Deck 16: Experimental Psychology: A Historical Sketch

Question 1

Helmholtz calculated the rate of nervous impulses to be

A) close to the speed of light.
B) faster than the speed of sound.
C) relatively slow at about 50 meters per second.
D) very slow at about 10 meters per minute.

Answer 1

relatively slow at about 50 meters per second.

Question 2

Who founded the important discipline of psychophysics?

A) Weber
B) Fechner
C) Wundt
D) Ebbinghaus

Answer 2

Fechner

Question 3

Which of the following is true of behaviorism?

A) Behaviorism had very little impact on scientific psychology.
B) Behaviorists considered mental events such as consciousness and imagery to be the appropriate focus of psychological research.
C) Behaviorism has been a major influence in experimental psychology.
D) A behaviorist established the first laboratory of experimental psychology.

Answer 3

Behaviorism has been a major influence in experimental psychology.

Question 4

Which of the following schools relied predominantly on the method of introspection?

A) Gestalt
B) behaviorist
C) functionalist
D) structuralist

Question 5

Which of the following psychologists was a behaviorist?

A) John Watson
B) John Dewey
C) E. B. Titchener
D) Max Wertheimer

Question 6

Wilhelm Wundt has been credited with establishing

A) the first laboratory of experimental psychology.
B) the behaviorist school of psychology.
C) the first psychology journal.
D) psychoanalysis.

Question 7

Many of the early German physiologists in the nineteenth century believed that forces in the human were

A) mental and physical.
B) chemical and physical.
C) mental and chemical.
D) chemical and biological.

Question 8

According to the theory called __________, the body is governed by physical laws but the mind is not.

A) monism
B) dualism
C) pluralism
D) bilingualism

Question 9

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) refers to

A) a method of studying form perception.
B) a method commonly used in human factors research.
C) measurement of the electrical activity of the brain using electrodes placed on the scalp.
D) measurement of blood flow and oxygenation in response to a specific cognitive activity.

Question 10

Early experiments on the speed of neural transmission demonstrated that

A) neural impulses travel at about the speed of light.
B) neural impulses travel faster than the speed of light.
C) neural impulses travel at a relatively slow rate.
D) the speed of neural impulses cannot be determined.

Question 11

In his reaction?time experiments, Helmholtz found __________ in reaction-time in __________.

A) great variability; the same subject
B) little variability; the same subject
C) little variability; among subjects
D) no variability; different experimental trials

Question 12

Which of the following schools rivaled the structuralist school?

A) Gestalt
B) functionalist
C) behaviorist
D) all of these

Question 13

Weber's law can be used to predict

A) the difference between recall and recognition performance.
B) the difference between reaction time and accuracy performance.
C) the relationship between IQ scores and academic performance.
D) the just noticeable difference (jnd).

Question 14

The structuralist school of psychology attempted to understand

A) the higher cognitive processes.
B) the basic elements of mental experience.
C) the fundamental laws of behavior.
D) the physiological basis of thought.

Question 15

The writings of Descartes

A) promoted the separation of the mind and body.
B) advanced the idea that the mind and body could interact.
C) advanced the idea that animals could be studied by the methods used in the physical sciences.
D) accepted the view that mind and body are indistinguishable.

Question 16

Ebbinghaus completed pioneering experiments on

A) sensation and perception.
B) human physiology.
C) human problem solving.
D) human learning and memory.

Question 17

Dualism refers to

A) the idea that the mind and body are independent entities.
B) the mind and the brain are one and the same.
C) the idea that thinking consists of memory and information processing.
D) implicit and explicit memory systems.

Question 18

Which of the following is NOT an important goal of psychophysiology?

A) to discover if psychological phenomena have measurable physiological correlates
B) to develop psychological models derived from knowledge of physiological states
C) to develop better theoretical integration of behavior and physiology
D) to replace psychological models with physiological models of behavior

Question 19

Which of the following individuals was NOT a British empiricist philosopher?

A) Locke
B) Berkeley
C) Hume
D) Watson

Question 20

Parallel distributed processing (PDP) refers to

A) an early method for measuring reaction time.
B) the use of fMRI to study brain activity.
C) a modern model of cognition.
D) a method of statistical analysis.

Question 21

The American Psychological Association (APA) consists of only a few divisions which cover the basic general areas of study.

Question 22

Functionalism was heavily influenced by the theory of relativity.

Question 23

Cognitive psychologists study unobservable mental events with objective, scientific methods.

Question 24

The behaviorists argued that terms such as consciousness were not useful scientific constructs.

Question 25

Researchers have not yet found any useful physiological correlates of behavior.

Question 26

The introspective method was common to structuralism and behaviorism.

Question 27

The British Empiricists believed that the mind could be modeled as a physical system.

Question 28

Early dualists argued that the mind could control the body, but there was little influence in the opposite direction.

Question 29

The structuralists are known for their use of the reaction-time experiment.

Question 30

Weber found that the ratio of the amount of difference necessary to produce a jnd to the standard was a constant.

Question 31

Realization of PDP models is accomplished via computer simulation.

Question 32

Helmholtz measured the speed of neural impulses by using overt reaction time.

Question 33

The U.S. Congress declared the 1990s the decade of the brain.

Question 34

Wundt believed that higher mental processes such as memory and thought could not be studied experimentally.

Question 35

Recently, the trend in psychology has been toward specialization.

Question 36

The jnd increases as the weight of the standard decreases.

Question 37

Helmholtz found that the reaction-times of a participant varied very little on different trials.

Question 38

Gustav Fechner is credited with opening the first psychology laboratory in the United States.

Question 39

Ebbinghaus was the founder of phrenology.

Question 40

Gestalt psychologists argued that perception of objects could be understood by analyzing the percept into its component parts.

Question 41

Shape constancy refers to the idea that our perceptions of objects in terms of shape do not change despite changes in retinal sensations.

Question 42

Discuss the lasting impact of behaviorism on the field of experimental psychology. Include in your answer at least two ways in which this influence can still be seen.

Question 43

List the four main schools of psychology from 1890 to 1940. For each school, state the subject matter, research methods, and two prominent names associated with the school.

Question 44

The National Psychological Organization is the most prominent psychological society in the United States.

Question 45

Ebbinghaus performed the first systematic experiments on memory.

Question 46

Of the early psychologists, who do you think made the biggest contributions? Why?

Question 47

Interpretation of physiological measures is not without risk. Discuss this statement by relating the
study of brain waves now to earlier studies of phrenology.

Question 48

Briefly describe the contributions of two important persons to early scientific psychology.

Question 49

Compare the approach to experimental psychology advocated by the structuralists to that of the behaviorists. In what ways were they similar? In what ways were they different?

Question 50

Parallel-distributed processing models have been used to simulate cognitive processes in one or two domains.

Question 51

Describe introspection. What are its strengths and weaknesses? Describe how introspection compares with today's methods for studying cognitive processes.

Question 52

What is Weber's Law? Briefly describe the method used by Weber in investigating this law.

Question 53

Is studying psychological issues using psychophysiological measures nothing more than modern phrenology? Why or why not?

Question 54

In psychological study, mental constructs are tied closely to observable responses.

Question 55

Psychology has moved into an era of specialization. Describe what this is. Do you think specialization is good for psychology as a whole?