Psychologists

John Watson

BEST KNOWN FOR LITTLE ALBERT experiment - a very controversial experiment that WATSON USED A 9 MONTH OLD BABY NAMED ALBERT. states that BEHAVORISM -- A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH THAT FOCUSES ON HOW HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS SHAPED BY ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AND LEARNING. ALSO CALLED BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE; it is the scientific study of human behavior. It is simply the study of what people do. Behaviorism is intended to take psychology up to the same level as the other sciences. Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli. Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests. or the experiment proper, Albert was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert got very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise. The rat, originally a neutral stimulus, had become a conditioned stimulus, and it was eliciting an emotional response (conditioned response) similar to the distress (unconditioned response) originally given to the noise (unconditioned stimulus). t should be noted that Watson's experiment had many failings by modern standards. For example, a single subject and no control subjects. Most importantly, such an experiment would never be allowed under current law and regulations, as it clearly subjected the infant to severe stress and potential long-term psychological damage. The 1st task is to observe behavior and make predictions, then to take determine casual relationships. Behavior can be reduced to relationships b/w stimuli and responses -- the S__R MODEL. A stimulus can be shown to cause a response or a response can be traced back to a stimulus. All behavior can be reduced to this basic component. Conditioning is the process of learning to react to the environment.

Ivan Pavlov

Classical conditioning (RESPONDENT CONDITIONING) is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated to him

Raymond Cattell

DEVELOPED 'VERBAL THEORIZING' to explore basic dimensions of personality, motivation and cognitive abilities; discovery of 16 factors underlying human personality -- called "SOURCE TRAITS" -- theory of 16 personality factors

Hans Selye

Discovered and documented that stress differs from other physical responses in that stress is stressful whether one receives good or bad news, whether the impulse is positive or negative. NEGATIVE STRESS -- DISTRESS and POSITIVE STRESS EUSTRESS. He developed idea of 2 reservoirs of stress resistance or alternatively stress energy.

Sigmund Freud

FATHER OF PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH (also called ANALYSIS); believed humans have 2 basic tendencies (1) survival and (2) pro-creation; identified 2 classes of human instincts -- THANATOS and EROS (from Greek terms for death and love); 2 instincts that wage war within the basic elements of any human personality -- the ID and the SUPEREGO; according to him the unconscious is the level of the mind that contains hidden thoughts, wishes, memories, and feelings that an individual cannot bring into conscious awareness; THANATOS -- the greek word for death which he used to represent the dark side of human nature, including aggressive urges and self-destructive behaviors

Wilhelm Wundt

FATHER OF PSYCHOLOGY -- generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental and cognitive psychology; combined philosophical introspection with techniques and lab apparatuses. His CHIEF METHOD OF INVESTIGATION WAS CALLED INTROSPECTION in the terminology of time, although "OBSERVATION" may be a better translation. "WE LEARN A LITTLE ABOUT OUR MINDS from casual, haphazard self-observation. HIS EMPHASIS ON OBSERVATION LED TO THE DEVELOPMENT BY EDWARD TITCHENER -- STRUCTURALISM (breaking consciousness down into components or structures including sensations, images and feelings)

Kurt Koffka

German psychologist and cofounder with Wolfgang Kohler and Max Wertheimer of the GESTALT SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY; best known for his systematic application of Gestalt principles to a wide range of questions; PRINCIPLES OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY (1935) dealt with a wide range of applied psychology but contributed mainly to the study of perception, memory and learning. In childhood we have SENSORIMOTOR learning and as adults we focus more toward IMITATION LEARNING.

Wolfgang Kohler

German-American psychologist, one of the founders of GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY with Kurt Koffka. "Aha" experience - a sudden flash of inspiration rather than thinking about a strategy (his theory of insight). He gained famed with STUDIES ON COGNITIVE PROCESSING INVOLVED IN PROBLEM-SOLVING BY ANIMALS. He argued that animals do not learn everything through a gradual trial-and-error process, or stimulus-response association. His tests in Tenerife in the 1910s with chimps suggested that THESE ANIMALS SOLVED PROBLEMS BY UNDERSTANDING. He also discovered with VON RESTOFF the ISOLATION EFFECT IN MEMORY, CONTRIBUTED TO THE THEORY OF MEMORY AND RECALL AND DEVELOPED A NON-ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE NATURE OF ASSOCIATIONS.

Howard Gardner

HE FORMULATED A LIST OF 7 INTELLIGENCES; multiple intelligence theory -- THE THEORY THAT THERE ARE VARIOUS TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE -- including verbal linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist with the possibility of more to come;

George Sperling

He documented the existence of iconic memory. He performed an experiment using a matrix with 3 rows of 3 letters. Participants of the study were asked to look at the letters for a brief period and then recall them immediately afterwords. He called this FREE RECALL

George Miller

He noticed that the memory span of young adults was around 7 elements called CHUNKS, regardless whether the elements were digits, letters, words or other units. Later research revealed that span does depend on the category of chunks used.

