Approaches

• Psychology


  Emerged as a separate and distinct scientific discipline from philosophy and biology
• William Wundt


  • Opened the world's first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879
  • Promoted the use of introspection to study mental processes
• Introspection


  Systematic analysis of one's own conscious experiences of a standard stimulus, then reporting the experience
• Structuralism


  Approach that attempted to uncover the structure of the mind by breaking down thoughts about an object into separate elements
• Wundt's contributions to psychology


  • Wrote first textbook of psychology
  • Set up first laboratory of experimental psychology
  • Used the scientific method to study the structure of sensation and perception
  • Showed that introspection could be used to study mental states in replicable laboratory experiments
• The timeline of psychology goes Wundt in 1879 and Freud at the 1890s with introspection, then the behaviourists Pavlov (1890s), Watson (1913), and Skinner (1940) who suggested that to give psychology greater credibility and comparable to other science it should measure objectively and use scientific methods like laboratory experiments, then there was Bandura in the 1960s with SLT talking about the impact of social interactions on our behaviour. The humanist school of psychology also appeared at around this time, rejecting the idea of studying humans in a scientific way. Cognitive psychology developed from the 1960s onwards and see the mind as a computer. Biological psychology as we know it emerged in the 1990s. Cognitive neuroscience is the most modern form of psychology.
• Behaviourism


  • All behaviors are learnt from our environment
  • Focus on observable behavior (behavior that can be seen)
  • Animals and humans learn in the same ways so behaviorists carry out experiments on animals and extrapolate the results to humans
  • Psychology should be scientific and the only things that could be objectively measured were the stimulus (input) and response (output), therefore behaviorists use mainly laboratory experiments to achieve this
  • Directly measuring the mind was untestable due to being subject to bias
• Classical conditioning


  Learning by association
• Classical conditioning


  1. Present neutral stimulus (bell)

  2. Present unconditioned stimulus (food)

  3. Neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus and elicits conditioned response (salivation)
• Operant conditioning


  Learning by consequences
• Types of reinforcement


  • Positive reinforcement (receiving a reward)
  • Negative reinforcement (stopping something unpleasant)
  • Positive punishment (adding something unpleasant)
  • Negative punishment (removing something pleasant)
• Extinction


  A behaviour that was previously reinforced stops being reinforced and so gradually stops happening
• Primary reinforcers


  Don't need pairing with another stimulus to be reinforcing (e.g. food, water, sleep)
• Secondary reinforcement


  An idea or action is reinforced by a primary reinforcer (e.g. money can buy food)
• Intermittent reinforcement


  Behaviour isn't reinforced every time it happens, resulting in compulsive and resistant to extinction behaviours
• Skinner Box experiment


  • Hungry rat placed in cage, lever press resulted in food pellet (positive reinforcement)
  • Rat placed in cage with electrical current, lever press turned off current (negative reinforcement)
• Social Learning Theory


  • Behaviour is learnt through exposure to the behaviours of others (models)
  • Includes internal mental cognitive processes (mediational factors) that need to occur for learning to happen: attention, retention, reproduction, motivation
• Bobo doll study


  • Children observed an aggressive or non-aggressive model, then had opportunity to imitate the behaviour
  • Children who observed the aggressive model were more aggressive, boys imitated more physical aggression than girls
• Free will vs determinism

  • Behaviourism is strong determinism, all behaviour is learnt from environment
  • Social Learning Theory is softer determinism, recognises an element of choice
• Nature vs nurture


  Behaviourism and Social Learning Theory are on the nurture side, arguing behaviour is learnt from environment
• It is a more complete explanation of human behavior than conditioning as it takes into account cognitive factors in learning. However it does not take into account free will and moral values.
• Behaviourism


  • Strong determinism of the behavioral approach as all behavior is learnt from our environment through classical and operant conditioning. We are the sum total of our previous conditioning.
  • Softer determinism of the social learning approach theory as it recognises an element of choice as to whether we imitate a behavior or not.
• Debates in behaviourism


  • Free will vs determinism
  • Nature vs nurture
  • Reductionism vs holism
  • Idiographic vs nomothetic
  • Scientific?
• Cognitive approach


  The study of internal mental processes, the role of schema, the use of theoretical and computer models to explain and make inferences about mental processes
• Cognitive psychology has been influenced by developments in computer science and analogies are often made between how a computer works and how we process information.
• Cognitive psychology is interested in how the brain inputs, stores and retrieves information.
• This has lead to models which shows information flowing through the cognitive system such as the multi-store model of memory.
• Assumptions of the cognitive approach

  • Information received from our senses is processed by the brain and this processing directs how we behave.
  • Thoughts can be both conscious and non-conscious, and these thoughts pass through stages called internal mental processes.
  • Mental processes are information processing completed by the brain, and the brain's processing can be compared to that of a computer.
  • Internal mental processes cannot be observed directly but we can infer what a person is thinking based on how they act.
  • Models are used to provide testable theories about mental processing and these can be studied scientifically and inferences made.
• Schema


  A mental framework of experience or expectations about the world and/or objects that helps us organise and interpret information. They are based on our previous experiences.
• Assimilation


  Adding new information to an existing schema
• Accommodation


  When an old schema has to be adapted, or a new schema created
• Schemas can lead to distortion of information as we select and interpret environmental stimuli using schemas which might not be relevant. This could be the cause of inaccuracies in areas such as eyewitness testimony. It can also explain some errors we make when perceiving optical illusions.
• Types of schemas


  • Self-schemas
  • Role schemas
  • Event schemas
• Inference


  Going beyond the immediate evidence that has been observed to make assumptions about the underlying structure of mental processes
• Computer model


  How we can think of the structure of the brain as analogous to a computer, i.e: CPU= brain, Coding= turning stimuli into thoughts, Memory stores= specialist memory areas of the brain, Output= behavioural responses
• Theoretical models


  Like flow charts used in computer programming and are a representation of how information flows and is processed through a mental systems, such as memory or attention
• Research methods used by the cognitive approach

  • Laboratory experiments
  • Case studies
  • Brain imaging
• Laboratory experiments are the preferred method of investigation of the cognitive approach i.e. Loftus and Palmer (1974) - Car Crash Study. In these experiments the extraneous variables are tightly controlled so they can be replicated, but they lack ecological validity as they take place in artificial environments and the tasks are also artificial.
• Case studies are used to study rare conditions which provide an insight on the working of some mental processes i.e. Clive Wearing, HM. Although case studies deal with very small sample so the results cannot be generalised to the wider population as they are influenced by individual characteristics, they allow us to study cases which could not be produced experimentally because of ethical and practical reasons.
• Brain imaging: fMRI and Pet scans are used to map areas of the brain to cognitive function because the processing of information by centres in the brain to be seen directly. Such processing causes the area of the brain involved to increase metabolism and "light up" on the scan. i.e. Braver et al. (1997).