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| Donders Reaction Time Experiment |
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Definition
| Donders had people watch a screen. If something appeared on the left side of the screen, they were to push one button. If something on the right appeared, they were to push a separate button. Donders then tested the reaction time of the participants hitting the buttons. This tested how long it took someone to make a decision! It was the first cognitive psychology experiment. |
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| Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve Experiment |
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Definition
| Ebbinghaus had people learn a set of words. He then tested them at different times, ranging from 20 minutes after learning to 31 days after learning, to see how much the participants remembered. The results were that over time, people forgot more and more of their memory, but the rate in which they forgot topped off at 6 days. |
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| The idea that our experience in life is made up of different basic elements called sensations, like that of the periodic table. It was created by William Wundt and mapped out the "periodic table of the mind" |
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| A technique to measure things by asking participants how they feel about certain stimuli. The problems with this are that the answer varies from person to person, and they were difficult to verify because it was just peoples thoughts or mental processes |
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in 1904, Watson felt that analytic introspection, or the idea of measuring psychological values by asking people about them, was not a good enough measure in psychology. As a result, he created behaviorism! Or the idea that we can measure our mental processes from our behavior (actions).
He performed the little albert experiment, which proved classical conditioning when the little boy was classically conditioned to fear rats. |
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| Founded by Watson, it is the idea that studying mental processes can be done by observing peoples physical actions and behavior, rather than study the "mind" and un-observable mental processes. |
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| Watson showed a little boy named Albert a rat, and then proceeded to play a very loud noise afterward. He continued to do this over and over every time he would show the boy the rat. Each time this happened the boy would get scared. Eventually the boy became scared just when he saw a rat, not even with the noise. This proved classical conditioning, because the boy became classically conditioned to the rat. |
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| Proposed by BF skinner, it was another form of learning from the behaviorist approach. Skinner showed that presentation of positive reinforcement can lead to strengthened behavior. For example, a rat was more likely to press a bar when presented with cheese. |
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| Tolman placed a rat in a maze. At first, the rat was allowed to explore the maze. After some exploring, the rat was placed in one spot and food was placed at the other. The rat then went to get the food. Again the rat was placed in a different spot and food at a different spot. When the rat entered the maze, instead of going in the direction he went the first time, he went in the direction of the food was! This proved cognitive maps, or the idea that we have a mental layout of our surroundings |
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| We have mental layouts of our surroundings. Was proven by Tolman in 1940. |
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| The strengthening (or hardening) of our memories over time. |
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