do philosophers mean when they talk about Nativism and Empiricism? How dependent are we on experience when acquiring knowledge? Basically nature = nativism, nurture = empiricism. Rationalism = reasoning can help us gain knowledge, part of reasoning is innate. 34. What is the Tabula Rasa idea and which Greek Philosopher was a big fan to this idea? Pure empiricism. Aristotle, knowledge through perception. 35. Aristotle’s teacher Plato was a nativist. What makes him a nativist? Believed much that allowed us to gain new knowledge through reasoning was innate. E.g. Plato’s cave. 36. The way we acquire knowledge, according Plato, was also by using our Ratio, what did he mean by that? (think in terms of the endless possibilities of a form called triangle) Ratio is basically an example of innate knowledge. By using our innate knowledge of triangle ratios we can create infinite numbers of triangles even though we may have never actually perceived them. 37. Were the British Philosophers mostly empiricists or nativists? Empiricists. 38. Were the European Mainland Philosophers mostly empiricists or nativists? Nativists. 39. What did John Locke mean by saying “Nothing is in the mind which was not first in the senses”? One is born without innate ideas; we learn through our senses. 40. Why is a reflex, which is often innate, not part of the discussion? 41. In terms of Body versus Mind, what do we mean by monism and dualism? Monoism = body or mind belief. Reductionism (materialism) and mentalism. Dualism = interactionism. 42. What is the idea behind Materialism, nowadays often known as (neuro)reductionism? There is only the body. The mind can be reduced to biochemical activity (reductionism). 43. What did Bishop Berkeley mean by subjective idealism? SI is also Mentalism. Reality only exists in the mind. Without the mind, reality does not exist. Objects cannot exist without being perceived. 44. Descartes was a dualist. What does that mean? Mind and body exist and interact with each other. “I think therefore I am.” You can doubt everything except your own existence. 45. Interactionism implies an interaction. What needed to interact to make his ideas work? The body and the mind. 46. Where was this interaction supposed to happen? Descartes believed the pineal gland was important in the interaction. 47. Kant was, like Descartes, a mainland European philosopher. Why did they consider themselves mostly nativists? They mostly believed that there were innate faculties in the mind. 48. Chomsky is considered a modern day nativist? Why? He believes language is an innate faculty. 49. The idea of have innate faculties in your mind, does that mean that you don’t need to learn? Not really, more like the innate faculties of the mind ‘allow’ us to learn. 50. What is the role of age in this? See Genie’s story. There are critical periods of language acquisition. Lecture 4 1. What do we mean when we talk about ‘Critical Period’ (aka Sensitive period) There is a period, in childhood where language acquisition is relatively easy. Can be seen in Genie’s story and in cases where children are taken out of their own culture and learn new languages easily. 2. Weber and Fechner were known for Psychophysics. What do we mean by that? Looking for laws in the mind. E.g. Weber’s law. Fechner is the father of psychophysics. 3. What do we mean by ‘the problem of demarcation’ from a philosophy of science point of view? What is scientific and what is unscientific? Science is based on the scientific method (fact, theory, hypothesis, experiment). 4. Come up with a few reason why the story of Clever Hans is so striking in terms of ‘doing the right experiment’ The right experiment can expose the difference between real and pseudoscience. However, this may not convince everyone. It is not so simple to do the right experiment. 5. What do we mean by ‘subliminal’ for example in the field of advertising? Stimulus is registered and processed without the subject’s awareness. 6. What is Popper’s central idea in one sentence? Falsifiability is central in scientific theory. Is psychodynamic theory unscientific? 7. And Kuhn’s (although it was Max Planck who really made that point)? No obvious difference between science and non science. Paradigm shifts are difficult and will only occur if anomalies show up that are hard to explain by the current paradigm. Planck: paradigm shifts as opponents literally die out. 8. What did Popper mean by Falsifiability? Is a hypothesis testable? 9. What is so crucial about the Popper’s Swans example. That the hypothesis is able to be tested. If you find one black swan you can disprove your hypothesis. 10. What is meant in Kuhn’s terminology ‘old and new theory’ Old theory = well established, many followers, politically powerful, well understood, many anomalies. New theory = few followers, untested, new concepts, accounts for anomalies, asks new questions. 11. Skinner never changed his mind, even when most evidence was against his ideas. Who would like that better in terms of the predictions of their theory, Popper or Kuhn? Definitely Kuhn. Lecture 5 12. What is introspection? A technique to look into the brain. Searching for the primitive experiences that constitute thought. 