Although Kant seemed to agree with both the rationalist and the empiricist perspective, in reality, he _
could not align with the two viewpoints because they were in opposition to one other
*Instead, Kant bridged the gap between rationalism and empiricism, much like how we have now reconciled the opposition in the the nature versus nurture points of view
define nature and nurture
- nature is the genetic predisposition or biological makeup of an individual
- nurture includes our life experiences and that there is an interplay of the two at any given time
What is the interplay between nature and nurture?
- our environment and our experiences influence the expression of our genes
- In return, our genes may impact our interactions with our environment
What big argument was made in Kant’s book Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)?
our understanding of the world is not merely a duplicate of the world as is
*ex. brain can identify a half obstructed chair or person behind podium, percieve as a whole
how does the he human mind actively construct knowledge?
Sensory input is continually incorporated and synthesized into our understanding of the world
- also make connections between events and experiences that occur at different times, shaping our understanding of the world in a spatio-temporal format, which is given meaning by our cognitive capabilities
While Kant was exploring sensory, perceptual, and cognitive aspects of the mind, what debate were some of his 18th-century contemporaries engaged in?
the nature of the soul and its influence on human behaviour
What was Kant’s opinion on the debate of the nature of the soul and its inflence on human behaviour?
- suggested that any discussions about the soul were challenging because there was no way to objectively measure something that was intangible
*the focus should be on answering questions that objectively explore the human experience
In Kant’s book “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,” he argued that psychology could not be established as a science because _
it is not possible to express human thought in mathematical (objective) format
What was Kant’s opinion on introspection?
thought it would alter the process of thought itself while the person is asked to reflect on their thinking process
*This made it impossible to study an ever-changing mental experience accurately
What did Johann Friedrich Herbart do?
(1776-2841)
- (Motivated by Kant), took on the bold mission to apply mathematics to studying the mind
- attempted to propose a new system of thinking about psychology, similar to the natural sciences, where all phenomena are governed by specific laws and measurable through mathematical calculations
Although Herbart’s formulations aimed at describing the activity of the human mind, _
eventually, they proved too complex
- nevertheless, his work had profound implications on the origins of psychophysics
Despite Kant’s skepticism, and Herbarts complex mathematical mind-body formulas, early 19th century thinkers persevered to _
establish psychology a scientific discipline
*the focus now on designing experiments so that they may understand human behaviour from sensory, perceptual, and cognitive viewpoints
if we wanted to understand human behaviour and learning (from sensory, perceptual, and cognitive viewpoints), we had to first think about _
- ways in which people process the world through their sensory organs (the eyes, ears, nose, etc.)
- how this information is processed (perceptually) by the brain
- how the brain engages in thinking through attention, learning and memory processing (cognition)
What did Wilhelm Wundt do?
- In 1879, Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, marking a significant milestone in the history of psychology
- His approach to psychology, structuralism, aimed to analyze the basic elements of consciousness
- believed that through breaking down conscious experiences into their fundamental components, such as sensations, feelings, and perceptions, one could gain insight into the structure of the mind
In his laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments using the method _
introspection
- a method in which participants were trained to carefully observe and report their own thoughts and sensations in response to differing experiences
- asking research participants to report exactly what they experienced as they engaged in a specific mental task, such as while with viewing colours, reading a page in a book, or solving a math problem
By recording participants’ introspective reports, Wundt sought to identify _.
He focused on studying _
- the elemental building blocks of mental processes
- immediate experiences, or “consciousness elements,” such as the perception of colour, tones, and touch sensations.
How was reaction time used by structuralists?
systematically assess how long it took participants to complete different tasks and then link the complexity of the task to its completion time
Through experiments on auditory stimuli, Wundt discovered that _
it took people longer to label a sound they had just heard in comparison to whether they had heard any sound at all
*The outcome of Wundt’s work was important - helped us realize that there can be differences in the amount of time it takes for the brain to detect a stimulus than to perceive that stimulus
While structuralism played a foundational role in the development of psychology as a science, it faced criticism for _
its reliance on introspection, which is subjective and difficult to standardize
When was psychophysics established and who gets credit for forming it?
mid 19th century
- Gustav Fechner
What was Gustav Fechner interested in studying?
- interested in studying the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce
- In 1860, Fechner published his seminal work “Elemente der Psychophysik” (Elements of Psychophysics), which laid the groundwork for the discipline
In his book “Elemente der Psychophysik”, Fechner introduced _
- the methods and principles of psychophysics, including his famous logarithmic formula (known as Fechner’s law), which related physical stimuli to psychological responses and also began to address the prevailing critique that human behaviour could not be studied through objective science
Fechner’s work marked a turning point in psychology by providing _
an objective approach to designing experiments to assess the relationship between physical stimuli and mental experiences
A major approach in psychophysics focused on discrimination - describe what this means
- ex. a listener is presented with two or more stimuli of different intensities and then asked if they are different
- In discrimination tasks, the experimenter is interested in obtaining an estimate of the smallest differences in a stimulus parameter (e.g., sound level) to which the auditory system is sensitive
***listener’s sensitivity to the stimulus - can they detect it or not if it increases or decreases in intensity?
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Textbook - Chapter 113
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Textbook - Chapter 242
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Textbook - Chapter 344
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Lecture - Chapter 137
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Lecture - Chapter 286
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Lecture - Chapter 3 (P1 for TEST 1)46
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Chapter 4 - Textbook67
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Chapter 5 - Textbook43
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Chapter 3 - Lecture PT 2 Test 229
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Chapter 4 - Lecture64
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Chapter 5 - Lecture65
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Chapter 6 - Textbook84
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Chapter 7 - Textbook45
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Chapter 8 - Textbook41
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Chapter 6 - Lecture54
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Chapter 7 - Lecture45
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Chapter 8 - Lecture0
