Psychology 101

Intro Bio Cog Psych

University of British Columbia
Dr. Luke Clark

Lecture 3 (9th January 2017)

Psychology Past and Present

Behaviourism
The Cognitive Revolution
Origins of Neuropsychology (Cognitive Neuroscience)

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 Schools of thought: Gestalt
Perception-based theory (early 1900s)
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
Revealed by visual illusions

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion 2
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html
Schools of Thought: Behaviourism

Introspection is subjective and unreliable

Psychologists should restrict themselves to the scientific

study of objectively observable behaviour

Dramatic departure from previous schools of thought

Watson (1924) Anyone, regardless of their nature, can be

trained to be anything Give me a dozen healthy infants,
and my own specified world to bring them up in, and Ill
take any one at random and train him to become any type
of specialist I select doctor, lawyer, artist even thief.

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 Timeline

Watson: Lashley: Tolman:

Little Albert Mass Action Cognitive Maps

1920 1929 1948

1898 1890s - 1927 1930 1959

Thorndikes Pavlovs Skinner: Chomsky:

Law of Effect dogs operant critique of
conditioning Skinner

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Edward Thorndike: the Law of
Effect (1898)

Invented the puzzle box for

cats

Rewarded actions are stamped

in
Profitless actions are stamped
out

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 Classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

Digestion and salivation
Nobel Prize in Medicine (1904)

Source: From Schacter et al (2014) Psychology (3rd ed) Worth

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 John Watson: the Little Albert
experiment

Stimulus-Response learning

Rat = neutral stimulus (no

fear)

5 pairings of the rat with loud

noise (unconditioned stimulus)

Rat = conditioned stimulus

(elicits fear)

Picture: http://teachinghighschoolpsychology.blogspot.ca/2009/10/little-albert-found.html

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BF Skinner (1904-1990)

The Skinner box

Founded operant conditioning
based upon reinforcement:
Positive reinforcement
Negative reinforcement
Punishment

The illusion of free will (Walden

Two, Beyond Freedom & Dignity)
Source: From Schacter et al (2014) Psychology (3rd ed) Worth

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Behaviourism: some problems

Neisser it was supposed that no psychological

phenomenon was real unless you could
demonstrate it in a rat

Chomsky: as young children generate sentences

they have never heard before, language learning
cannot occur by reinforcement

Garcia (1966): Rats can association taste with

sickness, but not a light with sickness
evolutionary psychology

Source: From Schacter et al (2014) Psychology (3rd ed) Worth

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The Cognitive Revolution

During WWII, the military needed

help understanding the human
interface with technology.

Donald Broadbent (1926-1993):

Discovered attention has limited capacity

George Miller (1920-2012): Found

consistency in capacity limits in memory

The mind as a computer (1950s, Herbert

Simon)
Source: From Schacter et al (2014) Psychology (3rd ed) Worth

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 Mapping the brain: Cognitive Neuroscience

Wilder Penfield (1891-1976)

Cortical ablation (for epilepsy)
Electrical stimulation of the
cortex
Sensory and motor homunculi

Neuroimaging
PET in 1980s, using radioactivity
MRI in 1990s, to show both structure
and function in the brain

Picture: http://www.mcgill.ca/mcgillfirsts/1950s/

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 Past and Present: Summary

Origins in philosophy and physiology

Nature Nurture debate
Mind Body problem

Major schools of thought in psychology:

Structuralism vs functionalism ( Consciousness,
chap 5)
Gestaltists ( Perception, chap 4)
Behaviourism ( Learning, chap 7)
Cognitive Revolution

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