Who was Wundt and what did he do
He is known as the father of Psychology opening the first institute for experimental psychology in Germany in 1879. He
... [Show More] separated psychology from philosophy and focused on studying the mind. He took a very reductionist approach where he simplified everything down to cause and effect.
Outline introspection and problems with it
Introspection is a psychological method to analyse someones thoughts and feelings internally, this was done as there were no brain scans or computers at the time and thus they used this technique of presenting a stimuli and asking how they felt after seeing it.
Problems with it include how it does not explain how the mind works it simply relies on peoples subjective thoughts. Secondly it doesn't provide data that can be used with certain reliability.
What are the 5 factors that need to be looked at when deciding whether psychology is a science
Objectivity
Control
Predictability
Hypothesis Testing
Replication
Evaluate the strengths and limitations to a scientific approach in psychology
:) - Due to its reliance on objectivity and scientific methods knowledge acquired is more than just the passive acceptance of facts
:) - Because scientific methods believe in determinism they are able to establish the causes of behaviour through the use of methods that are replicable
:) - If scientific methods no longer fit the facts then they can easily be refined or abandoned meaning that scientific knowledge is self corrective
:( - Be focusing on objectivity and control in experiments they tend to be too unrealistic and we lack an insight into natural behaviour
:( - A lot of psychological behaviour is unobservable and thus cannot be measured with much accuracy meaning that the gap between actual data and theories put forward is quite large
:( - Not all psychologists believe that human behaviour can be viewed scientifically as it is not subject to laws and regularities that science implies
The first worldwide accepted approach was behaviourism, outline this
Behaviourism, also known as learning theory, started in the early 1900's by Watson who believed that psychological research before this wasn't scientific enough.
There are three assumptions behaviourism makes:
1) All behaviour is learnt (exception of inborn reflexes)
2) Animals and humans learn in the same way
3) The minds is irrelevant
Outline Pavlov's classical conditioning
Pavlov was studying dogs salivation however during his studies he found that dogs would end up salivating before there was any food, the direction of his studies changed and outlined classical conditioning.
He eventually ended up ringing a bell before giving the dogs food and then he would ring a bell and give no food, the dogs still salivated. The food is the UCS and salivation is the UCR. The bell had become the CS and salivation the CR.
This process of learning can be applied to human development.
Comfort for the baby is an UCS that produces happiness, the UCR. The babies mother will talk to it while she feeds it and changes its nappies etc. and thus the baby hears its mothers voice every time it is made happy. The sound of the mothers voice is matched with the UCS and therefore becomes a CS, eventually the sound of the mothers voice alone will make the baby happy. The CS now causes the CR.
Outline the several principles of classical conditioning
Generalisation - stimuli similar to CS produces the CR
Discrimination - when stimuli similar to CS does not produce the CR
Extinction - when the CR isn't produced after the CS
Spontaneous recovery - when a previously extinct CR is produced in response to the CS
High order conditioning - when a new CS produces the CR because the animal associates it with the original CS
Outline Skinners operant conditioning
Skinner studies how animals can learn from consequences of their own actions. Consequences involve either:
Positive reinforcement where something desirable is obtained or negative reinforcement where something undesirable is removed.
Skinner used a 'Skinner Box' which he placed one rat inside at a time. Each box had a variety of different stimuli including a speaker, lights an electric floor and a food dispenser connected to a lever. The time taken for the rats to learn that pressing the lever was recorded. He found that rats would initially run around the cage until accidentally pressing the lever then it was rewarded the food. The more it was put into the box, the quicker they got at learning about the lever. The rat had learnt that when it pressed the leaver there was a reward in return.
Evaluate conditioning as a theory
Classical
:) - Research into classical conditioning has lead to the development of treatment of phobias, systematic desensitisation works by eliminating the learned anxious response (CR) that is associated with the feared object (CS). This process has been proven to work on many different phobias such as arachnophobia
:( - It is difficult to say that conditioning works the same for every animal as some animals find it harder to form associations with certain stimuli. Thus Seligman proposed preparedness, this means that animals are prepared to associate aspects that will help their survival such as the smell of meat with food, but are less ready to associate random items such as a bell with a tree.
