AndreaFlores

AndreaFlores

1. Andrea Flores

2. Memory: the record of our past experiences

   • Learning: we change behavior interacting with the world and it´s elements.

3. Nature vs. Nurture

   • This is a famous debate that can also be known as nativism vs. empiricism where nativism or nature explains that you are who you are because of your genes and your family and nurture or empiricism explains that experience and your surroundings shape you.

4. KEY WORDS:

   • Associonism: Memory links ideas, people, events, etc.
   • Contiguity: nearness in time and space
   • Frequency: the more we experience events that are contiguos, the more strongly and quickly we are able to associate them
   • Similarity: if two things are similar, the thought or sensation of one will trigger the thought of the other.

5. Important People

   • René Descartes: Believed in nativism, believed that the mind and body are different entities.
     • John Locke: Was a empiricist, said that babies were born with a blank canvas.
       • Gottfried Leibniz: Believed in nativism, said that 1/4 of our knowledge is heritable.
         • William James: Empiricist, belived in association through experiences.
           • Charles Darwin: Believed in nativism and natural selection.
             • Francis Galton: Nativist, talents are inherited.

6. The birth of experimental psychology

   • Hermann Ebbinghaus used himself as a test subject to test his memory. He put himself through the test of different words and if he could remember them.
     • Ivan Pavlov with the famous Pavlov experience. You have a dog, ring a bell, give him food, and condition him that everytime you ring the bell you are going to give him food.
       • Edward Thorndike: Law of Effect. Instrumental conditioning as cats learn to escape from a puzzle box

7. Behaviorism

   • They argued psychology should also focus on behavior.
     • Watson and Skinner did experiments on rats to explain this theory, Clark Hull did an equation that was later proven wrong.
       • By mid 1950´s it became apparent that behaviorism could not explain human behavior

8. Cognitive Approach

   • W. K. Estes: Mathematical Psychology experiment on maze with rats
   • Gordon Bower: Learning by Insight. Give a task with no instructions until they get it right
     • George Miller: Information Theory . Tested on people with short-term memory to study.
       • Herbert Simon: Symbol –Manipulation Models. Used technology
         • David Rumelhart(1942-2013): Connectionist Model. More that manipulation he wanted to connect and see similarity.