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| The principles, methods, and phiosphical issues of historical reasearch. |
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| The intellectual and cultural cimate or spirit of the times. |
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| The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributeable to the ideas of unique individuals |
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| The view that progress and change in scientific history are attributable to the Zeitgeist, which makes a culture receptive to some ideas but not others. |
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| E.B. Titchener's system of psychology which delt with conscious experience as dependent on the person experiencing it. |
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| A system of psychology concerned with the mind as it is used in an organism's adaptation to its environment |
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| Watson's science of behavior, which dealt soley with observable behavioral acts that could be discribed in objective terms. |
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| A system of psychology that focuses largely on learning and perception, suggesting that combining sensory elements produces new patterns with properites that did not exist in the individual elements. |
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| Sigmund Freud's theory of personality and system of psychotherapy. |
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| A system of psychology that emphasizes the study of conscious experience and the wholeness of human nature. |
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| A system of psychology that focuses on the process of knowing, on how the mind actively organizzes experiences. |
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| The doctrine that natural processes are mechanically determined and capable of explinatiron by the laws of physics and chemistry. |
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| The doctrine that acts are determined by past events |
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| the doctrine that explains phenomena on one level (such as complex ideas) in terms of phenomena on another level (such as simple ideas). |
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| The pursuit of knowledge through the observation of nature and the attribution of all knowledge to experience. |
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| The question of the distinction between mental and physical qualities. |
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| René Descartes (1596 - 1650) |
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| A French mathamatition and philosopher that differed from accepted views of the mind-body issue. Thought of the body as a machine and the mind as responsible for thought in a system where the mind and body influenced eachother. |
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| Ideas produced by the direct application of an external stimulus. |
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| Ideas arisen from the mind or conciousness, independent of sensory experiences or external stimuli. |
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| The doctrine that recognizes only natural phenomena or facts that are objectively observable. |
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| The doctrine that considers the facts of the universe to be sufficiently explained in physical terms by the existence and nature of mater. |
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| A British empiricist who was concerned primarly with cognitive functioning; that is, the way that the mind accuires knowladge. he rejected the existence of Descartes innate ideas and argued humans are born as a blank slate. recognized two kinds of experience, one deriving from sensation and one reflection. ideas derived from sensation - from sensory input from the environment- are simple sense impressions. these sense impressions operate on the mind, and the mind itself also operates on sensations, reflecting on them to form ideas. this mental or cognitive function of reflection as a source of ideas depends on sensory experience because the ideas produced by the mind's reflection are based on impressions already experienced through the senses. sensations appear first, once there is a reservoir of sense impressions for the mind to be able to reflect on, we can reflecgt on past sensory impressions and combine them to form abstractions and other high-level ideas. destinguished between simple and complex ideas. proposed the theory of association and primary and seconday qualities. |
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| Simple ideas are elemental ideas that arise from sensation and reflection; complex ideas are derived ideas that are compounded of simple ideas and thus can be analyzed or reduced to their simpler components. |
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| The notion that knowladge results from linking or associating simple ideas to form complex ideas. |
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| Primary and Secondary Qualities |
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| Primary qualities are characteristics such as size and shape that exists in an object whether or not we perceive them; secondary qualities are characteristics such as colour and odor that exist in our perception of the object. |
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| The doctrine that all knoledge is a function of mental phenomena and dependent on the perceving or experiencing person. |
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| George Berkley (1685-1753) |
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| An Irish deacon of the anglican church. He agreed with Locke that all knowledge of the external world comes from experience but dissagreed with primary and secondary qualities. He believed all knowledge was a function of - or depended on - the experiencing or perceving person. "perception is the only reality." To account for the fact that objects existed inipendent of our perception of them; God functioned as a perminent perciever. Applied the principle of association to explain how we come to know objects in the real world. |
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| The notion that the more frequently two ideas occur together, the more readily they will be associated. |
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| David Hartley (1705 - 1757) |
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| his fundamental law of association is contiguity and he preposed that repetition of sensations and ideas is necessary for associations to be formed. Agreed with locke that all ideas and knowledge come from experience. Viewed the world in mechanical terms. thought that nerves sent signals through vibrations that innitiated smaller vibrations in the brain, these were the physiological counterparts of ideas. |
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| Applied the doctrine of mechanism to the human mind (thought it was a machine). the mind is a totally passive entity that is acted on by external stimuli. Had no place in his theory for the concept of free will. studied the mind by reducing it to its elementary components. sensations and ideas are the only kinds of mental elements that exist. all knowladge begins with sensations from which are derived, through the process of association, higher-level comples ideas. association was a matter of contiguity or concurrence alone, and it could be simultaneous or successive. Believed that the mind had no creative function because association is a totaly automatic, passive process. association is mechanical and the resulting ideas are merely the accumulation or sum of the indivudual mental elements. |
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| John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) |
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| Agreed with Locke's suggestion that the humand mind was blank at birth. Thought the mind played an active role in the association of ideas. proposed that complex ideas are more than the sum of simple ideas because of creative synthesis. called his approach to the association of ideas "mental chemistry'. argued that it was possible to make a scientific study of the mind. recommended a new field of study, which he called "ethology," devoted to factors that influence the development of the human personality. |
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| the notion that comples ideas formed from simple ideas take on new qualities; the combination of the mental elements creates something greater than or different from the sum of the origional elements. |
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| A technique for determining the function of a given part of an animal's brain by removing or destroying it and observing the resulting behavior changes. |
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| Post humous examination of brain structures to detect damaged areas assumed to be responsible for behavioral conditions that existed before the person died. |
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| A technique for exploring the cerebral cortex with weak electric current to observe motor responces. |
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| Fredrich Bessel (1784-1846) |
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Responsible for the "personal equation" that was used to compensate for reaction time differences between astronomers observing the transit of stars. Bessel's work provided data that supported Locke's and Berkeley's view that there was an inexact correspondence between the nature and perception of an object.
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| Developed by Franz Gall and popularized by Johann Spurzheim. Claimed the shape of the skull reveals person's intellectual and emotional characteristics. |
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| Students of Johannes Müller who were committed to mechanism. They signed an oath committed to a single proposition: "no other forces than the common physical-chemical ones are active within the organism." |
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Smallest spatial distance at which two concurrent but separate sources of touch can be detected.
this reaserch by Weber was the first experimental demonstration of threshold. |
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minimal detectable change in a stimulus is a constant fraction of that stimulus.
∆R = kR
R is the standard stimulus
∆R is the minimal detectable change in R
k is a constant (k varies e.g., 1/40 for lifted weight 1/4 for smell) |
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| Just Noticable Difference (JND) |
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| The smallest difference that can be detected between two physical stimuli. |
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| the lowest intensity at which a stimulus can be detected |
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How much a stimulus of given magnetude needs to be changed in order to detect a difference.
Procedure:
start at zero stimulus value, increase value untill absolute threshold, start at new value and increase until JND, start at new value and increase until jnd ect.
each JND considered to be subjectively equal |
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