Operant
:) - Skinner used a strong experimental method which allowed him to control the conditions in which it was setup in. The 'Skinners Box' in particular is a good example of this in practice where the consequence was manipulated to see the effects on the rats behaviour. All of this allowed him to draw a strong cause and effect relationship.
:( - Critics have pointed out that he has relied strongly on the fact he can extrapolate his findings from rats onto humans. We are very different to rats and specifically we have free will, it can be argued that we do not have our behaviour determined by positive and negative reinforcement
Outline Bandura's SLT
Bandura agreed that people can learn through conditioning but he stated other people such as role models also play a key role in our behaviour. He said people must focus their attention onto a role model, perceive what they do and then remember it in order to repeat it.
In order to model we must first identify with the role model, meaning certain attractive characteristics and qualities are picked up on.
The behaviour can be learnt through both reinforcement and vicarious reinforcement and once this is happened for effective learning meditational processes need to occur.
1) Attention
2) Retention
3) Reproduction
4) Motivation
Outline Bandura's Study
He had a large sample of toddlers half female half male and setup a lab experiment. The experiment consisted of two conditions, in the first condition half the toddlers observed an aggressive model playing in a room ie. hitting a bobo doll and the second condition had the other half observing a non-aggressive model playing. There was a third condition in which no observation was taken place, this was the control group. The children were then put in their groups into the same room and observed for 20 minutes.
He found that children who had observed aggressive models tended to act with much more physical and verbal aggressive behaviour when compared to the non-aggressive group who showed nearly no aggressive behaviour.
This study provided evidence for social learning theory.
Evaluate SLT
:) - There are many real world applications that research into SLT has bought for example Akers suggested that the probability of someone engaging in criminal activity increases when they are exposed to models that do this around them. This is an application that can benefit society as we now know to keep children away from parents with criminal records or general antisocial behaviour.
:) - There has been research done which supports identification. Greater identification results in a learner learning more as it is easier for them to visualise them self in the place of the model. Fox found evidence for this using computer generated virtual humans engaging in exercise and had participants watch these CGI humans, some of which looked similar to participants and some didn't. The participants were then observed for the next 24 hours and found that the participants who's models looked similar tended to do exercise them self.
:( - Social learning theory is too reductionist as it only states that it only looks at the nurture side of the nature nurture debate. We know now that we must take a wholistic approach and take parts from both side of the argument as there is strong evidence that proves genes play a significant part in our behaviour and thus SLT needs to take a more wholistic approach in explaining human behaviour.
Outline the cognitive approach
Cognitive psychology looks at how we interpret the world, whilst the behavioural approach studies observable behaviour the cognitive approach does quite the opposite by looking at the internal workings of the mind. Cognitive psychologists try to explain behaviour by looking at our perception, language, attention and memory. They use scientific methods to construct experiments and is a fairly reductionist approach as they explain the mind by comparing it to a computer.
There are several principles to the cognitive approach, these are:
-Our mental systems have a limited capacity
-A control mechanism oversees all mental processes
-There is a two way flow of information
Outline what schemas are
Schemas help us to interpret organise all the information and experiences that we know, the schema for a human face for example is that it has two eyes, a nose and a mouth. When information is consistent with a schema then the schema is assimilated and strengthened. However if it is not consistent with a schema then the schema is accommodated and it changes based on the new information
There are three types of schemas:
Role
Event
Self
Outline cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is a rapidly advancing field of psychology that has become more popular after the last decade because of advances in computer technology. It is a much more scientific and detailed way of physically studying the brain without doing post morterm's or autopsies. The use of non-invasive scans such as fMRI or EEG's has allowed psychologists to see how the brains behaviour works in hand with human behaviour. [Show Less]