Foundations for the study of psychology - a summary of chapter 1 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)

Psychology
Chapter 1
Foundations of the study of psychology

Psychology is the science of behaviour of the mind.
Behaviour is the observable action of a person or animal
Mind refers to an individual’s subjective experiences.

Three fundamental ideas for 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 environment.
3. The body’s machinery is a product of evolution

The idea of physical causation of behaviour

Dualism

René Descartes (1596-1650)
Important about him: the body is like a complicated machine, a machinal control of movements. Quite complex behaviours can occur trough purely machinal means.
Nonhuman animals have no souls.
Thought (Descartes defined as conscious deliberation and judgment) is ascribed to the soul.
Body and soul communicate through the pineal body.

19^th century physiology, learning about the machine

Increased understanding of reflexes

The basic arrangement of the nervous system.
Some suggest that all human behaviour occurs through reflexes.  → reflexology by I. M Sechenov (1863-1935) This inspired Pavlov.

The 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.

Johannes Müller (1838-1965)
Different qualities of sensory experience come about because the nerves from different sense organs excite different parts of the brain. (We experience vison if this part of the brain is active).

Pierre Flourens (1824-1965)
Experiences on animals. Brain damage on different parts of the brain causes different deficits on animals abilities to move.

Paul Broca (1861-1965)
Publics effidence that people who suffer brain damage on specific parts of the brain lose the ability to speak, but do not lose other mental abilities

The idea that the mind and behaviour are shaped by experience

British emperism

(John Locke, David Hartley, James Mill, John Stuart Mill)
Human knowledge and thought derive from sensory experience.
We learn.
Locke viewed a kid as a tabula rasa (blank state)
Experiences servers as chalk that writes on and fills the slate.
There is no human nature other than an ability to adapt one’s behaviour to the demands of the environment.

The empirist concept of association by contiguity

Thoughts are reflections of a person’s experiences in the physical and social environment.
The fundamental units of the mind are elementary ideas that derive directly from sensory experiences and become liked together, to form complex ideas and thoughts.

Association by contiguity (proposed by Aristotle)

Contiguity refers to the closeness in space or time.
If a person experiences two environmental events at the same time or one right after the other, those two events will become associated in the person’s mind such that the thought of one event will, in the future, tend to elicit the thought
of the other.
This even counts for the most complex ideas. Those are linked together in their minds as a result of contiguities in their experiences.

John Stuard Mill (1843-1875)
Referred to this sort of analysis of the mind as mental chemistry.

The nativist response to empirism

The opposite of empiricism is nativism.
Nativism is the view that the most basic forms of human knowledge (and the basic operating characteristics of the mind) are native to the human mind. This is inborn (and not acquired trough experience).

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
Two forms of knowledge.

• A Priory knowledge (built into the brain)
• A poseriory  knowledge (gains form experience in the environment)
  Without the first, a person could not acquire the second.

The idea that the machinery of behaviour and mind evolved through natural selection

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
A biological grounding for psychology

Natural selection and the analysis of the functions of behaviour

Living things evolve by a progress of natural selection.
The innate characteristics of any given species (or plant) can be examined for the functions they serve in helping the individuals to survive and reproduce.

Adaption of Darwin’s ideas to psychology

Humans evolve to.
Evolutionary thinking can contribute to a scientific understanding of human behaviour.

Varieties of explanations in psychology

• Neural (brain and cause)
• Physiological (internal chemical functions)
• Genetic
• Evolutionary
• Learning
• Cognitive
• Social
• Cultural
• Developmental (age related)