Introductory Psychology and Brain & Cognition (7201702PXY)
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Summary Introductory Psychology & Brain and Cognition Part A
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Course
Introductory Psychology and Brain & Cognition (7201702PXY)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Book
Psychology
This is for the first year UvA Psychology course; Introductory Psychology & Brain and Cognition; the first interim exam. I don't know what my grade was for this exam, but I completed this course with a 9.
Introductory Psychology and Brain & Cognition (7201702PXY)
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Table of Contents
Summary Psychology - Gray & Bjorklund ........................................................................................................... 2
Chapter 1 Background to the study of Psychology ....................................................................................................................... 2
Chapter 2 Methods of Psychology .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 3 Genetics and evolutionary foundations of behaviour .........................................................................................10
Chapter 8 Basic processes of learning ................................................................................................................................................19
Chapter 4 The neural control of behaviour ......................................................................................................................................26
Chapter 5 Mechanisms of motivation and emotions ..................................................................................................................36
Chapter 7 The psychology of vision .....................................................................................................................................................41
Chapter 9 Memory, attention, and consciousness .......................................................................................................................46
1
,Summary Psychology - Gray & Bjorklund
Chapter 1 Background to the study of Psychology
PART 1
- Psychology is the science of human behaviour and the underlying mental processes.
- Founding of psychology as a formal, recognized, scientific discipline was in 1879, by Wilhelm
Wundt.
3 fundamental ideas of psychology
1. Behaviour and mental experiences have physical causes that can be studied scientifically.
2. The way people behave, think, and feel is modified over time by their experiences in their
environment.
3. The body’s machinery, which produces behaviour and mental experiences, is a product of
evolution by natural selection.
Dualism; church maintained that each human being consists of two distinct but intimately conjoined
entities, a material body and an immaterial soul.
Dualism - Descartes
- Descartes’ conception of the mechanical control of movement resembles our modern
understanding of reflexes, which are involuntary response to stimuli.
- Previous philosophers ascribed many functions to the soul, but Descartes ascribed just one -
thought [= conscious deliberation and judgement]
- Descartes suggested that the soul, though not physical, acts on the body at a particular
physical location: a small organ (now known as the pineal body) buried between the two
hemispheres (halves) of the brain. Threadlike structures, which we now call nerves or
neurons, bring sensory information by physical means into the brain, where the soul receives
the information and, by nonphysical means, thinks about it and sends a signal back.
- As a philosophy, it stumbles on the question of how a nonmaterial entity (the soul) can have a
material effect (movement of the body), or how the body can follow natural law and yet be
moved by a soul that does not.
- Limit on what psychologists can study scientifically [not the soul/thought]
- Not clear how certain aspects were possible [brain damage] if soul is something
different
Idea 1; Behaviour and mental experiences have physical causes that can be studied
scientifically.
Materialism - Thomas Hobbes
- Hobbes argued that soul is a meaningless concept and that nothing exists but matter and
energy → philosophy materialism.
- Materialism: all human behaviour can be understood in terms of physical processes in the
body, especially the brain.
2
, - No limit on what psychologists can study scientifically.
Empiricism
- The idea that the body, including the brain, is a machine helped to promote the science of
physiology—the study of the body’s machinery.
Important development → increased understanding of the reflexes
- The basic arrangement of the nervous system - central nervous system [brain and spinal cord]
and peripheral nerves - was well understood beginning 19th century.
- Francois Magendie demonstrated that nerves have 2 pathways; from sensory to brain
& from brain to muscles.
- Some people thought all human behaviour occurs through reflexes [reflexology]
Concept of localization of function in the brain
- The idea that specific parts of the brain serve specific functions in the production of mental
experience and behaviour.
- All such evidence about the relationships between mind and brain helped to lay the
groundwork for a scientific psychology, because it gave substance to the idea of a material
basis for mental processes.
Idea 2; The way people behave, think, and feel is modified over time by their experiences in
their environment.
Materialist philosophy led to empiricism.
- Empiricism: the idea that human knowledge and thought derive ultimately from sensory
experience [vision, hearing, touch etc].
- If we are machines, we are machines that learn.
Tabula rasa [nurture]
- The primary building blocks of experience are the senses [locke and mill]
- Learning = associating experiences
- Association by contiguity: Association takes place when ‘building blocks’ appear successively
or simultaneously
- Apple = round + red + crunchy + sour
- Mill called this mental chemistry → Complex ideas and thoughts are formed from
combinations of elementary ideas, much as chemical compounds are formed from
combinations of chemical elements
Opposite empiricism = nativism [nature]
- Basic forms of human knowledge, foundation of human nature, are native to the human mind
- In philosophy [von Leibniz and Kant] the difference between
- A posteriori knowledge; things you have to learn
- A priori knowledge; things you don’t have to learn
- In psychology this is supported by indications which prove that not everything is learned
3
, Idea 3; The body’s machinery, which produces behaviour and mental experiences, is a
product of evolution by natural selection.
Darwin
- Darwin argued that basic forms of human emotional expressions are inherited, may have
evolved, because helps in chances of survival
- Kant might argue that this is how human have evolved. To not be a blank sheet of paper, but
through the process of natural selection, built in the capacities into the brain’s machinery for
survival.
The scope of psychology
Level of analysis; level or type of causal process that is studied.
Levels in study of behaviour or mental experience:
Most directly biological psychology:
- Neural [brain as cause]
- Physiological [internal chemical functions, e.g. hormones, as cause]
- Genetic [genes]
- Evolutionary [natural selection]
- Learning [individual’s prior experiences with environment]
- Cognitive [individual’s knowledge or beliefs]
- Social [influence of other people]
- Cultural [culture in which person develops]
- Developmental [age-related changes]
→ read pages 73 – 83 for examples.
On the natural science end, most linked to biology via
behavioural neuroscience etc. Social science end linked
most directly to sociology and anthropology. In addition
to bridging natural and social science, psychology ties
whole spectrum of sciences to humanities through its
interest in how people produce and understand
languages, philosophies, art and music.
4
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