What are some things people can do to maximize or improve their memory
Pay attention, create associations, a picture is worth a thousand words, practice makes perfect, use multiple senses, reduce overload, time travel, get some sleep, try a rhyme, and relax.
What was Aristotle's view of associatism and what were his three principles?
Memory depends on the formation of associations, for which there are three principles: contiguity, frequency, and similarity.
What are the key features of the empiricist and nativist school of thought?
Empiricism believes that all the ideas we have are the result of experience. Example: we are born with a blank slate.
Nativism believes that the bulk of our knowledge is inborn, acquired during the past lifetimes of our souled. Example: nature vs nurture.
What was Descartes concept of dualism and his theory of reflexes?
The mind and the body are distinct entities, governed by different laws. The body functions as a machine with innate and fixed responses to stimuli.
What were John Locke's contributions to the empiricist school?
A newborns mind is a blank slate that is written on by experience. Education and experience allow common people to transcend their class.
What are the key features of William James concept of associationism?
Habits are built up from inborn reflexes through learning; memory is built up through networks of associations.
What is the theory of evolution?
The theory that species change over time, with new traits or characteristics emerging and being passed from one generation to the next.
What is Lamarcks theory of herdity?
If an organism changes during life in order to adapt to its environment then it is passed down to their offspring.
Be able to explain the theory of natural selection and how Charles Darwin arrived at the theory.
Natural selection proposed a mechanism for how evolution occurs. He proposed that species evolve when they possess a trait that meets three conditions. First, the trait must be inheritable. Second, the trait must vary, having a range of forms among the individual members of the species.
Third, the trait must make the individual more fit, meaning it will increase reproductive success.
How have learning and evolution been proposed to interact?
Evolutionary psychology. The basic premises of evolutionary psychology is that learning has enormous value for survival, allowing organisms to adapt to a changing and variable world. Organism with more capacity for learning and memory are more fit-- better able to survive and more likely to breed and pass their inherits capacities on to offspring.
What contributions did Francis Galton make to psychology and to evolutionary applications to human behavior?
He crated a hypothesis and a correlational study. He used experimental groups and control groups in his studies. He also brought to psychology eugenics, a program for encouraging marriage and production amount the healthiest, strongest, and most intelligent members of society while at the same time, discouraging childbearing in the mentally or physically unfit.
What are the key features of Ebbinhaus early experiments on forgetting?
Be able to define and apply experimental terminology such as independent variables, dependent variables, and bias to psychological studies.
Be able to describe essential features of Pavlovian (classical) conditioning and how it was discovered.
One stimulus predicts an upcoming import even is considered classical conditioning. Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by rewarding them with food. When the dogs heard the bell, they would assume food was coming and proceed to salivate.
This is called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning can be used for a positive or negative reinforcer.
What is Edward Thorndikes law of effect?
The probability of a particular behavioral response increased or decreased depending on the consequences that followed.
What are the key features of operant conditioning?
In which organisms learn to make responses in order to obtain or avoid important consequences.
What are the key features of the concept of behaviorism?
Psychology should restrict itself to the study of observable behaviors (such as lever presses, salivation, and other measurable actions) and not seek to infer unobservable mental processes.
Why did John B. Watson's early work lead him to become a proponent of behaviorism?
He had a rat study where he put a rat in a maze with food at the end, he would wait until the rat found the food. The next time, the rat would find the food even quicker than before. He would surgically impair the rat, by blinding them, making them deaf, or removing their whiskers but the rats would still find their way to the food quickly.
He discovered that the rats are not rendered by the physical changes because they had learned an automatic set of motor habits and motor habits are largely independent of any external sentry cues.