Martin Seligan

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS -- according to him the loss of motivation and failure to attempt escape from unpleasant stimuli that occurs if an individual perceives they are not able to exert control over his or her environment

Walter Mischel

MARSHMALLOW EXPERIMENT -- ability to delay gratification and to exert self control in the face of strong societal pressures; ability to forgo immediate gratification and wait for larger reward

Paul Ekman

PIONEER IN STUDY OF EMOTIONS & THEIR RELATION TO FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Albert Bandura

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY; he developed CONCEPT OF SELF-EFFICACY which is the focal point of his SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY; ACCORDING TO HIM -- THE LEVEL OF CONFIDENCE AN INDIVIDUAL HAS REGARDING HIS OR HER ABILITY TO PERFORM PARTICULAR TASKS; INDIVIDUALS MAY HAVE HIGH OR LOW SELF-EFFICACY FOR A PARTICULAR TASK. By means of self-system, individuals exercise control over their thoughts, feelings and actions; self-efficacy beliefs are the most influential arbiter of human activity; self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments is constructed on the basis of the 4 most influential sources: enactive attainment, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological as well as emotional factors; RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM--how people think, how they behave and what their environment is like all interact to influence the consistency of behavior

Elizabeth Loftus

STUDIED HUMAN MEMORY WITH EXPERIMENTS THAT REVEAL HOW MEMORIES CAN BE CHANGED BY THINGS THAT WE ARE TOLD. MISINFORMATION EFFECT -- the tendency for individuals who have been provided with subtle misleading information to alter their memories by adding the false memories to alter their recollection

Joseph Wolpe

Systematic desensitization

Carl Rogers

american psychologist and FOUNDERS OF HUMANISTIC APPROACH TO PSYCHOLOGY; MEANING OF BEHAVIOR IS PERSONAL AND SUBJECTIVE; Non-directive approach -- a type of therapy in which the client is at the center of the process of the process doing the thinking, talking and problem-solving. HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE -- a psychological approach that focuses on the human capacity for goodness and creativity; emphasis the importance of self-esteem, free will and choice and THIS PERSPECTIVE EMERGED FROM THIS PSYCHOLOGISTS WORK; CLIENT CENTERED THERAPY -- humanist therapy that emphasizes the client's natural tendency to become healthy

John Garcia

american psychologist known for his research on TASTE AVERSION learning also known as SAUCE-BERNAISE SYNDROME; conditioned taste aversion occurs when a subject associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled or poisonous substance.

Eric Erickson

coined the phrase IDENTITY CRISIS; PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT -- his development stage theory consists of 8 STAGES of DEVELOPMENT THAT ENCOMPASS THE ENTIRE LIFESPAN IN WHICH AN INDIVIDUAL FACES 8 SEPARATE CRISES THAT CAN HAVE A POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE OUTCOME; according to him, TRUST vrs. MISTRUST -- is the first stage in psychological development that if successfully resolved involves developing a sense that the world is supportive and safe; this stage occurs between birth & approximately 18 months.; IDENTITY VERSUS ROLE CONFUSION -- 5TH STAGE; INTIMACY VRS ISOLATION -- 6TH STAGE, integrity versus despair -- 8th stage

Frederic Bartlett

composed WAR OF THE GHOSTS -- comprised a sequence of events which were logical but also subtly illogical; he would recite the story to subjects and asked them to recall later; HE DISCOVERED MOST HAD DIFFICULT TIME RECALLING STORY EXACTLY; even after repeated readings; he theorized that where elements of the story failed to fit into the schemata of the listener, they adapted them.

Noam Chomsky

credited with creation of the THEORY OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR; MADE SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIELD OF LINGUISTICS IN THE 20TH CENTURY; according to this psychologist -- the commonalties in the basic underlying structure of all human languages; NATIVIST APPROACH -- the theory that language development is the result of an innate ability; LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE -- according to him this is the built-in biological readiness to learn the grammatical rules for any language, including syntax, semantics, and pronunciation.

Carl Jung

founder of analytical psychology -- understanding the psyche by exploring the realms of dreams, art, mythology, etc. introversion -- personality type defined by him as an individual who is self-conscious, quiet, less social; ARCHETYPE -- images and memories of the unconscious allow an individual to respond to particular situations

Alfred Binet

french psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test which is the basis of our modern day IQ test

David Wechsler

his scales introduced many novel concepts and breakthroughs to the intelligence testing movement. he did away with the quotient scores of older IQ test (the Q in IQ) and instead he assigned an arbitrary value of 100 to the mean intelligence and added or subtracted another 15 points for each standard deviation above or below the mean the subject was. Rejecting a concept of global intelligence he divided the concept of intelligence into 2 main areas: VERBAL and PERFORMANCE

BF Skinner

inventor of OPERANT CONDITIONING CHAMBER (A research tool used to examine the orderly relations of the behavior of organisms such as rats, pigeons and humans) (reinforcements and punishments); AND HE WAS INFLUENCED BY PAVLOV & LOEB. he conducted pioneering work in psychology and innovated his own school of RADICAL BEHAVIORISM, which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. KNOWN AS THE INVENTOR OF THE OPERANT CONDITIONING CHAMBER (SKINNER BOX) -- A RESEARCH TOOL USED TO EXAMINE THE ORDERLY RELATIONS OF THE BEHAVIOR OF ORGANISMS (ie -- rats, pigeons, and humans) TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT; AUTHOR OF WALDEN TWO, BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY;

Edward Tolman

most famous for studies on behavioral psychology and known for his studies of LEARNING OF RATS USING MAZES. Drew on GESTALT psychology to argue animals could learn the connections b/w stimuli and did not need explicit biologically significant event to make learning occur

Max Wertheimer

one of the founders of GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY. There he became interested in perception. Together with 2 younger assistants, Kohler and Koffka he studied the effect of moving pictures a tachistoscope generates. In 1912 HE PUBLISHED HIS SEMINAL PAPER ON EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF THE PERCEPTION OF MOVEMENT

Jean Piaget

well-known for working with children and for GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY; Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years) Preoperational Period (2-7 years) Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years) Formal Operational Period (11 and up)

Lev Vygotsky

worked extensively on ideas about cognitive development, particularly the relationship b/w language and thinking; ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT -- according to him -- the difference between what children are capable of learning independently and what they can accomplish with the extra help provided by others. INTERNALIZED SPEECH -- THE INNER LANGUAGE THAT INDIVIDUALS RELY ON TO LEARN ABOUT THEIR WORLD