13. What in general is the difference between Structuralism and Functionalism. Structuralism looks for the building blocks of the conscious experience. Functionalism asks what is the FUNCTION of these building blocks, believed structure was too reductionist. 14. Who was Titchener? USA structuralist. Student of Wundt. 15. Can you describe introspection based on the perception of a pencil? Introspection in the perception of a pencil would be to describe the fundamental shapes and colours of the object, not name etc. 16. Why was according William James, ‘the stream of consciousness’ a problem for the structuralist approach? ‘You can’t freeze and separate building blocks, has not much relevance.’ 17. What do we mean by perceptual organisation? Often the Gestalt movement was described by ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’. But Koffka said: The whole is OTHER than the sum of its parts. What did he mean by that (so what is the difference?) Stimuli can organize themselves, perceiving is not just sensations but the organization of stimuli. The whole is other to the sum of its parts. The whole exists independently of its parts. 18. What kind of Gestalt laws do you know? Similarity, proximity and closure. 19. Which movement had its roots in animal research? Behaviourism. 20. Who is known as the discoverer of Classic Conditioning? Ivan Pavlov. 21. Little Albert’s emotional response… what kind of conditioning was that? Classical conditioning. 22. What is meant by Thorndike’s puzzle box? Forming more frequent and faster behaviour through reward – operant conditioning. Law of effect. 23. What was the big improvement of the skinner box? Studied reinforcers, punishments and neutral operants. Studied more ways in which behaviour could be shaped. The Skinner box produces more accurate and useful results compared to Thorndike's puzzle box. This is because the Skinner Box is an experimental environment that is better suited to examine the more natural flow of behavior. In other words, the Skinner box lets you measure a number of successful responses on the part of the animal because the animal stays in the box and can push the lever (or other mechanism) many times to receive multiple rewards. 24. Who is seen as the big person in the world of Operant Conditioning? B.F. Skinner. 25. Why was the rat Barnabus both a success as well as a problem for the behaviourists? Could elicit complex behaviours. Problems, does this have external validity? Single trial learning. 26. What is meant by the Cognitive Revolution? Cognitive science is a child of the 1950s, the product of a time when psychology, anthropology and linguistics were redefining themselves and computer science and neuroscience as disciplines were coming into existence. 27. What is meant by the Cognitive Neuroscience? Focus on the neurobiological/physiological substrates that underlie cognition and mental processes. 28. What is the main difference between 27. and 28. Cognitive revolution = intellectual movement, study of thought. Cognitive neuroscience = field, physiological. Latest movement in cognitive psychology. Lecture 6 29. Why was single trail learning a problem for the die-hard Behaviourist? Rats learned to stop drinking water that made them sick after only one trial, lack of repeat trial conditioning. 30. In the history of mental health problems, they often talk about imbalances. What is meant by that? In the case of Hippocrates, he thought it had to do with an imbalance in the four fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. 31. So how did they try to bring the balance back? E.g. blood letting. 32. Which parts of the world where the first to establish mental hospitals? Middle east: Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus. 33. Asylums where far from ‘holiday resort hotels’. Can you give some examples of the problems? Think about the expertise of the staff and the way they treated the patients! Mental illness often stigmatized and resulted in shame and abuse. E.g. Valencia asylum: untrained staff. St Mary of Bethlehem (Bedlam): freak shows, squalid conditions etc. 34. The movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was an eyeopener for the general audience. Why? Showed the treatment of patients e.g. ECT. Humanized mental illness. 35. Why do we sometimes use the term Mesmerized? What is Franz Mesmer known for (among other things)? Franz Mesmer is known for the advent of hypnosis. 36. Who was Lightner Witmer? Lightner Witmer was the first to establish what? Another student of Wundt. Introduced the term of clinical psychology. Taught a young person that had problems with spelling. Made first psychological clinic in 1896. 37. Which three components about the human mind did Freud distinguish? ID, ego and superego. 38. What three kinds of consciousness states did Freud distinguish? Conscious, preconscious and unconscious. 39. Freud later didn’t like hypnosis anymore, why? Thought that hypnosis would still block repressed painful memories and developed new free association techniques. 40. Name a few Neo-Freudians. Anna Freud, Karl Yung, Erik Erikson. 41. Give an example of a therapy in the behaviourism/behavioural tradition. Systematic desensitization – e.g. if you are afraid of spiders, exposure to spiders. 42. Carl Rogers is considered the godfather of which theory? Humanistic. 43. What is the DSM? The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.